dustrious subjects. Their irreconcilable
hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence,
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.
[7]

[Footnote 4: It is to Modestinus, a Roman lawyer (l. vi. regular.) that
we are indebted for a distinct knowledge of the Edict of Antoninus. See
Casaubon ad Hist. August. p. 27.]

[Footnote 5: See Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, l. iii. c. 2, 3. The
office of Patriarch was suppressed by Theodosius the younger.]

[Footnote 6: We need only mention the Purim, or deliverance of the
Jews from he rage of Haman, which, till the reign of Theodosius, was
celebrated with insolent triumph and riotous intemperance. Basnage,
Hist. des Juifs, l. vi. c. 17, l. viii. c. 6.]

[Footnote 7: According to the false Josephus, Tsepho, the grandson of
Esau, conducted into Italy the army of Eneas, king of Carthage. Another
colony of Idumaeans, flying from the sword of David, took refuge in the
dominions of Romulus. For these, or for other reasons of equal weight,
the name of Edom was applied by the Jews to the Roman empire. * Note:
The false Josephus is a romancer of very modern date, though some of
these legends are probably more ancient. It may be worth considering
whether many of the stories in the Talmud are not history in a
figurative disguise, adopted from prudence. The Jews might dare to say
many things of Rome, under the significant appellation of Edom, which
they feared to utter publicly. Later and more ignorant ages took
literally, and perhaps embellished, what was intelligible among the
generation to which it was addressed. Hist. of Jews, iii. 131. ----The
false Josephus has the inauguration of the emperor, with the seven
electors and apparently the pope assisting at the coronation! Pref. page
xxvi.--M.]

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