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* The case of the Gipsies, often alleged as a parallel, is a ludicrous
evasion of the argument. These few and scattered vagabonds, whose very
safety has been obscurity and contempt, have never attracted towards
them a thousandth part of the attention, or the hundred thousandth part
of the cruelties, which have been directed against the Jews. Had it been
otherwise, they would long since have melted away from every country in
Europe. We repeat that the existence of a nation for 1800 years in the
bosom of all nations, conquered and persecuted, yet never extinguished,
and the propagation of a religion amongst different races without force,
and even against it,--are both, so far as known, paradoxes in history.
+ 'They may say,' says Butler, 'that the conformity between the
prophecies and the event is by accident; but there are many instances in
which such conformity itself cannot be denied.' His whole remarks on the
subject, and especially those on the impression to be derived from the
multitude of apparent coincidences, in a long series of prophecies, some
vast, some minute; and the improbability of their all being accidental
are worthy of his comprehensive genius. It is on the effect of the
whole, not on single coincidences, that the argument depends.
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Once more then; if, from the external evidences of this religion, we
pass to those which the only records by which we know any thing of its
nature and origin supplies, the infidel must believe, amongst other
paradoxes, that it is probable that a knot of obscure and despised
plebeians--regarded as the scum of a nation which was itself regarded as
the scum of all other nations--originated the purest, most elevated, and
most influential theory of ethics the world has ever seen; that a system