Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem is a treatise on church and state, written in German in the 1780s and presented here in an 1838 London edition translated by M. Samuels. The book argues a philosophical case about ecclesiastical authority, toleration, and the civil standing of the Jews. A preface addressed to the reader opens it; there follows a translation of Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel’s seventeenth-century Vindiciae Judaeorum, with Mendelssohn’s own preface to that tract and a series of related letters and editorial notes. The volume moves between abstract principle and historical testimony, using the older text as evidence for a case Mendelssohn is making in his own present.
“What a world of bliss we should live in, did all men adopt and practise the true principles, which the best amongst the Christians and the best amongst the Jews have in common !”
Mendelssohn’s central claim is that the state has no business enforcing religious belief. Rights, he argues, are the moral faculty of acting—the quality of doing or forbearing—and they attach to the use of things and the exercise of industry, never to opinions about immutable truths. Assent or dissent cannot extend or restrict a right, and no system of opinions can generate a mode of acquiring property. From this it follows that “ecclesiastical jurisdiction” and “ecclesiastical authority” are phrases without any intelligible content: true religion is all spirit and heart, it wins by argument and conviction, and it needs neither arms nor fingers. The state may tolerate a religious community’s own arrangements in civil matters, since property is alienable and members may bind themselves by covenant to settle disputes among themselves, but the judges who decide those disputes should be the ordinary judges, whatever their own faith. A conscientious physician treats a malefactor by the rules of his art; so a judge does justice in this life’s interests regardless of what he believes about the next.
How the Case for Toleration Is Assembled
The 1838 London Edition and Its Translator’s Frame
The volume opens with the apparatus of a Victorian translation: a dedication to Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, praised as a steady friend of civil and religious liberty, a subscriber list thick with Rothschilds and Montefiores, and a translator’s preface by M. Samuels, author of a life of Mendelssohn. Samuels begins with a theory of nations. Each people, he argues, carries a character rooted in its first origin, and a fair observer looks for that character in essentials rather than accidents. The Jewish nation’s original elements were sound; only the accidents of a long and bitter history deformed it. Remove those disadvantages and the Jewish polity recovers its dignity—but the reform must grow from native soil, since foreign cultivation would annihilate or disfigure it. Great reformers of every age, he notes, built on maxims already in place, tender toward what a people held sacred and severe only against real harm. A footnote offers Rabbi Meir, who daily visited his apostate old teacher, explaining that he kept the kernel and threw away the shell; another names Maimonides, Aben Ezra, and Manasseh Ben Israel as imperishable ornaments of the Hebrew nation.
Samuels then recalls the Hebrew people at their happiest, faithful to the religion of their fathers, perfected under a pacific monarchy, their nationality rising into general philanthropy—Solomon’s tolerant prayer at the Temple’s dedication stands in a footnote. When independence ended, the wanderers carried nothing but their religion, and clung to her the more cruelly they were used. Over that horrid page the translator draws a veil; a gladder chapter has opened, with toleration pulling down the iron barrier between hearts. Yet obstacles remain, and many still read the Jewish character as nothing but immoral motive. Twelve years earlier, admirers of his Memoirs urged him to print this translation; leisure failed him then, and now he offers it with the scarce publications that occasioned Mendelssohn’s book and notes drawn from approved Jewish authors. He confesses himself no censor and no reformer, too timid for satire and too conscious of his own defects, his ambition reaching no higher than a tolerable translation—and he pleads that he is not a native of this country.
Manasseh Ben Israel Answers the Reproaches
There follows Manasseh Ben Israel’s Vindiciæ Judæorum of 1656, a letter to a noble and learned gentleman. Manasseh receives the letter with delight despite its painful subject, which touches the credit of a nation he dares call innocent amid calumny. Silence, he says, would concede the charge; yet who can be eloquent about his own calamity? He sends brief relations, enough to inform the rulers of England of a truth most sincere, and charitably supposes his correspondent acted not from hatred but from fear that Jewish settlement might injure English estates—charity beginning at home—so he argues the case under the heading of profit, which has made Jews welcome elsewhere.
