| 230 in Holland, Turkey, Germany, and Poland.-In America, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Russia, they are not so numerous. In Persia, China and India, on the east and west of the Ganges, they are few in number among the heathen. The cold region of Siberia, and the burning deserts of Arabia, bear record of their misery; and we have every reason to believe, that they are to be found in the very interior of Africa. From one end of the earth unto the other, the Jews have been scattered among all nations.
They were to find no ease nor rest among the nations, whither they were to be driven.-Their plagues and the plagues of their race, were to be great, and of long continuance.-They were to be oppressed and crushed, and spoiled evermore. In the first century, Jerusalem was laid even with the ground, and they led captive, or driven as homeless vagabonds throughout the world. In the second, five hundred thousand of them were slain, under one emperor alone. They suffered serious persecutions in the third. In the fourth, their ears were cut off, and they banished from Rome.-In the fifth, they were driven from Alexandria, and grievously oppressed throughout Persia, and could find no rest for the soles of their feet, they made another attempt to regain Judea, being allured by a false Messiah, and a slaughter, like that by which their forefathers had fallen, was again renewed in Palestine, in the sixth century. In Africa, they were prohibited from any exercise of their religion, even in caverns. In the seventh century, they were grieviously [grievously] persecuted and expelled from Jerusalem, from Antioch, and from Spain. Numbers fled to France, where the only alternative was to renounce their religion, or be despoiled of all they possessed. Mahomet also, exacted a heavy tribute from the Jews in Arabia, and finally expelled them. In the succeeding century, a law was passed throughout the Mahometan dominions, authorizing any child that would renounce Judaism, and embrace Mahometanism, to take possession of the whole property of its father, and turning the whole family out of doors. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they suffered grievously through the caliphs, or successors of Mahomet, whose power extended from Spain to India; their academies were closed, themselves taxed; and marks and badges of infamy placed on them, till they were compelled to flee for refuge, to the deserts of Arabia. And if the murdering hand of oppression was stayed for a short time, through their excessive covetiousness [covetousness], they soon began to heap up treasures in abundance, which merely prepared the way for further spoilations.
The scenes through which this stricken people had to pass, is calculated to rouse the sympathies of the most obdurate heart. Sir Walter Scott says that no part of God's creation, except the flying fish, suffered as this once peculiar people. Surely they had trembling of heart, and sorrow of mind! What madness for the sight of their eyes that they did see! What choosing of death, rather than life, was their portion. They were massacred in multitudes throughout Europe. All the Jews were slain at Ulm; at Frankfort one hundred and thirty were burned, and numbers butchered. Twelve thousand were killed at one time in Franconia and Bavaria. In other places they barricaded their houses, and threw their treasures, their families, and themselves into the rivers or the flames.
At Norwich, in England, the Jews were massacred, and many were slain at Stamford, and other places in that kingdom; but at York their sufferings were worse than death. Fifteen hundred Jews, including men, women and children, shut themselves up in the castle and their silver and gold could not save them from the murderous sword of those demons, and in their desperation, each father was the murderer of his wife and children, and afterwards cut their own throats. At Massada, a similar scene was transacted; and several other places, death was chosen by them rather than life.
The Mahometans bribed their children to forsake their parents; the Roman Catholics took them from them by force, according to law, and brought them up in monasteries, and when the Jews were banished from Lisbon, none of the children under fourteen years of age, were suffered to depart. Their sons and their daughters were given to another people.
They found no rest for the soles of their feet. They were seven times banished from France, and at one time six hundred thousand of them were driven from Spain, and scarcely a kingdom in existence, but what have publicly banished them. They have been a proverb, a bye-word, an astonishment, and a hissing among all nations.
This letter has, in spite of all my endeavors, run out too far, and yet I am afraid the few subjects I have touched upon will not be explicit enough to be of much service to your readers, for I thought I could have put twice as much in half the space, and so I must conclude after giving a short statement of the present condition of the Jews, and one more proof of the truth of the Bible, namely the much talked of numbers of Daniel and John, and I think I can set this in a light that all can understand it. Many good men have been endeavoring to fix the
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