“After dinner my wife and I, by Mr. Rawlinson’s conduct, to the Jewish Synagogue: where the men and boys in their vayles, and the women behind a lettice out of sight; and some things stand up, which I believe is their law, in a press to which all coming in do bow; and at the putting on their vayles do say something, to which others that hear the Priest do cry Amen, and the party do kiss his vayle. Their service all in a singing way and in Hebrew. And anon their Laws that they take out of the press are carried by several men, four or five several burthens in all, and they do relieve one another; and whether it is that every one desires to have the carrying of it, thus they carried it round about the room while such a service is singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, in which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. “But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more; and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this.” Such was the impression which the Jewish congregation produced on that keen observer of the surface of things. The inference to be drawn from these sprightly comments is that the Jew was far from having outlived his unpopularity. Though the doctrine of toleration, for which Cromwell had fought and Milton suffered, was still preached by divines like Taylor and expounded by philosophers like Locke, the English public was far from recognising every man’s right to think, act and worship as seemed good to him. So hard it is even for the faintest ray of light to pierce the mists of prejudice. To Mr. Pepys we also owe a curious glimpse of the vigour with which the Messianic Utopia was cherished at this time amongst us. The fame of Sabbataï Zebi had reached England, and the Prophet of Smyrna found adherents even in the city of London. We are in 1666, on the eve of the mystic era fixed by enthusiasts as the year that was to see the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land. Under date February 19th, Mr. Pepys makes the following entry in his Diary;--“I am told for certain, what I have heard once or twice already, of a Jew in town, that in the name of the rest do offer to give any man £10 to be paid £100, if a certain person now at Smyrna be within these two years owned by all the Princes of the East, and particularly the Grand Segnor, as the King of the world, in the same manner we do the King of England here, and that this man is the true Messiah. One named a friend of his that had received ten pieces in gold upon this score, and says that the Jew hath disposed of £1,100 in this manner, which is very strange; and certainly this year of 1666 will be a year of great action; but what the consequences of it will be, God knows!” ♦1689♦