The Blood Libel Refuted
Manasseh opens with bitter weeping over the accusation that Jews kill Christian children for Passover blood. He answers with scripture and reason. Exodus xxi, 20 punishes a master who kills even his Gentile slave; how much less may a Jew murder a peaceful neighbor in a strange land? Grant the act lawful, and why eat blood at Passover, when every confection must be free of anything that ferments? If such a rite were required, Jews would not brave imminent death for it unless a divine precept or rabbinic constitution commanded it—and no accuser can cite one. Saving life overrides the Sabbath and most commands, save idolatry, murder, and adultery; a supposed precept to kill would be void, since it endangers the whole congregation and violates “Thou shalt do no murder,” spoken universally. Jeremiah commanded the captives to seek the peace of their city; Jews bless the prince under whose protection they live, as the Amsterdam synagogue blessed Lord St. John and the commonwealth of England. Israelites are merciful by nature—Ben-hadad trusted the kings of Israel for his life, and the prophet marks that the Gibeonites were not of Israel when they demanded Saul’s sons. As for the charge of mocking Jesus by buffeting children, it sins against the sixth commandment, risks life and fortune, and would bring graven images into Jewish houses, which Deuteronomy curses. Matthew Paris’s tale of a circumcised Norwich child collapses on its own circumstances: why circumcise a boy one means to crucify? The story resembles Spanish piety that baptized Indians before butchering them. Under the Mahometans, whose yoke is heavier, no such libel was ever forged—Sultan Selim merely laughed at it. Manasseh swears by the most high God, creator of heaven and earth, who gave the Law on Sinai.
Manasseh Ben Israel’s Defence of the Jews
Manasseh ben Israel answers the old charge that Jews seduce Christians into their faith. They avoid religious disputation, he writes, precisely to prevent scandal and hatred; they refuse to circumcise converts so as to give no offence. Ferdinand and Isabella’s expulsion of the Jews from Castile, ostensibly a response to Jewish seduction of Christian nobles, was a mere pretext for tyranny. He cites Josephus, who refused to compel the noblemen of the Trachouites to be circumcised, holding that every man should serve God of his own free will; Manasseh praises this as a model for defending common liberty and leaving judgment to God. Torments, he insists, cannot make a Jew a Christian: beasts are taught by blows, men by reason, and the Spanish Inquisitions only harden men in their tenets.
On commerce he meets the objection that Jews would monopolise trade and ruin natives. Jews bring profit through customs and excise, buy commodities to transport elsewhere, and enrich the commonwealth even when particular persons lose by cheaper prices. God distributed benefits unequally among places to create commerce; England, though plentiful, lacks shipping materials, wine, oil, figs, almonds, raisins, and Indian drugs, and the English are most capable of navigation. Some deceivers exist among Jews, as among all nations, since poverty breeds baseness—but Rabbi Moses of Egypt teaches that robbing any man, even a Gentile, is sin. In Alexander’s time the Alexandrians accused the Jews of theft; Guebia Ben Pesria answered that the Jews entered Egypt with seventy souls and grew to over six hundred thousand, serving in base offices two hundred and ten years, so that demanding payment for their labour would show the Alexandrians still in debt—and Alexander acquitted them. Rabbi Simeon Ben Satah, having bought an ass whose head-stall concealed a valuable jewel unknown to the seller, restored it freely. Oaths to any nation must be kept; God punished Zedekias for breaking his oath to Nebuchadnezzar. Manasseh tells of a Morocco court where a Jew traded false stones for verdigrease with a Portuguese Christian, who remarked that had the Jew stoned him, he would have buried the Jew. Many Jews at Amsterdam, he affirms, remained poor rather than break with others’ goods. Against Edward I’s charge that Jews clipped coin, he cites Mr. Prynne’s A Short Demurrer to the Jews, quoting the King’s writ acknowledging that Christians accused Jews out of hatred and extorted money by threats.
The Hope of Israel and the Voyage to England
Manasseh addresses his recipient directly: correspondence with eminent English persons first prompted his design, and for seven years he solicited by letters. He conceived that the dispersion of the Jews must be fulfilled before their restoration, citing Daniel and Deuteronomy, and understood “the end of the earth” to mean this island. He congratulated the English nation on its liberty and peace, addressed The Hope of Israel to the First Parliament and Council of State, who sent a favourable passport, and the Second sent another. His kindred pressed him to stay and he promised; then he addressed the Lord Protector, and finding his coming not unwelcome, took leave of house, friends, and Amsterdam, voyaged to England, was courteously received, and presented a petition. The Protector convened an assembly at Whitehall of divines, lawyers, and merchants of differing persuasions, whose judgments differed so much that no final determination came. The few Jews present departed; others went to Italy or Geneva, which granted privileges. Manasseh prays to the “Keeper of Israel,” asking God to influence the prince, who acted from commiseration rather than private interest, and begs the English nation to read his arguments impartially. The tract is dated from his study in London, April 10th, 5416.
