Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
Ver. 15. Who both killed the Lord] And are therefore banished out of the world, as it were, by a common consent of nations, for their inexpiable guilt. Even in Jerusalem there be hardly to be found a hundred households of them. (Breerwood Inquir.) In Cyprus it is at present death for any Jew to set his foot upon the island. (Dio. Cass.) In Thessalonica and Constantinople there are many thousands of them, but at every Easter they are in danger of death, if they but stir out-of-doors, because at that time they crucified our Saviour. (Biddulph.) The Turks themselves so hate the Jews for crucifying Christ, that they use to say in detestation of a thing, "I would I might die a Jew." Neither will they permit a Jew to turn Turk, unless he be first baptized. The Romans permitted other nations to call themselves Romans after they had conquered them; but so they would not suffer the Jews to do, though they complied never so much, and were their servants (as August. in Psal. lviii. witnesseth), lest there should some blot stick to the glory of the Romans, by that odious and sordid people. O Marcomanni, O Quadi! said one emperor.
And their own prophets] Whose slaughter (though long since done) is in recent remembrance with God, and is reckoned and registered together with the death of Christ himself.
And have persecuted us] They still curse the Christians in their daily prayers, which they close up with a Maledic, Domine, Nazaraeis. Curse, of God, Christians. Lopez at Tyburn affirmed, that he had loved Queen Elizabeth as he loved Jesus Christ. Which from a Jew was heard not without laughter. (Camden's Elizabeth.)
And they please not God] Yet they challenged the title of God's Church, as the Papists will needs be the only Catholics. They cried, ad ravim usque, The temple of the Lord, when they nothing regarded the Lord of the temple.
And are contrary to all men] Being herein rather Ishmaelites than Israelites, Genesis 16:12. The trout delights to swim against stream. The herb alexander will agree with no other herb but itself. Such antipodes a are our Jesuits, so insufferably ambitious and impudent, that neither their doctrine nor their conversation pleaseth those of their own religion.
a Diametrically opposite (to anything). ŒD