The Roommate From Hell

362: He replied, All poets that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains;

363: but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.

364: Then Ezekiel said, The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception:

365: some nations held one principle for the origin & some another;

366: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all other others merely derivative,

367: which was the cause of our despising the priests & Philosophers of other countries,

368: and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius;

369: it was this that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly,

370: saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms;

371: and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled;

372: from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews.

373: This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be?