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 to consider them as an odious and impure race.

By disdaining the intercourse of other nations, they might deserve their contempt.

The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd; yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind; and it was universally acknowledged, that they had a right to practise what it would have been criminal in them to neglect.
But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favor or security to the primitive church.

By embracing the faith of the gospel, the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence.