SECT. XIV. But more especially amongst the Jews, who ought to be credited upon the account of the long continuance of their religion.

Now, that some miracles have really been seen, (though it should seem doubtful from the credit of all other histories), the Jewish religion alone may easily convince us: with though it has been a long time destitute of human 19assistance, nay exposed to contempt and mockery, yet it remains to this very day, in almost all parts of the world;²⁵²⁵   Hecatæus, concerning the Jew; which lived before the time of Alexander, has these words: “Though they be severely reproached by their neighbours and by strangers, and many times harshly treated by the Persian kings and nobility; yet cannot they be brought off from their opinion. but will undergo the most cruel torments and sharpest death, rather than forsake the religion of their country.” Josephus preserved this place, in his first book against Appion: and he adds another example out of the same Hecatæus, relating to Alexander’s time, wherein the Jewish soldiers peremptorily refused to assist at the repairing the temple of the god Belus. And the same Josephus has very well shewn, in his other book against Appion, that the firm persuasion of the Jews of old, concerning God’s being the author of their law, is from hence evident; because they have not dared, like other people, to alter any thing in their laws; not even when, in long banishments, under foreign princes, they have been tried by all sorts of threatenings and flatteries. To this we may add something of Tacitus about the proselytes: “All that are converted to them do the like; for the first principle they are instructed in is to have a contempt of the gods; to lay aside their love to their country, and to have no regard for their parents or brethren.” That is, when the law of God comes in competition with them; which this profane author unjustly blames. See further what Porphyry has delivered about the constancy of the Jews, in his second and fourth books against eating of living creatures; where Le mentions Antiochus, and particularly the constancy of the Essenes amongst the Jews. when all other religions²⁶²⁶   Even those so highly commended laws of Lycurgus, as is observed by Josephus and Theodoret. (except the Christian, which is, as it were, the perfection of the Jewish) have either disappeared as soon as they were forsaken by the civil power and authority, (as all the pagan religions did), or else they are yet maintained by the same power as Mahometanism is: for, if any one should ask, whence it is that the Jewish religion hath taken so deep root in the minds of all the Hebrews, as never to be forced out; there can be no other possible cause assigned or imagined than this, that 20the present Jews received it from their parents, and they from theirs, and so on, till you come to the age in which Moses and Joshua lived: they received, I say, by a certain and uninterrupted tradition, the miracles which were worked, as in other places, so more especially at their coming out of Egypt, in their journey, and at their entrance into Canaan; of all which their ancestors themselves were witnesses.²⁷²⁷   To which we give credit, because it was worthy of God to institute a religion in which it was taught that there was one God, the Creator of all things, who is a spiritual Being, and is alone to be worshipped. Le Clerc. Nor is it in the least credible, that a people of so obstinate a disposition could ever be persuaded, any otherwise, to submit to a law loaded with so many rites and ceremonies; or that wise men, amongst the many distinctions of religion which human reason might invent, should choose circumcision; which could not be performed without great pain,²⁸²⁸   Philo says, it was done “with very great pain.” and was laughed at by all strangers,²⁹²⁹   The same Philo says, “It was a thing laughed at by every body:” whence the Jews by the poets are called cropt, circumcised, fore-skinned. and had nothing to recommend it but the authority of God.