Rev. Dr. William Gouge
Hugo Grotius Rev. Henry Jessey
All these Christian pioneers of religious liberty and Zionism were in close connection with Manasseh, and helped him to prepare the way for the re-admission of the Jews into England.
The view held by many Christians, especially in England, was that the Israelitish race, now scattered over the face of the earth, would eventually be brought back to its own land. To this was generally added the belief that the Jews would return in a converted, i.e. Christian, state.[¹] In conformity with the general spirit of the period, all these ideas had a religious colouring in the minds both of English theologians and writers and of the Jews themselves.
[¹] The final ingathering of the Jews is taught in both the Jewish and Christian Bibles.
Why were these considerations particularly important with regard to England? In seeking an answer to this question we are met at once by the significant fact dealt with in the first chapter of this book: the attachment of Englishmen to the Bible.
The men and women who live in the pages of the Bible had long ago become recognized types for the English nation. As early as the seventeenth century interest in the restoration of Israel had become deep and general, England providing the earliest stimulus to Zionism. The connection between this idea, and the idea of the readmission of the Jews into England after long years of exclusion, following their final expulsion under Edward I. in the year 1290, and the steady progress of the latter idea, supported and determined by the former, is characteristic not only of Manasseh’s writings, efforts and plans, but of the whole epoch. Facts prove with what steadfastness of aim and consistency of thought the problem was attacked and conquered by the Puritan theologians and writers, and to what an extent their defence of the Jews formed one comprehensive and consistent scheme, of which the readmission of the Jews (justice applied to individuals) was one part, and the Restoration of Israel (justice applied to the nation as a whole) was another.
Whoever studies Manasseh’s writings and the Puritan literature of that epoch will have no difficulty in recognizing that the idea of national justice to the Jews underlies all the discussions and controversies and is common to all schools of thought. Thus Zionism has but brought to light and given practical form and a recognized position to a principle which had long consciously or unconsciously guided English opinion. The ideas of Readmission and Restoration originally formed a single stream in England, before they separated to flow in distinct but parallel channels. Readmission, however, became an immediate practical result, whilst Restoration was left for the future.