Thou shalt love all men; and you are
cruel and spiteful, hating each other, and making all mankind hate you.
Thou shalt walk humbly with thy God; and you Jews are walking proudly
with God; fancying that God belongs only to you; that because you are His
chosen people, He will let you commit every sin you choose, as long as
you keep His name on your lips, and keep up an empty worship of Him in
the temple. That is your adversary, the everlasting moral law of God.
And who is the Judge but God Himself, who is set on His throne judging
right, while you are doing wrong? And who is the officer, to whom that
judge will deliver you? There indeed the Jews were right. It was the
Romans whom God appointed to punish them for their sins. All which our
Lord had foretold, as all the world knows, came true forty years after in
that horrible siege of Jerusalem, which the Jews brought on themselves
entirely by their own folly, and pride, and wicked lawlessness. In that
siege, by famine and pestilence, by the Romans' swords, by crucifixion,
and by each other's hands (for the different factions were murdering each
other wholesale up to the very day Jerusalem was taken), thousands of
Jews perished horribly, and the rest were sold as slaves over the face of
the whole earth, and led away into a captivity from which they could not
escape till they had paid the uttermost farthing.
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