'
'The criminals said that, not the judge. Is it a principle of your
jurisprudence to permit the guilty to assign their own punishment?
They might deserve a severer one. Why should they transfer any of the
infliction to their posterity? What evidence have you that Omnipotence
accepted the offer? It is not so announced in your histories. Your
evidence is the reverse. He, whom you acknowledge as omnipotent, prayed
to Jehovah to forgive them on account of their ignorance. But, admit
that the offer was accepted, which in my opinion is blasphemy, is the
cry of a rabble at a public execution to bind a nation? There was
a great party in the country not disinclined to Jesus at the time,
especially in the provinces where he had laboured for three years, and
on the whole with success; are they and their children to suffer? But
you will say they became Christians. Admit it. We were originally a
nation of twelve tribes; ten, long before the advent of Jesus, had been
carried into captivity and scattered over the East and the Mediterranean
world; they are probably the source of the greater portion of the
existing Hebrews; for we know that, even in the time of Jesus, Hebrews
came up to Jerusalem at the Passover from every province of the Roman
Empire.
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