The clergy, it would seem, took umbrage at the privileges which the Jews enjoyed, and resolved to attempt, by an exercise of ecclesiastical authority, to overbear the effects of the protection which had been afforded by the measures of government. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, in conjunction with Hugo de Velles, Bishop of Lincoln, published a general prohibition, by which all persons were forbidden to buy anything of the Jews, or to sell them any victuals or other necessaries, or to have any communication with them; declaring, at the same time, that they were persons, who, by the laws of the Church, were excommunicated for their infidelity and usury. Indeed the ecclesiastics had more cause to be jealous of them then than at any subsequent periods. The Jews were then a more accomplished and enlightened race, than centuries of feudal oppression had made them four or five hundred years later. Benjamin of Tudela, the great Jewish traveller of the preceding century, informs us, that every association of Jews in the more important cities of Europe, had its college, or seminary, for training men learned in their law: whilst on the other hand, Christians were then groping in the darkness of superstition and ignorance. The laity, and even the priesthood, were then, in point of enlightenment, as far inferior to their descendants four hundred years later, as the Jews were superior to theirs. In England, the balance of learning and accomplishments decidedly preponderated in favour of the Jews, as I have shown in the lecture before last.¹ There was a difference, too, in the relative holds of the two religions upon the minds of their votaries. Both rested upon one common basis――the Old Testament. The faith which spiritualises the types and forms of that sacred volume was then comparatively new in the island; many of its inhabitants had been pagans only two or three centuries before, and were yet wavering in their faith. On the other hand, the Jews were stronger in faith then than they are now. The Jews were then a proselytising race: now they no more seek to make converts than the Society of Friends. All which tended to excite emulation on the part of the Church.² ¹ See p. 109. ² See Knight’s London. Stephen Langton issued, therefore, the following edict respecting the Jews, at his provincial synod:―― “That the Jews do not keep Christian servants: and let the servants be compelled by ecclesiastical censure to observe this, and the Jews by canonical punishment, or by some extraordinary penalty contrived by the diocesans. Let them not be permitted to build any more synagogues, but be looked upon as debtors to the churches of the parishes wherein they reside, as to tithes and offerings.