Note 59 — Chapter VIII

This excessive liberality on the part of Lady Huntingdon exposed her sometimes to the artifices of the designing, who failed not to prey upon her pious generosity. About the date of this letter great efforts were made on the Continent, assisted by the support of the charitable in England, to convert the Jews to Christianity. Two zealous students in the University of Halle, in Saxony, devoted themselves to this work of grace, travelling over Europe during several years; preaching, and raising funds for the maintenance of proselytes and catechumens, and for the publication of tracts, those messengers of mercy, which were dispersed in thousands, by Russian officers, a Swedish bishop, the Danish missionaries, and other zealous persons, wherever an individual of the Jewish nation was to be found. An account of these efforts was published in 1732, in a pamphlet of forty-eight pages, drawn up by Professor John Henry Collenberg, of Halle, which was reprinted in London in 1751, with a view to its distribution among Jews and Mohammedans, by English merchants trading to the East. Of the seed thus sown, good fruit was expected, but tares sprung up to destroy the wholesome grain and to deceive the hopes of the sower. Hypocrisy and apostasy marred the fair work of conversion, and the wicked pretender applied to his own use the contributions intended for the persecuted convert. In September 1749, Mr. Whitefield introduced to Lady Huntingdon two German ministers, who had laboured in this vineyard, and preached in the German chapel here with great power; but the time for the conversion of the Jews, that great triumph which is to crown the Christian verity, had not yet arrived. Her Ladyship, waiting for the fulness of time, failed not to pour in her mite towards the accomplishment of so pure a purpose. But these true ministers were followed by impostors, two of whom, a father and son, after having been several times baptized in various countries of Europe, came to repeat the profitable experiment in England. They found a liberal friend in Lady Huntingdon, whom they grossly deceived; and, as we learn from David Levi (see his work on the Prophecies, p. 114), persuaded her that they were not only proselytes to Christianity, but that they had also converted him (Levi), whose example was calculated to produce a powerful effect on his whole nation. Levi amuses himself with the credulity of the sufferers, from whom these impostors had obtained upwards of 1,800l. “Lady Huntingdon (he says) requested me to wait on her, whether for my conversion, or to be better informed concerning the imposture, I cannot tell, for her illness prevented the interview.”