“For if yee loue them which loue you, what reward haue yee? Doe not euen the Publicanes the same?”
1611 King James Version (KJV)
5:46 The publicans - were officers of the revenue, farmers, or receivers of the public money: men employed by the Romans to gather the taxes and customs, which they exacted of the nations they had conquered. These were generally odious for their extortion and oppression, and were reckoned by the Jews as the very scum of the earth.
Mt 5:46 Do not even the publicans the same? The tax collectors, the gatherers of the Roman tribute, were generally odious, and deemed the scum of the earth, but even they loved those who loved them.