Some of them scarcely retained the semblance of humanity.

They might have been taken for brutes; yet they were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their lot, good-tempered, kind-hearted, devoted to their families, and irreproachable in their general conduct.
I need not add that the Roman rabble, bettering the instruction of Catholic monks, spurned them, reviled them, and robbed them.

The law forbade Christians to hold converse with them, but to steal anything from them was a work of grace.
The law did not absolutely sanction the murder of a Jew; but the tribunals regarded the murderer of a man in a different light from the murderer of a Jew.

Mark the line of pleading that follows.
"Why, Gentlemen, does the law severely punish murderers, and sometimes go the length of inflicting upon them the penalty of death?
Because he who murders a Christian murders at once a body and a soul.

He sends before the Sovereign Judge a being who is ill-prepared, who has not received absolution, and who falls straight into hell--or, at the very least, into purgatory.