The prevailing historiographies of Jewish life in England suggest that religious
representations of the Jews in the early modern period were confined to the
margins and fringes of society by the desacralization of English life. Such
representations are mostly neglected in the scholarly literature for the latter
half of the long eighteenth century, and English Methodist texts in particular
have received little attention. This article addresses these lacunae by
examining the discourse of Adam Clarke (1760/2–1832), an erudite Bible scholar,
theologian, preacher and author and a prominent, respected, Methodist scholar.
Significantly, the more overt demonological representations were either absent
from Clarke‘s discourse, or only appeared on a few occasions, and were vague as
to who or what was signified. However, Clarke portrayed biblical Jews as
perfidious, cruel, murderous, an accursed seed, of an accursed breed and
radically and totally evil. He also commented on contemporary Jews (and
Catholics), maintaining that they were foolish, proud, uncharitable, intolerant
and blasphemous. He argued that in their eternal, wretched, dispersed condition,
the Jews demonstrated the veracity of biblical prophecy, and served an essential
purpose as living monuments to the truth of Christianity.