The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

his subjection fM^'irJT' to Rome, no longer a right
to his religion; and all the more bitter that, do what
he might, that despised race confronted him
everywhere, with a religion so uncompromising as
to form a wall of separation, and with rites so
exclusive as to make them not only strangers, but
enemies. Such a phenomenon was nowhere else to
be encountered. The Romans were intensely
practical. In their view, political life and religion
were not only intertwined, but the one formed part
of the other. A religion apart from a political
organisation, or which ofiered not, as a quid pro
quo^ some direct return from the Deity to his
votaries, seemed utterly inconceivable. Every
country has its own religion, argued Cicero, in his
appeal for Flaccus. So long as Jerusalem was
unvanquished, Judaism might claim toleration ; but
had not the immortal gods shown what they thought
of it, when the Jewish race was conquered ? This
was a kind of logic that appealed to the humblest
in the crowd, which thronged to hear the great
orator defending his client, among others, against
the charge of preventing the transport from Asia to