"Amaziah," replied Javan, "I am not insensible to the feelings of nature and humanity. I delight not in seeing the affliction of others; and if I could terminate your anxiety, and procure the liberation of Theophilus without compromising my well-known and declared opinions, and countenancing a heresy which my soul abhors, I would gladly do so. But the pure faith which has descended to me unsullied from our father Abraham is dearer to me than any considerations of a personal nature. Your son is an apostate. He has cast off the God of his fathers, and gives to a creature, a mere man, the honour which belongs to Jehovah alone. Therefore is he cut off from his family and his nation--nay more, he is wiped away from the book of life, and consigned to perdition. And shall I--a son of Aaron--lend my aid to rescue him from the punishment which he so well has earned? Shall I be the means of setting him at liberty, to disseminate his accursed doctrines, and carry the same spiritual pestilence into other families that he has brought into his own? No! by the altar of God I swear that so long as he cleaves to his idolatry, so long may he pine in a dungeon; or, if his judges see fit, he may be torn limb from limb, and given to be meat for the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. But let him renounce his errors, and seek the pardon of his offended God by confession and sacrifice, and I will procure his release. Amaziah, look to your own safety. You have narrowly escaped sharing the same fate as your son; and I warn you to abjure your heresy, or to flee at once from the city. Judith and Claudia are known and marked as Nazarenes; and Naomi too is suspected. I have power to shelter her at present; but even that may fail, and my sister may be seized on and offered as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of insulted Heaven! O God of Jacob! what woes have been brought on thy peculiar people by the impostures of the crucified carpenter's son." Javan left the room, and retired with hasty steps to the terrace, where he remained a great part of the night, pacing to and fro, and revolving many anxious thoughts. All his better feelings had been excited by the scene which he had just witnessed, and it was only by recalling to his mind the sentiments of severe fanaticism that generally reigned there, that he had been enabled to banish the rising emotions of tenderness and compassion. But now he had checked what he considered a weakness. Bigotry and mistaken zeal resumed possession of his soul, and all his thoughts were directed to the paramount object of bringing back his cousin to Judaism, or making him a fearful example of vengeance, as a warning to Naomi, to Amaziah, and to all who were in like manner perverted.