THE

HESE Letters are printed chiefly to be distributed among the Jews; and if there should appear to be any profpect of

their answering the end for which they were compofed, they will be tranflated into Hebrew, for the ufe of learned Jews in all parts of the world, to engage them, if poffible, in an amicable difcuffion of the fubject.

It may be proper to obferve, that the word Chrift, in this work, is used only as a proper name, to denote the founder of the chriftian religion, and not as fynonymous to Meffiah, though it was originally nothing more than a tranflation of that word into Greek.

Since the first edition of thefe Letters, I have published Letters to Philofophical Unbelievers, Part II. in which I have ftated the evidence of the Jewish and chriftian religions jointly; and therefore I with the Jews would give particular attention to them, and confider them as an appendage to these Letters, addreffed to themselves.

Of the peculiar Privileges of the Jewish Nation, and the Causes of their Prejudices against Christianity.

CHI

HILDREN of the stock of Abraham, and heirs of the fure promises of God. Bear, I intreat you, with the ferious addrefs of a chriftian, who reverences your nation, is a believer in the future glory of it, and is a worshipper of the God of your fathers, without admitting any other to share in the rights of divinity with him.

I admire your perfevering faith in the promises of God, notwithstanding the most

In this you

difcouraging appearances. fhew yourselves to be the worthy fons of the great patriarch from whom you are defcended. You have fuffered more than any other nation under heaven, but you justly believe it is no more than was foretold by your great prophet Mofes, and what you have brought upon yourselves. And, believing in the equity of the divine proceedings, and in the veracity of that God, who has diftinguished you as his peculiar people, you cannot entertain a doubt, but that whenever the cause of his displeasure is removed, he will turn from his fierce anger, and remember the covenant which he made with your fathers, to be a God to them, and to their feed after them. He will make a full end of all other nations, that shall perfecute and opprefs you, but you he will never utterly deftroy. He will only correct you in measure, as we read, Jer. xxx. 11. xlvi. 28.

Your diflike of chriftians, and your abhorrence of their faith, is not to be wondered at, when it is confidered how

much

much you have fuffered by their cruel oppreffions, and how contrary their doctrines have been to the fundamental principles of your religion. You are the worshippers of the one living and true God. But, befides him, the generality of christians have paid divine honours to Jefus Chrift, and in a great measure also to those dead men, whom they have called Saints, who were no more the proper objects of worship than images of wood and ftone, the work of men's hands. But at this day the cruel usage you have met with from christian nations is happily much abated. Chriftians in general, and especially the more civilized among them, are difpofed to treat you with equity and humanity; and if you now make enquiry into their faith, you will find that many of them have rejected, as abuses and corruptions of it, thofe doctrines which you fo justly abhor.

Jefus Chrift, who was of your nation, was a worshipper of the fame God with yourselves. He taught his followers to worship the fame great Being, and no other,

Acts

and to regard himself as their mafter, but as nothing more than the meffenger and fervant of God, a prophet like unto Moses; and the apostle Peter calls him, "a man ap"proved of God, by miracles, and wonders, "and figns, which God did by him." ii. 22. This rational doctrine prevails more and more among chriftians; and by reading the New Testament you will eafily fatisfy yourselves that there has been no more juft reafon why chriftians fhould pay divine honours to Chrift, than your ancestors had to worship Mofes.

For many ages your fathers were continually relapfing into idolatry. But God, in the course of his providence, has at length entirely cured you of the leaft propensity to it. In like manner he thought proper to permit chriftians to fall into fimilar idolatrous practifes, but he is now opening their eyes, to fhew them their abominations, and to bring them back to the worship of himself alone; that with us, as well as with you, God may be one, and his name one. Zech.

iv. 9.

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