enemy, and such the rapid advances of desolation against the persevering, but ill-fated heritage of Israel. Here, instead of that abundant flow of milk and honey which had been so often promised, and till now, so invariably bestowed upon the chosen people of this land; bloodshed and famine prevailed: whilst ploughshares, by a fatal reverse, were converted into swords, and pruning-hooks into spears; and even the sacred implements of the Temple into those of an unhallowed sacrifice. That Temple too, so lately the source of all spiritual and earthly joy, and the habitation of Divinity, now polluted by massacre, and defiled by the unholy trespass of heathen footsteps; is deserted by Omnipotence, and left with the remnant of its worshippers to be purified by fire; whilst another more glorious Temple rises from its ashes, so extensive as to embrace the world itself; one not made by hands, for "its builder "and maker is God." One, into which this vanquished people, punished with temporary blindness, will not enter, "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," when all flesh shall flow unto it, and there shall be peace upon Israel.

CHAP.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SIGNS AND

PORTENTS PROGNOSTICATING THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY AND TEMPLE ENUMERATED...TITUS PROCLAIMED IMPERATOR...THE PRIESTS OF THE TEMPLE PUT TO DEATH....THE THIRD WALL TAKEN, AND THE UPPER CITY ENTERED AND BURNED....JOHN AND SIMON, THE LEADERS OF THE FACTIONS, ARE IMPRISONED....THE NUMBER OF THE INHABITANTS AND OTHERS SLAIN AND MADE CAPTIVES ....THE WHOLE CITY LAID IN COMPLETE RUIN, AND THE ROMANS RETURN TO THEIR CAPITAL.

JOSEPHUS states a variety of preternatural events to have preceded the final destruction of the City and Temple of the Jews. He mentions that four years before the war with the Romans, a common peasant began on a sudden impulse to cry out, a voice from "the east! a voice from the west! a voice from the "four quarters of the world! a voice against Jerusa"lem! against the Temple! and all men and women newly married. A voice against the whole body of "the people!" From that time he never ceased day and night to repeat, "Woe to the People! woe to Jerusalem!" No other words came from his lips. At the solemn festivals he uttered the same menaces, upon which he was seized by the populace and dragged to the Roman magistrate, to whose questions he made no other reply

than

than "woe to Jesulalem!" He was severely scourged without making the least complaint, and at length was dismissed as one deranged. His predictions were uttered repeatedly for some years, and though on these occasions he spoke with every possible exertion to be heard, his voice was never enfeebled. When the siege had commenced, and he was in the act of going round upon the walls, he exclaimed with violence, "Woe to the City! Woe to the Temple! Woe to the "People!" and added at last, "Woe to myself!" and in that moment a stone from a battering engine struck him dead upon the spot.1

"The name of this man," says Bousset, " was Jesus; and it may be, that since the first who offered grace and mercy and eternal life expired on the cross: the second of the name was ordained to denounce the ruin of the nation."

A sword seemed to hang over the city, or a comet pointing down upon it, for the space of nearly a year, which seemed to portend destruction by the sword." Before

(1) It is not easy to deny the truth of the history of this man (says Basnage, in his History of the Jews) "this is not a thing about which men might be "deceived: so that if there be any thing to which we ought to attend, it is this, "which we must acknowledge somewhat extraordinary."—" And if,” as Le Clerc observes, "this be true, Josephus rightly says, it was in a great mea66 sure divine”—“ quæ si vera sint, non immerito Josephus rem divinitus contigisse censuit."-Vide Bell. Jud. 6, v. 3.

(2) Virgil enumerating the portentous times preceding, and consequent upon the death of Julius Cæsar, says; " at that time, never did keener lightnings " dart from a more serene sky, or comets of such direful omen so often blaze." Non alias cœlo ceciderunt plura sereno

Fulgura, nec diri toties arsere cometa.

Geo. i. 487.

