The following is a catalogue of the High Priests, from the beginning of Herod's reign, till the final destruction of the temple. They had no hereditary right, but were set up and removed at the pleasure of Herod and his successors.

Phannias was high priest when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by Titus Vespasian. This was in the 70th year of the Christian æra. Since that time the Jews have neither had temple, nor high priest, nor holy city.

VII. 2. With respect to the present state of the Jews, their history, from the death of Christ to the present century, has been ably written by Monsieur Basnage. It presents a scene of suffering and persecution unparalleled in the annals of the world. Wherever the Jews have been established, they necessarily have borne their share of the evils of the age in which they lived, and the country in which they resided. But, besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men have experienced in any age or any country. "What "have ye done, O ungrateful men!" exclaims Bossuet; "slaves in every country, and under

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every prince, still ye serve not strange gods.

Why then has God, who chose you, forgotten you? Where are his ancient mercies? What crime, what atrocity more heinous than idolatry, has brought on you a punishment, that even your repeated idolatries did not bring upon you? Ye are silent! Ye see not what "makes your God thus inexorable! Then recol"lect the words of your fathers,-Let HIS blood "be on us and on our children; WE will have no "other King than Cæsar. Be it so: the Messiah "shall not be your King,-continue slaves of "Cæsar, slaves of the sovereigns of the earth, "till the Church shall be filled with the Gentiles! "Then only shall Israel be saved." But while

we, reverence, in their sufferings and calamities, the prophecies which foretold them, so long before they happened; while, in humble silence and submission, we adore the inscrutable and unsearchable decrees of God, who thus terribly visits the sins of fathers on their children, we shall find, that, in judging between them and their persecutors, it is a justice due to them from us, to acknowledge, that, if on some occasions they may be thought to have deserved their misfortunes by their private vices or public crimes, it has oftener happened, that they have been the innocent victims of avarice, rage, or mistaken zeal. Res est sacra, miser. Their sufferings alone entitle them to compassion; and our compassion for them should rise to an higher feeling, when, to use the language of St. Paul, (Rom. ix. 4, 5, and 6), we consider, "that theirs was the adoption, the glory, the co"venants, the law, the worship, the promise, "and the fathers, and that from them descended "the Christ according to the flesh, who is God "over all, blessed for ever" (Rom. xi. 26, 28); "that the hour approaches, when all Israel shall "be saved, when the deliverer shall come out of "Zion, and shall turn away ungodliness from

Jacob;" and that, even in their present state of rejection," they are beloved of God, for their "fathers' sake."

To the honour of the See of Rome, it must be said, that the Roman Pontiffs, with a small

exception, have treated them with lenity, defended them against their persecutors, and often checked the mistaken zeal of those, who sought to convert them by force. St. Gregory the Great always exhorted his clergy and the other parts of his flock, to behave to them with candour and tenderness. He repeatedly declared, that they should be brought into the unity of faith, by gentle means, by fair persuasions, by charitable advice, not by force: and, that, as the law of the state did not allow their building new synagogues, they ought to be allowed the free use of their own places of worship. His successors, in general, pursued the same line of conduct. The persecutions excited by the Emperor Heraclius against the Jews, were blamed at the fourth council of Toledo, which declared, "that it was unlawful and un"christianlike to force people to believe, seeing "it is God alone who hardens and shews mercy "to whom he will." St. Isidore of Seville was a strong advocate for mild treatment of them. There is extant a letter from St. Bernard, to the Archbishop of Mentz, in which he strongly condemns the violence shewn them by the crusaders. At a latter period, Pope Gregory the IXth, a zealous promoter of the crusade itself, observing, that the crusaders in many places began their expedition with massacres of the Jews, not only loudly reprehended them, but took all proper methods of preventing such barbarity. Pope Nicholas the IId