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 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