Plutarch says, this comet shone very brightly for seven successive nights after the death of Cæsar.-In vitâ Cæs.

So

Before the sun went down there were seen in the clouds, armies in battle array, and chariots encompassing the country, and investing other cities: which there are men, now living ready to attest.'

The great gate of the Temple, which twenty men could scarcely shut, and which was made fast with bolts and bars; was seen to open of its own accord, as if to let in the enemy. At the ninth hour of the night, at the feast of unleavened bread, a light of great brightness shone upon the Temple and the altar, as if it had been

So Suetonius "Stella crinita per septem dies continuas fulsit, exoriens eirca undecimam horam."-In vitâ Cæs.

-from his horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war

That hairy comet, that long streaming star,

Milton's Par. Lost, ii. 710.

Sylvester Du Bartas.

Which threatens earth with famine, plague, and war.

(1) Bell. Jud. 6, v. 3.

Newcome has endeavoured to shew to what this phenomenon may be ascribed, by a quotation from Whitelock's Swedish Embassy, vol. i. 455. Many observed strange appearances in the sky; exceeding brightness in the night, mingled with various colours, chiefly red, and swiftly passing from one part of Heaven to another; and one colour, as it were, opposing and encountering the other. In the evening, about nine, the flashes of lightning and clouds came swiftly one against another, as it were, in charging and making breaches where they went, and divided themselves as into bodies of pikes and musketeers: then the sky appeared some time all blood colour, afterwards green, yellow, and grey, then all black, and, as it were, a new battaile, from the North to the South.

Obs. on the Conduct of our Lord, p. 264. Matthew of Westminster relates, that A. D. 555, a certain appearance of lances were seen in the air from North to West—" quasi species lancearum in aëre visæ sunt a septentrione usque ad occidentem”—and again, in 567, that fiery spears were seen in the air portending the incursion of the Lombards into Italy" Hastæ ignez in aëre visæ sunt, portendentes irruptionem "Longobardorum in Italiam."-P. 101.

(2) Bell. Jud. 6, v. 3.
Qq

been at noon day and at the feast of Pentecost, when the priests went at midnight into the Temple to attend the service; they first heard a noise, as of a multitude in motion, and then a sound of many voices, saying, "Let us remove hence." These several circumstances and supposed events, Tacitus thus endeavours to establish.

"Portents and prodigies announced the ruin of the "city; but a people blinded by their own national "superstition, and with rancour detesting the religion " of other states, held it unlawful by vows and victims "to deprecate the impending danger. Swords were "seen glittering in the air: embattled armies appeared, "and the Temple was illuminated by a stream of light "that issued from the heavens. The portal flew open "and a voice more than human denounced the imme"diate departure of the Gods. There was heard at the "same time a tumultuous and terrific sound, as if supe"rior beings were actually rushing forth. The impres"sion made by these wonders fell upon a few only; "the multitude relied upon an ancient prophecy con"tained,

(1) Dr.Willes in his discourse upon Josephus, says,-"The prodigies which " he saith happened before the destruction of Jerusalem, would agree better to Livy and Tacitus, than to a Jewish Historian. The flying open of the "brazen gates of the Temple is the same as happened at Thebes just before "the great battle of the Lacedemonians at Leuctra, when the great gates of "the Temple of Hercules opened of themselves, without any one touching "them."-" Quid? Lacedemoniis paullo ante Leuctricam calamitatem quæ significatio facta est in Herculis fano arma sonuerant, Herculisque simulacrum multo sudore manavit? Ad eodem tempore Thebis ut ait Callisthenes, in Templo Herculis valvæ clausæ repagalis, subito se ipsa aperuerunt: armaque quæ fixa in parietibus fuerant, ea sunt humi inventa." (Cicero de div. 1, xxiv. 74.)—" I omit many other things of the same nature, whence it is evident that Josephus endeavoured to Grecise and shape the History of the Jews, as like as he could to the Greeks and Romans."