That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with hostile feelings as their first persecutors, was but natural, and that that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation it's abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compassion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration, served in this to close the heart against it. Being looked upon as God's outlaws, they were everywhere placed as it were under the ban of humanity. And while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them more especial objects of envy, suspicion and popular hatred. In times when literature had gone to decay throughout all Christendom, the Jews had not partaken of the general degradation. They had Moses and the Prophets whose everlasting lamps were kept trimmed amongst them, and burning clearly through the dark when the light of the Gospel had grown dim in the socket, and Monkery and Popery had well nigh extinguished it. They possessed a knowledge of distant countries which was confined to themselves; for being dispersed every where, they travelled every where with the advantage of a language which was spoken by the Children of Israel wherever they were found, and nowhere by any other people. As merchants therefore and as statesmen they had opportunities peculiar to themselves. In both capacities those Princes who had any sense of policy found them eminently useful. But wealth made them envied, and the way in which they increased it by lending money made them odious in ages when to take any interest was accounted usury. That odium was aggravated whenever they were employed in raising taxes; and as they could not escape odium, they seem sometimes to have braved it in despite or in despair, and to have practised extortion if not in defiance of public opinion, at least as a species of retaliation for the exactions which they themselves endured, and the frauds which unprincipled debtors were always endeavouring to practise upon them.