25.--I cannot but wonder with what exception
the Samaritans could confine their belief to the Penta-
teuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the
rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the Old
Testament,<37> as much as their defection from the New:
and truly it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible
and degenerate issue of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick
superstition, and so easily seduced to the idolatry of
their neighbours, should now, in such an obstinate and
peremptory belief, adhere unto their own doctrine,
expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the
church, persist without the least hope of conversion.
This is a vice in them, that were a virtue in us; for
obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good:
and herein I must accuse those of my own religion; for
there is not any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable
belief, as a Christian; none that do so often transform
themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity, and
of the same species, but unto more unnatural and contrary
forms of Jew and Mohammedan; that, from the name
of Saviour, can condescend to the bare term of prophet:
and, from an old belief that he is come, fall to a new
expectation of his coming.
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