Secondly, it is also highly probable, from the nature of the case, that the propagation of the new religion was attended with difficulty and danger.  As addressed to the Jews, it was a system adverse, not only to their habitual opinions but to those opinions upon which their hopes, their partialities, their pride, their consolation, was founded.  This people, with or without reason, had worked themselves into a persuasion, that some signal and greatly advantageous change was to be effected in the condition of their country, by the agency of a long-promised messenger from heaven.* The rulers of the Jews, their leading sect, their priesthood, had been the authors of this persuasion to the common people.  So that it was not merely the conjecture of theoretical divines, or the secret expectation of a few recluse devotees, but it was become the popular hope and Passion, and, like all popular opinions, undoubting and impatient of contradiction.  They clung to this hope under every misfortune of their country, and with more tenacity as their dangers and calamities increased.  To find, therefore, that expectations so gratifying were to be worse than disappointed; that they were to end in the diffusion of a mild unambitious religion, which, instead of victories and triumphs, instead of exalting their nation and institution above the rest of the world, was to advance those whom they despised to an equality with themselves, in those very points of comparison in which they most valued their own distinction, could be no very pleasing discovery to a Jewish mind; nor could the messengers of such intelligence expect to be well received or easily credited.  The doctrine was equally harsh and novel.  The extending of the kingdom of God to those who did not conform to the law of Moses was a notion that had never before entered into the thoughts of a Jew.

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* “Pererebuerat oriento toto vetus et contans opinio, esse in fatis, ut eo tempore Judaea profecti rerum potirsatur.”  Sueton.  Vespasian. cap. 4—­8.

“Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri, eo ipso tempore fore, ut valesecret oriens, profectique Judaea rerum potirentur.”  Tacit.  Hist. lib. v. cap. 9—­13. _________

The character of the new institution was, in other respects also, ungrateful to Jewish habits and principles.  Their own religion was in a high degree technical.  Even the enlightened Jew placed a great deal of stress upon the ceremonies of his law, saw in them a great deal of virtue and efficacy; the gross and vulgar had scarcely anything else; and the hypocritical and ostentatious magnified them above measure, as being the instruments of their own reputation and influence.  The Christian scheme, without formally repealing the Levitical code, lowered its estimation extremely.  In the place of strictness and zeal in performing the observances which that code prescribed, or which tradition had added to it, the new sect preached up