societies, undisturbed by traditionary experience, were strong, and their
convictions, unmitigated by criticism, were necessarily fanatical. The
Jews were looked upon in the middle ages as an accursed race, the enemies
of God and man, the especial foes of Christianity. No one in those days
paused to reflect that Christianity was founded by the Jews; that its
Divine Author, in his human capacity, was a descendant of King David; that
his doctrines avowedly were the completion, not the change, of Judaism;
that the Apostles and the Evangelists, whose names men daily invoked, and
whose volumes they embraced with reverence, were all Jews; that the
infallible throne of Rome itself was established by a Jew; and that a Jew
was the founder of the Christian Churches of Asia.

The European nations, relatively speaking, were then only recently
converted to a belief in Moses and in Christ; and, as it were, still
ashamed of the wild deities whom they had deserted, they thought they
atoned for their past idolatry by wreaking their vengeance on a race to
whom, and to whom alone, they were indebted for the Gospel they adored.

In vindicating the sovereign right of the Church of Christ to be the
perpetual regenerator of man, the writer thought the time had arrived when
some attempt should be made to do justice to the race which had founded
Christianity.

The writer has developed in another work ('Tancred') the views respecting
the great house of Israel which he first intimated in 'Coningsby.' No one
has attempted to refute them, nor is refutation possible; since all he has
done is to examine certain facts in the truth of which all agree, and to
draw from them irresistible conclusions which prejudice for a moment may
shrink from, but which reason cannot refuse to admit.