The Jews were told that the observances of the Mosaic Law were instituted on account of the hardness of their hearts and were no longer acceptable in the sight of God; that the circumcision of the spirit had superseded the circumcision of the flesh; that faith, and not works, is the key to eternal life; that their national calamities were judgments for their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus; and that their only hope of peace in this world and of salvation in the next lay in conversion. Nor was the enmity towards the Jews confined to refutation of their doctrines and attempts at persuasion. The Jews had always been held by the Christians responsible for all the persecutions and calumnies with which their sect had been assailed. “The other nations,” says Justin to his Jewish collocutor in 140 A.D., “are not so much to blame for this injustice towards us and Christ as you, the cause of their evil prejudice against Him and us, who are from Him. After the crucifixion and resurrection you sent forth chosen men from Jerusalem throughout the earth, saying that there has arisen a godless heresy, that of the Christians.”[33] The accusation is repeated, among others, by Origen: “The Jews who at the commencement of the teaching of Christianity spread evil reports of the Word, that, forsooth, the Christians sacrifice a child and partake of its flesh, and also that they in their love for deeds of darkness extinguish the lights and indulge in promiscuous incest.”[34] Here we find the sufferings of Christ linked to the sufferings of His followers; the crime of the Pharisees associated with those of their descendants; and, in defiance of the essential tenet of Christianity, and of the sublime example of its author, the sins of the fathers are now to be visited upon the children. The Christians, while gratifying their own lust for revenge, flattered themselves that they avenged the wrongs of Christ; by oppressing the Jews they were convinced that they carried out the decrees of Providence. Thus pious vindictiveness was added to the other and older motives of hatred--a new ring to the plant of anti-Judaism. But for the existence of those other motives of hatred, with which theology had little or nothing to do, the theological odium henceforth bestowed upon the Jews would have been merely preposterous. The founder of Christianity, Himself a Jew, had appeared to His own people as the Messiah whom they eagerly expected and with all the divine prophecies concerning whose advent they were thoroughly familiar. They investigated His credentials and, as a nation, they were not satisfied that He was what His followers claimed Him to be. Instead of remembering that His Jewish fellow-countrymen were, after all, the most competent to form a judgment of their new Teacher, as they had done in the case of other inspired Rabbis and prophets, the Christians proceeded to insult and outrage them for having come to the conclusion