[Footnote 1: Rom. vii. 16.]
[Footnote 2: Arnica Collatio de Veritate Relig. Christ. cum Erudito
Judaeo, published in 1687, by Philippe de Limborch, who was eminent as
a professor of Theology at Amsterdam from 1667 until his death, in 1712,
at the age of 79. But the learned Jew was the Spanish Physician Isaac
Orobio, who was tortured for three years in the prisons of the
Inquisition on a charge of Judaism. He admitted nothing, was therefore
set free, and left Spain for Toulouse, where he practised physic and
passed as a Catholic until he settled at Amsterdam. There he made
profession of the Jewish faith, and died in the year of the publication
of Limborchs friendly discussion with him.
The Uriel Acosta, with whom Addison confounds Orobio, was a gentleman of
Oporto who had embraced Judaism, and, leaving Portugal, had also gone to
Amsterdam. There he was circumcised, but was persecuted by the Jews
themselves, and eventually whipped in the synagogue for attempting
reformation of the Jewish usages, in which, he said, tradition had
departed from the law of Moses. He took his thirty-nine lashes,
recanted, and lay across the threshold of the synagogue for all his
brethren to walk over him. Afterwards he endeavoured to shoot his
principal enemy, but his pistol missed fire. He had another about him,
and with that he shot himself. This happened about the year 1640, when
Limborch was but a child of six or seven.]
[Footnote 3: Sur la Religion. OEuvres (Ed. 1752), Vol. III. pp. 267,
268.]
[Footnote 4: I Cor. x. 31.]
[Footnote 5: Psalm cxxxix. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 6: Genesis v.22; vi. 9]
[Footnote 7: Erasm. Apophthegm. Bk. III.]
* * * * *
No. 214. Monday, November 5, 1711. Steele.
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