The petition further requested that the Jews “may again be received and permitted to trade and dwell amongst you in this Land.” What moved Joanna and Ebenezer Cartwright, authors of the petition, to ask not only that England assist in the restoration of Israel to Palestine but also repeal Edward I’s act of banishment, which had been in force for some three hundred and fifty years? To understand their motive one must realize the transformation wrought by the Bible acting through the Puritan movement. It was as if every influence on thought exerted today by press, radio, movies, magazines were equaled by one book speaking with the voice of God, reinforced by the temporal authority of the Supreme Court. Particularly the Old Testament, with its narrative of a people unalterably convinced of having been chosen by the Lord to do His work on earth, governed the Puritan mind. They applied its narrative to themselves. They were the self-chosen inheritors of Abraham’s covenant with God, the re-embodied saints of Israel, the “battle-ax of the Lord,”
