I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was certainly a righteous man, and probably one who wished to bring back his countrymen, to a rational observance of the law, and to abandon their traditions. He appeared in an age when the religious part of the Jewish nation had made the law in many respects of none effect by those traditions, and had rendered their religion a stumbling block to the Gentiles, by reason of the puerile superstitions they had added to it: thus counteracting the express design, for which they had been set apart from other nations, viz. to bring them to the knowledge and acknowledgement of the unity and supremacy of God;) and violating the command of Moses, "ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." Deut. ch. iv.-- and when the irreligious part of the nation, had become dreadfully corrupt. The Jewish people at that time were oppressed and despised; the prophets of the Old Testament had taught them to believe that at a time when their oppressions should be at their height, their Messiah should appear. Of consequence the appearance of such a man as Jesus Christ, at that time when they considered themselves as crushed under the Roman yoke, possibly led them or some of them to believe that he might be their expected deliverer. But the Jewish nation at that time were unworthy of such a deliverance. They longed for their Messiah, not for righteousness, but for vengeance sake; not to hail him as the benefactor of the human race, but as the avenger of their wrongs upon all the world who had crushed and despised them. Such a people were not the lawful candidates for the happiness of the eternal kingdom; and they afterwards learned, by the event of their struggle with the Romans, that they must not expect deliverance till they had become less unworthy of it. Jesus, by preaching against the traditions of the elders, by not observing the Sabbath day so rigidly as the Pharisees, by denouncing them as hypocrites, tithers of mint anise and cummin, washers of plates and platters, and neglecters of the weightier matters of the law, justice, judgment, and mercy, as serpents, a generation of vipers, whited sepulchres, and what not, had enraged these superstitious fanatics to the last degree. But they could not wreak their vengeance, because he was protected, by the people whom the gospels represent as expecting with the most anxious impatience, that he would announce himself as their deliverer.[fn100] But when repeated importunity, accompanied by an attempt to seize upon him and by compulsion oblige him to head them, terminated only in causing Jesus to escape and withdraw himself from their wishes [fn101] the people were disgusted, and abandoned him.