Mendelssohn’s Preface: Prejudice in Changing Dress
Mendelssohn thanks providence that he lives to see the Rights of Man taken to heart. Toleration, he notes, once concerned only the three religious parties favoured in the German empire; Pagans, Jews, Mahometans, and Theists were neglected, or mentioned only to make universal toleration seem disputable. Prejudice, he observes, assumes the forms of every age to oppress the Jews. In superstitious days the charges were defiling sacred things, stabbing crucifixes, secretly circumcising Christian babes, using Christian blood at Passover, poisoning wells, witchcraft—for which Jews were despoiled, exiled, racked, and put to death. Such calumnies no longer work; now come charges of superstition, want of moral feeling and good manners, unfitness for arts, sciences, trades, and especially the military and civil services, and proneness to cheating and usury.
The Challenge from Vienna
A letter signed “S.” from Vienna, dated 12 June 1782, presses Mendelssohn with an argument that cuts to the heart of his public standing. Jewish law, S. contends, keeps Jews apart from Christians: scorn for other nations is woven into the faith, Gentile food and drink are declared abominable, and intermixture is blocked at every turn. Such precautions once made sense, S. concedes, when a people prone to idolatry lived among pagan neighbours; but Christians are no idolaters, and a shared meal would hardly lure a Jew into accepting Christian mysteries. If Jews are to be incorporated into the State and enjoy the benefits of citizens, every breach between the two persuasions should be filled. England shows the way: religion is no bar to marriage there, since marriage is merely a civil contract. S. then turns the screw. If ecclesiastical law grounded in express Mosaic statutes can be set aside without harm to pure Judaism, why not the mere rabbinical reservations? A footnote reports three Vienna marriages between Christian husbands and Jewish wives, and a pending case of a converted Jew demanding to keep cohabiting with a wife who persists in Judaism—with the opinion that difference of religion cannot justify legal separation, for under the principles of wise Joseph, difference of opinion should not stand in the way of natural ties. The public, S. concludes, may justly demand a reason for the discrepancy: either Mendelssohn should publicly embrace Christianity, or he should argue against Christianity itself. The truth-loving public longs to hear an approved thinker speak in the evening of his life without reserve. By explaining himself he will either free his nation from paralysing constraint or draw his brethren nearer to the Christians; a foundation will be laid for the prophecy that in the latter days the Lord will be the universal shepherd and all rational creation one flock. The present happy era allows truth her proper station—though even now the archdemon of fanaticism hatches imps, and Magnetizers and Ghost-seers conspire to trample free reason underfoot; only another Ferdinand and Isabella are wanted to let the spectre of the Inquisition gambol on smoking pyres. Having battered down the steel gate of ecclesiastical authority, what should keep him from celebrating his ovation in the inner sanctum of truth? A man called by Providence to promulgate truth cannot withdraw after putting his hand to the plough.
A postscript by “Moerschel” from Berlin, 3 September 1782, adds its own pressure. Reading Mendelssohn’s preface to Manasseh Ben Israel’s Vindication of the Jews, he had wished the author would step further into the light or take off the veil behind which he hides. He had hoped a more distinguished pen might accomplish this; it did not. Lately he chanced to see the manuscript of the prefixed epistle before it went to press, and it had such an extraordinary effect that his former wishes revived more vividly than ever. He entreats Mendelssohn neither to embrace the religion Moerschel professes nor at once to refute it, but to speak resolutely of what is of first and vital importance to the reflecting and conscientious of all religions.
Mendelssohn’s Reply to Bonnet
Mendelssohn’s letter to Charles Bonnet opens with a confession. The Zurich Deacon, Lavater, has effectively admitted his rashness, and Mendelssohn acknowledges his own indiscretion: the excitement of the challenge made him speak of Bonnet with less reserve than Bonnet’s merits deserved. He had assumed the translator would not have taken such an extraordinary step without consulting the author of the original, so the challenge must have carried the sanction of the writer of Palingenesy. He waited months for a hint of correction; only at the end of December did Lavater inform him that Bonnet had disapproved of the dedicatory epistle—but by then Mendelssohn’s letter was already published and ten days on the road to Zurich. He asks Bonnet to forgive both the Deacon and the Berlin Jew, and to consign the past to oblivion.
