evidence of their own senses.

The Jewish religion was admirably fitted for defence, but it was
never designed for conquest; and it seems probable that the number of
proselytes was never much superior to that of apostates. The divine
promises were originally made, and the distinguishing rite of
circumcision was enjoined, to a single family. When the posterity of
Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose
mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself
the proper and as it were the national God of Israel and with the most
jealous care separated his favorite people from the rest of mankind. The
conquest of the land of Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful
and with so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were
left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbors.
They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes,
and the execution of the divine will had seldom been retarded by the
weakness of humanity. With the other nations they were forbidden to
contract any marriages or alliances; and the prohibition of receiving
them into the congregation, which in some cases was perpetual, almost
always extended to the third, to the seventh, or even to the tenth
generation. The obligation of preaching to the Gentiles the faith of
Moses had never been inculcated as a precept of the law, nor were the
Jews inclined to impose it on themselves as a voluntary duty.

In the admission of new citizens, that unsocial people was actuated by
the selfish vanity of the Greeks, rather than by the generous policy of
Rome. The descendants of Abraham were flattered by the opinion that
they alone were the heirs of the covenant, and they were apprehensive of
diminishing the value of their inheritance by sharing it too easily with
the strangers of the earth. A larger acquaintance with mankind extended
their knowledge without correcting their prejudices; and whenever the
God of Israel acquired any new votaries, he was much more indebted to
the inconstant humor of polytheism than to the active zeal of his
own missionaries. The religion of Moses seems to be instituted for
a particular country as well as for a single nation; and if a strict
obedience had been paid to the order, that every male, three times in
the year, should present himself before the Lord Jehovah, it would have
been impossible that the Jews could ever have spread themselves beyond