olence,
evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every
opportunity of overreaching the idolaters in trade; and they pronounced
secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom.

Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities adored by
their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed, however, the free
exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other
cause, which exposed the disciples of Christ to those severities from
which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them
is simple and obvious; but, according to the sentiments of antiquity,
it was of the highest importance. The Jews were a nation; the Christians
were a sect: and if it was natural for every community to respect the
sacred institutions of their neighbors, it was incumbent on them
to persevere in those of their ancestors. The voice of oracles, the
precepts of philosophers, and the authority of the laws, unanimously
enforced this national obligation. By their lofty claim of superior
sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an
odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations,
they might deserve their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the
most part frivolous or absurd; yet, since they had been received during
many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the
example of mankind; and it was universally acknowledged, that they had
a right to practise what it would have been criminal in them to neglect.
But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not
any favor or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of
the gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural
and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and
education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and
presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true,
or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the
expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter
who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria, would equally
disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every
Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his
city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused
to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of
mank