Open defiance between them, he argues, only diverts the idle, scandalizes the simple, and gives malicious exultation to revilers of truth. Analyse their aggregate stock of knowledge, and they would concur in so many important truths that few individuals of one persuasion would harmonize more. The labels “Christianity” and “Judaism” sound no more inimical than “Cartesian” or “Leibnitzian.” He concedes that with such sentiments his talents as a polemic cannot be of the first order—and observes that Bonnet seems no more gifted by nature for that occupation, his mildness and excessive modesty disqualifying him as a theological prize-fighter. The Zurich Deacon, too much a lover of truth not to copy Bonnet’s example, would soon settle the business between them.
Dietary and Marriage Law as Civil Matters
The editor’s notes take up the practical objections one by one. A Jew, he argues, is not like a Mahometan or a Hindoo who will destroy a cooking vessel a Christian has touched; he abstains only from forbidden ingredients or unlawful combinations, and whatever he may lawfully eat at his own table he may eat from a Christian’s hands. The stricter refusal of wine not made by Jews—libation wine—probably aimed at keeping Jews from carousing with pagan neighbours who poured drink to Bacchus; where Jews grew their own vines it caused little trouble, and with the supposed motive gone the rule is now only partly kept, chiefly where ceremony requires wine. Marriage, likewise, was never seriously disputed to be a civil contract rather than an “unessential point of religion.” The Talmud lays down three modes of marrying—money, a deed, cohabitation—any one of which constitutes a legal marriage; the ring and formula before two witnesses suffice. The canopy, the Chaldee deed nobody understands, the benedictions, give solemnity and publicity only: omit them and the contract stands, though the omission would be thought indecent. In Holland marriage is a civil engagement before secular authorities, optionally hallowed afterwards; no priest, ulema, or rabbi can legitimize the offspring of a merely religious marriage, while any justice of the peace can. Since the Revolution France manages it the same way.
Forms and the Eternal Religion
Religions, runs the next note, are mere forms, changing and perishing like all terrestrial things; Religion is eternal and always the same. Human nature required the Eternal to be blended with the evanescent, and from that need come the variety, instability, and decay of forms. Strip the spirit of its envelope and in all religions you find only one eternal religion—a thought quoted from Schlachter.
The Argument from Mendelssohn’s Example
No age was so barren as to produce no Jew distinguished for learning and talent, though such men generally lived in obscurity, unpatronised, harassed by adverse circumstance, and on changing religion almost invariably changed their names, so that Jewry lost the glory. Many now fill academic chairs and hold high office, descended of Israelites. No bigot ever denied them intellectual powers; on the contrary they were credited with more than natural sagacity, the better to inveigh against its abuse. A reviewer of Lessing’s drama The Jews in the Göttingen Literary Advertiser laid down the axiom that there could be no honest man among the Jews—and then Mendelssohn appeared. If this Jewish lad, without regular education or foreign culture, could rise to such morality, uniting true piety, resignation to the divine will, and universal philanthropy, why not many others of his nation? His instance proves that with encouragement and proper culture the mass of Jewry may become useful subjects and respectable citizens. Reason, experience, and true religion took Israel’s part; these thoughts germinated in enlightened statesmen under wise princes until, in the reign of the friend and protector of justice, they bore fruit and the cause of humanity was decided. Heartless beings still cry No, from ignorance, selfishness, and fear of losing the monopoly of citizens’ rights, but are not listened to.
Truth Preached Without Disguise
Mendelssohn’s confidence in the force of truth was unlimited, and he resembled his revered Lessing, whose opinions were oracles to him. Lessing is quoted: whether it is our duty to sacrifice happiness and life to truth he does not know, but if we would preach truth it is our bounden duty to preach it clearly and plainly, without innuendo or reservation; he who withholds the whole truth and puts us off with something between truth and falsehood deserves little of the human understanding. Hence hypocritical and double-tongued persons, particularly religious ones, were odious to him; he would find grounds of excuse even for a renegade acting openly, but treated the dissembler with ineffable contempt—in Lessing’s spirit, that he who is faithless to truths when danger threatens may still be Truth’s ardent lover and be forgiven, whereas he who passes truth off under masks may be Truth’s pimp, never her lover. His manful contention for the rights of reason while giving no offence to orthodox brethren was understood by few confidential disciples; holding no office in his congregation, his conduct was not liable to animadversion.
