Page:The Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, John, Andrew and Thomas.djvu/145

 having got possession of the Kingdom, along with other wrongful acts, set himself also to make a persecution against the righteous men. For having learned that the city was filled with Jews, remembering the edicts given by his father about them, he purposed casting them all out of the city of the Romans. And some of the Jews took courage, and gave Domitian a writing, in which the following was written:

3. "O Domitian, Cæsar and King of all the world, as many of us as are Jews entreat thee, as suppliants we beseech of thy power not to banish us from thy divine and benignant face; for we are obedient to thee, and the customs, and the laws, and practices, and policy, doing wrong in nothing, but being of the same mind with the Romans. But there is a new and strange nation, neither agreeing with our customs nor consenting to the religious observances of the Jews, uncircumcised, inhuman, lawless, subverting whole houses, proclaiming a man as God, all assembling together under a strange name, that of Christian. These men reject God, paying no heed to the law given by Him, proclaim to be the Son of God a man born of ourselves, Jesus by name, whose parents and brothers and all his family are connected with the Hebrews; whom on account of his great blasphemy and his wicked foolery we gave up to the cross. And they add another blasphemous lie to their first one: him that was nailed up and buried, they glorify as having risen from the dead; besides, they also falsely assert