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having laid waste the country in his progress, and slaughtered the inhabitants, arrived before its walls. The sight of the Romans produced a temporary reconciliation among the contending factions, and they unanimously resolved to oppose the

common enemy.

4. Their first sally was accordingly made with such fury and resolution, that, though Titus displayed uncommon valor on this occasion, the besiegers were obliged to abandon their camps, and flee to the mountains. No sooner had the Jews a short interval of quiet from their foreign enemies, than their civil disorders were renewed. John, by an impious stratagem, found means to cut off, or force Eleazer's men to submit to him; and the factions were again reduced to two, who opposed each other with implacable animosity.

5. The Romans, in the mean time, exerted all their energy in making preparations for a powerful attack upon Jerusalem. Trees were cut down, houses levelled, rocks cleft asunder, and valleys filled up; towers were raised, and battering rams erected, with other engines of destruction, against the devoted city.

6. After the offers of peace, which Titus had repeatedly sent by Josephus,* were rejected with indignation, the Romans began to play their engines with all their might. The strenuous attacks of the enemy again united the contending parties within the walls, who had also engines, which they plied with uncommon fury. They had taken them lately from Cestius, but were so ignorant of their use, they did little execution, while the Roman legions made terrible havoc.

7. The Jews were soon compelled to retire from the ponderous stones, which the Romans threw incessantly from the towers they had erected, and the battering rams were at full liberty to play against the walls. A breach was soon made in it, at which the Romans entered and encamped in the city, while the Jews retreated behind the second enclosure.

8. The victors immediately advanced to the second wall, and plied their engines and battering rams so furiously, that one of the towers they had erected began to shake, and the Jews, who occupied it, perceiving their impending ruin, set it

* Flavius Josephus, the ancient historian of the Jews, was born at Jerusalem, A. D. 37, and died in A. D. 93. He studied at Rome, and afterwards bravely defended a small town of Judea against the Romans for seven weeks. The place being taken, Josephus delivered himself up to the Romans, and was received into great favor, and accompanied Titus at the siege of Jerusalem, where he alleviated the misfortunes of his country, and ou tained the sacred books of his nation.

on fire, and precipitated themselves into the flames. The fall of this structure gave the Romans an entrance into the second enclosure.

9. They were, however, repulsed by the besieged; but at length regained the place entirely, and prepared for attacking the third and inner wall. The vast number of people which were enclosed in Jerusalem, occasioned a famine, which raged in a terrible manner; and, as their calamities increased, the fury of the zealots,* if possible, rose to a greater height.

10. They forced open the houses of their fellow citizens, in search of provisions; if they found any, they inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon them, under pretence that they had food concealed. The nearest relations, in the extremity of hunger, snatched the food from each other.

11. Josephus, who was an eye-witness of the unparalleled sufferings the Jews experienced during the siege of their metropolis, remarks, that "all the calamities that ever befel any nation since the beginning of the world, were inferior to the miseries of his countrymen at this awful period." Thus we see the exact fulfilment of the emphatic words of our Saviour respecting the great tribulation in Jerusalem. "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

12. Titus, who was apprized of their wretched condition, relaxed the siege four days; and being still desirous of saving the city, caused provisions to be distributed to his army in sight of the Jews, who flocked upon the walls to behold it. Josephus was next sent to his countrymen, to attempt to persuade them not to plunge themselves in inevitable ruin, by persisting in defence of a place which could hold out but little longer, and which the Romans looked upon as already their own.

13. He exhorted them, in the most pathetic terms, to save themselves, their temple, and their country; and painted in strong colors the fatal effects which would result from their obstinacy. But the people, after many bitter invectives, began to dart their arrows at him; yet he continued to address them with greater vehemence, and many were induced, by his eloquence, to run the utmost risk in order to escape to the Romans; while others became more desperate, and resolved to hold out to the last extremity.

14. The Jews, who were forcibly seized by the Romans without the walls, and who made the utmost resistance for fear Zealot, one who engages warmly in a cause, and pursues it with an intemperate ardor.

*

of punishment, were scourged and crucified near the city.Famine made them so daring in these excursions, that five hundred, and sometimes more, suffered this dreadful death every day; and, on account of the number, Josephus observes, that "space was wanted for the crosses, and crosses for the captives." And yet, contrary to Titus' intention, the seditious Jews were not disposed to surrender by these horrid spectacles.

15. În order to check desertion, they represented the sufferers as suppliants, and not as men taken by resistance. Yet even some, who deemed capital punishment inevitable, escaped to the Romans, considering death, by the hands of their enemies, a desirable refuge, when compared with the complicated distress which they endured.

16. And though Titus mutilated many, and sent them to assure the people that voluntary deserters were well treated by him, and earnestly to recommend a surrender of the city, the Jews reviled Titus from the walls, defied his menaces, and continued to defend the city by every method which stratagem, courage, and despair, could suggest.