The Old Schoolroom and the Rabbis’ Fear of Philosophy
The editorial notes then survey traditional Jewish schooling. Boys were made to learn the Pentateuch from earliest infancy, often by their fourth year, under a petty schoolmaster, synagogue-reader, or beast-killer—sometimes one man serving both capacities—or a private teacher, generally an indigent Talmudical student called a Bachur.
The Reformers and Their Missteps
The appendix turns from Mendelssohn himself to the movement he set in motion, weighing the congregational maxim that the individual holds a living, heart-stirring religion while the community keeps only external forms against both Rabbinism and Mendelssohn’s own teaching that the Jews’ laws are duties each person takes up individually. The author concedes that the hoped-for change in Jewish thought and life did not bear fruit everywhere at once. Newly emerging from the middling class, Jews had to pass through a childhood and adolescence of their own; having thrown off the Rabbis, they lacked men able to teach religion with dignity. Novices with no access to ancient sources found their enlightenment among French philosophers and their German imitators, and minds that cast off fetters without any apprenticeship in freedom produced intestine discord screened by vanity, aloofness from homely brethren, and exposure. Students who took up religion unprepared drifted back to commerce. Those who possessed High German through translations of Scripture felt pressed toward further proficiency, since society demanded refined speech; company discussed philosophy, the Talmud could not equip them to join, and German philosophers were out of reach for want of books or groundwork, so they resorted to Hebrew thinkers—Maimonides and Judah Hallevi as models, the Moreh, Solomon Maimon’s Kanteism, the Cosri, Jedadya Hapnini—inflating many into self-styled philosophers. Half-learned merchants enjoyed notice among accomplished Christians, while old-fashioned Jews were isolated and mocked by brethren who took the waving of outward observances for a sign of superior education. Lacking satisfactory reasons, the licentious party reaped disapprobation from every side—Rabbis crying irreligion, estimable anti-rabbins crying deviation from knowledge, Christians crying ridiculousness—and pamphlets and caricatures followed. The first reforming spirits towered above their age; except for Mendelssohn, who knew how to let himself down to the people, they advanced too swiftly and left the weak behind. Schools, teachers, and catechisms were wanting; worship was less understood and not heart-bracing, so synagogues stood deserted; theological study was neglected, and religious life with its homespun virtues—temperance, peace of mind, domestic happiness—disappeared, breeding conceited half-bred literati. When political writers sought a remedy it came too late for some informed Jews, who preferred Christianity and drew after them others who shift religion like a coat.
Emancipation and Its Fruits
Jewish education then progressed in the Prussian states. Sources opened, and careers in science, the arts, civil appointments, membership in the Royal Academy, and municipal offices spurred emulation and shamed half-advanced pretensions. Jewish painters of both sexes exhibited, virtuosi performed at concerts, some taught mathematics and languages, some joined the stage. Christian children attended Jewish schools—the Berlin free-school counted one-third Christian scholars—and members of the board of general education and clergymen praised it in public journals. Dr. Bock’s higher academic establishment at Berlin won universal applause; first families and titled ones entrusted children to him; the promiscuous education of Jews and Christians was sanctioned by the consistory and visiting commissioners; he died in his thirty-second year, universally lamented. Ben David continued writing; David Friedländer, aged but vigorous, served as elder and in municipal offices, and his and Lieberman Schlesinger’s activity improved the Jewish lower class. Friedländer’s Hebrew muse sounded faint echoes in the new Gatherer for three years, but German had established ascendancy. Pamphleteers declaimed against naturalization, yet it was completed before law sanctioned it: Jews served in the national guard, entered the army, fought courageously, loved soil and empire, frequented gymnasiums, universities, artists’ ateliers; only husbandry and mechanical trades were denied them. In March 1812 the royal edict completed emancipation: Jews in the ancient Prussian states are natives and Prussian citizens on condition of adopting family names and using German or another living language in all transactions; equal rights; eligibility to academical and parochial offices; freedom to live anywhere, acquire land, exercise lawful trades; no additional taxes but equal charges; subject to military service; marriages unimpeded except that foreigners cannot gain citizenship by marrying a native; no separate laws except in divine worship and ritual usances, without retroactive force; no own jurisdiction; the government reserving determinations about church conditions and improving education, availing itself of able and integrity-known Jewish confessors’ assistance and opinion. The edict excited enthusiasm; now they were natives—a footnote prefers LandesKinder, “children of the country,” to “natives”—and the holy war of the first French invasion gave opportunity to manifest love of sovereign. Young men joined the army, none showed cowardice; many decorated died for their country, many returned honoured; parents sacrificed children to danger and substance to wounded sufferers, time and health to nursing. The name “
