“I can,” says the Spectator, “in the first place attribute their numbers to nothing but their constant Employment, their Abstinence, their Exemption from Wars, and, above all, their frequent Marriages; for they look on Celibacy as an accursed State, and generally are married before Twenty, as hoping the Messiah may descend from them.” Their dispersion is explained as follows: “They were always in Rebellions and Tumults while they had the Temple and Holy City in View, for which reason they have often been driven out of their old Habitations in the Land of Promise. They have as often been banished out of most other Places where they have settled.... Besides, the whole People is now a Race of such Merchants as are Wanderers by Profession, and, at the same time, are in most if not all Places incapable of either Lands or Offices, that might engage them to make any part of the World their Home. This Dispersion would probably have lost their Religion had it not been secured by the Strength of its Constitution: For they are to live all in a Body, and generally within the same Enclosure; to marry among themselves, and to eat no Meats that are not killed or prepared their own way. This shuts them out from all Table Conversation, and the most agreeable Intercourses of Life; and, by consequence, excludes them from the most probable Means of Conversion. “If, in the last place, we consider what Providential Reason may be assigned for these three Particulars, we shall find that their Numbers, Dispersion, and Adherence to their Religion, have furnished every Age, and every Nation of the World, with the strongest Arguments for the Christian Faith, not only as these very Particulars are foretold of them, but as they themselves are the Depositories of these and all the other Prophecies, which tend to their own Confusion. Their Number furnishes us with a sufficient Cloud of Witnesses that attest the Truth of the Old Bible. Their Dispersion spreads these Witnesses thro’ all parts of the World. The Adherence to their Religion makes their Testimony unquestionable. Had the whole Body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the Prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the Coming and History of our Blessed Saviour, forged by Christians, and have looked upon them, with the Prophecies of the Sybils, as made many Years after the Events they pretended to foretell.” This cold-blooded habit of drawing from the sufferings of fellow-men an assurance of our own salvation is still cultivated by many good Christians. It is a comfortable doctrine, though not particularly complimentary to Providence. ♦1723♦