each other with greater fury than the romans without their walls did against both the contending factions within; those days of vengeance were shortened. Partly, as our Lord says, "for the elect's sake," the christians so called, in contradistinction to the unbelieving jews, or reprobate. (For sometimes amongst the gentiles they were confounded with the jews, and indiscriminately partook of the general odium which fell upon that nation :) and partly, for the sake of the elect, or remnant of Israel, which God would have to be preserved, for his own mysterious purpose in the latter days.

The prophet Zephaniah speaks of this dreadful time, in terms very similar to those of our Lord. The great day of the Lord is near, it is near and hasteneth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord. The mighty man shall cry there bitterly." Great indeed must that distress be which shall force the steeled heart of the hardy veteran to express his feeling of it in unavailing womanish complaints. Yet Josephus relates, that the

mingled horror and grief of the soldiers was really such, when they found "the delicate woman," as Moses had foretold, (Deut. xxviii. 56, 57-) reduced by famine, to sustain life a few hours longer by eating her own child. "That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and DESOLATION, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness.-A day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord: and their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh as the dung."* (Zeph. i, 14.)

But though a punishment of that wicked nation unparalleled in the severity of it, was

The history of Josephus is the best commentary on these prophecies. Besides the enemy without the walls, civil war, and famine, and pestilence raged within, and the empty houses were filled with the bodies of the dead, and shut up. Those which fled out by night to the romans, were ript up alive by the soldiers, from an idea that they had swallowed great quan

the real purport of that mystical expression"then shall they see the sign of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven,”—yet it was still determined in the counsel and foreknowledge of God, that "a REMNANT should be saved." The promises to Abraham and David had in part indeed been fulfilled by the actual coming of Christ in the flesh. But a shade of gloom and obscurity seemed to have been cast upon God's faithfulness and truth, by the low and contemptible condition of the Son of David in the world, the ignominy of the cross at his death, and his rejection by his own nation. It was also a considerable addition to the infidel plea of a failure in the divine promises, that shortly after this calamitous event to the family of David, the whole jewish nation were cast off from the presence and mercy of God, apparently for ever; and with a peculiarity of their misfortune which

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tities of gold; and the prisoners taken, were crucified in such numbers, (to strike a terror into the besieged), that wood could no longer be found for crosses, nor space to set them up upon. It is computed that there perished in this war alone 1,400,000 jews. See Amos v. 18, 20. Joel i. xv. and ii. 1, 2, 31. Mal achi iii. 1, 2. and iv, 1. Ezekiel vii. 21,

distinguished them from the rest of mankind, as the objects of hatred to God and man, wherever they sojourned.*

It

How then, in such a situation of things, were the many prophecies of a contrary aspect to receive their accomplishment? could not be done otherwise than by the preservation of a REMNANT from the general ruin, like a burning brand snatched from the fire, or like the family of Noah saved in the ark of God's mercy from the wreck of a world. For thus St. Paul solves this seeming difficulty, by quoting a prophecy from Isaiah, of a happy restoration in reserve for Israel, in the latter days; and time has not hitherto, in so long an intervening space, raised up any insuperable bar to the possibility of such an event. Though the number of the children of Israel (prior to these days of excision) be as the sand of the sea, a remnant (only) shall be saved. For he will finish the work (of destruction) and cut it short in righteousness. Because a short work will the Lord make

*See Jeremiah xxxiii. 24.

upon the earth.* And as Esaias had said before, except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrah,"-that is to say in two respects, by the general depravity of our nation, and by a total extinction of it.(Romans ix. 27. Isaiah x. 22, 23)

It will scarcely be maintained by any one, that the promises to David, of an extended empire and a perpetual throne, and to Abra

* Beza finds great fault with the septuagint translation of this passage of Isaiah, as giving a different sense from the hebrew, yet he says it was necessary for the apostle to quote from the septuagint, as he wrote in greek, and to people amongst whom that greek translation only was known. To which may be added, that the septuagint translation coincides well with the saying of our Lord, that "those days should be shortened." Our old translation renders Isaiah more correctly. Lowth gives the passage thus, "The consummation decided overfloweth with strict justice, for a full and decisive decree shall Jehovah, the Lord of hosts, accomplish in the midst of the land."-The sense, according to Beza, is, that God had determined by (not "a short work," but) a decisive destruction," to reduce that ungrateful people to a very small REMNANT, by his most just judgments. "Pro consumptione vero, et ea quidem decisa, λόγον συντέλων, et λόγον συντόμενον, dixerunt admodum ngigenter Græci interpretes."