The book’s most striking feature is the way it lets history do the arguing. Manasseh ben Israel’s tract, written in 1656 to press for the readmission of the Jews to England, is a catalogue of accusations and rebuttals: the blood libel refuted from the Mosaic prohibition on consuming blood, from the Talmudic rule that murder is one of the three commands a Jew may not break even to save his life, from Jeremiah’s instruction to seek the peace of the city where the captive dwells, and from the simple observation that if Jews were required to kill Christian children they would hardly expose themselves to the punishment that follows. Manasseh answers the charge of cursing Christians by showing that the daily prayer speaks of heretics, and that Jews pray for the whole world, following the high priest who on the Day of Atonement beseeches another year of blessing and peace for all mankind. He answers the charge of seducing converts by insisting that every man should serve God of his own free will, not by force—a principle he praises in Josephus and holds up for imitation. He answers the charge of usury and fraud by arguing that the petty trader is a real producer, that competition and equal liberty keep prices at a mutually advantageous mean, and by telling of Rabbi Simeon Ben Satah, who bought an ass and found a jewel in its head-stall and restored it freely, saying he had bought the ass but not the jewel.
Mendelssohn’s own preface to the tract turns this historical material into a diagnosis of his own moment. Prejudice, he observes, changes costume with the age. In superstitious centuries the Jews were accused of stabbing crucifixes, poisoning wells, and using Christian blood at Passover; now that such calumnies no longer convince, the charges shift to superstition, want of taste and good manners, unfitness for the arts and sciences and especially for the military and civil services, and a proneness to cheating. The effect is the same: exclusion. Jews are kept from trades and professions, and then their want of refinement is made the pretext for keeping them out—”They tie our hands, and scold us for not making use of them.” He is careful to show how legends outlive their refutation. The story that Elector Joachim the Second of Brandenburg was poisoned by his Jewish physician Lippold had been repeated so often that the most intelligent men took it as fact; Dr. Mochsens traced it to its source and found that the elector died of an open ulcer on his leg, that Lippold was a valet and master of the Mint rather than a physician, and that the accusation of magic arose only when an inquiry into his accounts found him innocent and release could no longer be deferred. Barbarous laws, Mendelssohn remarks, are more pernicious than no laws at all.
The letters gathered around the treatise show the argument being tested from several directions. “The Search for Light and Right,” an epistle addressed to Mendelssohn, presses him to say plainly what he means by the faith of his forefathers, and charges that by denying the synagogue the right to expel the heretic he has wrenched away its cornerstone—since Moses himself ordained stoning and extermination for the Sabbath-breaker and the reviler of the divine name. A letter signed S. from Vienna pushes further, arguing that Jewish dietary and marriage laws obstruct the intermixture of Jews with Christians and that if ecclesiastical law founded on express Mosaic statutes can be suppressed without harm to pure Judaism, the rabbinical reservations should go too. Mendelssohn’s reply to Charles Bonnet takes a different tack, regretting the public defiance that diverts the idle and scandalizes the simple, and suggesting that if the shared stock of knowledge held by the best Christians and the best Jews were analysed, they would concur in so many important truths that the points of division might be adjourned for ages without detriment to human welfare.
What holds the volume together is a single conviction about the limits of force in matters of belief. Mendelssohn warns against the error that religion can be maintained by iron force, that doctrines of blessedness can be inculcated by unblest persecution, and that true notions of God, who is love itself, can be communicated through hatred and ill-will. He thanks the God of his fathers that this error seems to be vanishing, and urges his brethren to imitate the virtues of the nations whose vices they had thought they must imitate: “Love, and ye will be beloved.” The book’s significance lies in that move—the transfer of a theological quarrel onto the ground of civil right, where the question is no longer which creed is true but what the state may do about any of them. The editorial notes that close the volume, gathering papal protections and persecutions, the Roman Jews’ homage to a newly elected pope, and Luther’s remark that if Jews were kindly used many would become good Christians, extend the same argument backward through history, as if to show that the case was always there to be made and only the temper of the age prevented it from being heard.