17. In order to accelerate the destined ruin of Jerusalem, Titus, discouraged and exasperated by the repeated destruction of his engines and towers, undertook the arduous task of enclosing the city with a strong wall, in order to prevent the inhabitants from receiving any succor from the adjacent country, or eluding his vengeance by flight.

18. Such was the persevering spirit of the soldiers, that in three days they enclosed the city by a wall nearly five miles in circuit. Thus was the prophecy of our Saviour accomplished: “The days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side.”

19. Upon this, the famine raged with augmented violence, and destroyed whole families; while Jerusalem exhibited a horrid spectacle of emaciated invalids and putrescent bodies. The dead were too numerous to be interred; and many expired in the performance of this office. The public calamity was too great for lamentation, and the silence of unutterable wo overspread the city.

20. The zealots, at this awful period, endeavored to encourage the obstinacy of the people, by hiring a set of wretches, pretenders to prophecy, to go about the city, and declare the near approach of a speedy and miraculous deliverance. This impious stratagem for a while afforded delusive hopes to the miserable remains of the Jewish nation. But at length an

affair took place in Jerusalem, which filled the inhabitants with consternation and despair; and the Romans with horror and indignation.

21. A Jewess, eminent for birth and opulence, rendered frantic with her sufferings, was reduced to the dreadful extremity of killing and feeding upon her infant. Titus, being apprized of this inhuman deed, swore the total extirpation of the accursed city and people; and called heaven to witness, that he was not the author of their calamity.

LESSON LXXVI.

Destruction of Jerusalem-concluded.

1. THE Romans having pursued the attack with the utmost rigor, advanced their last engines against the walls, after having converted into a desert, for wood to construct them, a country well planted, and interspersed with gardens, for more than eleven miles round the city. They scaled the inner wall, and after a sanguinary encounter, made themselves masters of the fortress of Antonia.

2. Still, however, not only the zealots, but many of the people, were yet so blinded, that though nothing was now left but the temple, and the Romans were making formidable preparation to batter it down, they could not persuade themselves that God would suffer that holy place to be taken by the heathens; but still expected a miraculous deliverance. And though the war was advancing towards the temple, they themselves burnt the portico, which joined it to Antonia; which occasioned Titus to remark, that they began to destroy, with their own hands, that magnificent edifice, which he had preserved.

3. The Roman commander had determined in council not to burn the temple, considering the existence of so proud a structure an honor to himself. He therefore attempted to batter down one of the galleries of the precinct; but as the strength of the wall eluded the force of all his engines, the troops next endeavored to scale it, but were repulsed with considerable loss.

4. When Titus found, that his desire of saving the sacred building was likely to cost many lives, he set fire to the gates of the outer temple, which being plated with silver, burnt all night, and the flame rapidly communicated to the adjacent galleries and porticoes. Titus, who was still desirous of preserving the temple, caused the flames to be extinguished; and

appeased the clamors of his troops, who vehemently insisted on the necessity of razing it to the ground. The following day was therefore fixed upon, for a general assault upon that magnificent structure.

5. The utmost exertions of Titus to save the temple were, however, ineffectual. Our Saviour had foretold its total destruction; and his awful prediction was about to be accomplished. "And now," says Josephus, "the fatal day approached in the revolution of ages, the 10th of August, emphatically called the day of vengeance, in which the first temple had been destroyed by the king of Babylon."*

6. While Titus was reposing himself in his pavilion, a Roman soldier, without receiving any command, but urged as it were by a divine impulse, seized some of the blazing materials, and with the assistance of another soldier, who raised him from the ground, threw them through a window into one of the apartments that surrounded the sanctuary.

7. The whole north side, up to the third story, was immediately enveloped in flames. The Jews, who now began to suppose that Heaven had forsaken them, rushed in with violent lamentations, and spared no effort, not even life itself, to preserve the sacred edifice on which they had rested their security.

8. Titus, being awakened by the outcry, hastened to the spot, and commanded his soldiers to exert themselves to the utmost to extinguish the fire. He called, prayed, and threatened his But so great was the clamor and tumult, that his entreaties and menaces were alike disregarded.

men.

9. The exasperated Romans, who resorted thither from the camp, were engaged either in increasing the conflagration, or killing the Jews; the dead were heaped about the altar, and a stream of blood flowed at its steps.

10. Still, as the flames had not reached the inner part of the temple, Titus, with some of his chief officers, entered the sanctuary and most holy place, which excited his astonishment and admiration. After having in vain repeated his attempts to prevent its destruction, he saved the golden candlestick, and

* Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, took Jerusalem-destroyed the temple-and carried the Jews into captivity, B. C. 606. After they had been kept in bondage 70 years, Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, took Babylon, and set them at liberty, B. C. 536. The Jews then returned to Jerusalem, and built the second temple. The first temple was finished and dedicated by Solomon, B. C. 1004,-the second temple was finished and dedicated A. C. 515.

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