thousand four hundred of the inhabitants of the former place, he slew. The district of Narbatene he laid waste, and slew two thousand of the Jews in Galilee; reduced the city of Lydda to ashes, and drove the Jews, (who made desperate sallies upon him) till he encamped within a hundred miles of the capital. Soon after, he entered Jerusalem, and burned some part of the city. But through the treachery of his own officers, he made an unexpected flight. The enraged Jews pursued him, and slew about sixty thousand of his men. Many of the rich Jews, alarmed at the Roman invasion, tied from Jerusalem, as from a foundering ship. Some suppose many of the Christians now fled to a place called Pella in the mountains of Judea.

Nero being informed of the defeat of Cestius, gave the command to Vespasian to press the war against the rebellious Jews. He and his son Titus soon collected an army of sixty thousand men. In A. D. 67, he marched from Ptolemais to Judea, marking his steps with ravages and desolation. Infancy and age fell before the furious soldiery. All the strong towns of Galilee, and many of those of Judea fell before the victorious arms of Vespasian, who slew not less than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Signal vengeance was taken on Joppa, which had in part been rebuilt, after it had been by Cestius reduced to ashes. Vespasian was enraged at the frequent piracies of this people. The Jews of this place fleeing before him, betook themselves to their shipping. But a furious tempest overtook those who stood out to sea, who were lost. The others were dashed vessel against vessel, or against the rocks. Some in their distress laid violent hands on themselves.

Such as reached the shore were slain by the enraged Romans. The sea for some distance was stained with their blood: four thousand two hundred were strewed along their coasts, and not one escaped to relate their catastrophe. Truly this was distress of their nation, with the sca and the waves thereof roaring !”

Vespasian returned from Jericho to Cæsarea, to prepare for a grand siege of Jerusalem. Here he received intelligence of the death of the emperor Nero. This led him to suspend for the present, the execution of his plan against the Jews. This respite to that devoted people continued about two years, and but encouraged them to deeds of greater enormity.

A spirit of faction now appeared in Jerusalem. Two parties first, and afterwards three, raged there; each contending with deadly animosity for the precedency. A part of one of these factions having been excluded from the city, entered it by force during the night; and to such madness were they abandoned, that they butchered (on that fatal night) not less than eight thousand five hundred of men, women and children, whose mangled bodies appeared the next morning strewed in the streets of Jerusalem. These abandoned murderers plundered in the city; murdered the high priests, Ananus and Jesus, and insulted their dead bodies. They slew their brethren of Jerusalem, as though they had been wild animals. They scourged and imprisoned the nobles, in hopes to terrify them to become of their party; and many who could not be thus won, they slew. In this reign of terror, twelve thousand of the higher orders of the people thus perished; and no relative dared to shed a mourning tear, lest this should bring on him a similar fate.

Accusation and death became the most common events. Many fled, who were intercepted and slain. Piles of their carcasses lay on publick roads; and all pity, as well as regard for human or divine authority, seemed extinguished.

To add to the horrid calamities of the times, occasioned by the bloody factions, Judea was infested by bands of robbers and murderers, plundering their towns and cutting in pieces such as made any resistance, whether men, women or children. Here were exhibited the most horrid pictures of what fallen man is capable of perpetrating when restraints are taken off; that they would turn their own towns and societies into scenes of horror, like kennels of mad animals.

One Simon became commander of one of these factions; John of another. Simon entered Jerusalem at the head of forty thousand banditti. A third faction rose, and discord blazed with terrifick fury. The three factions were intoxicated with rage and desperation, who went on slaying and trampling on piles of the dead, with an indescribable fury. People coming to the temple to worship, were murdered, both natives and foreigners. Their bodies lay in piles, and a collection of blood defiled the sacred courts.

John of Gischala, head of a faction, burned a store of provisions. Simon, at the head of another faction, burned another. Thus the Jews were weakening and destroying themselves, and preparing the way for "wrath to come upon them to the uttermost."

In the midst of these most dismal events, an alarm was made that a Roman army was approaching the city! Vespasian becoming emperor, and learning the factious and horrid state of the Jews, determined to prosecute the war

against them, and sent his son Titus to reduce Jerusalem and Judea. The Jews, on hearing of the approach of the Roman army, were petrified with horror. They could have no hope of peace. They had no means of flight. They had no time for counsel. They had no confidence in each other. What could be done? Several things they possessed in abundance. They had a measure of iniquity filled up; a full ripeness for destruction. All seemed wild disorder and despair. Nothing could be imagined but "the confused noise of the warrior, and garments rolled in blood." They knew nothing was their due from the Romans, but exemplary vengeance. The ceaseless cry of combatants, and the horrors of faction, had induced some to desire the intervention of a foreign foe, to give them deliverance from their domestick horrors. Such was the state of Jerusalem when Titus appeared before it with a besieging army. But he came not to deliver it from its excruciating tortures; but to execute upon it divine vengeance; to fulfil the fatal predictions of our Lord Jesus Christ, that "when ye see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place--when ye see Jerusalem compassed about with armies,-then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." "Wheresoever the carcass is, there shall the eagles be gathered together." Jerusalem was now the carcass to be devoured; the Roman eagles had arrived to tear it as their prey.

The day on which Titus had encompassed Jerusalem, was the feast of the passover. Here let it be remembered, that it was the time of this feast, (on a preceding occasion) that Christ was taken, condemned and executed. It was at the time of this feast, that the heifer in the hands of

the sacrificing priests, brought forth a lamb. And just after this feast at another time, that the miraculous besieging armies were seen over Jerusalem, just before sunset. And now at the time of the passover, the antitype of this prodigy appears in the besieging army of Titus. Multitudes of Jews had convened at Jerusalem from surrounding nations to celebrate this feast. Ah, miserable people,-going with intent to feed on the paschal lamb; but really to their own final slaughter, for rejecting "the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world!” The Jews had imprecated the blood of the true Paschal Lamb, (by them wantonly shed) on themselves and on their children. God was now going in a signal manner to take them at their word. He hence providentially collected their nation, under sentence of death, as into a great prison, for the day of execution. And as their execution of Christ was signal, low, degrading,-the death of the cross; so their execution should be signal and dreadful. The falling city was now crowded with little short of two millions of that devoted people. The event came suddenly and unexpectedly to the Jews, as the coming of a thief, and almost like lightning. Josephus notes this; and thus without design, shows the fulfilment of these hints of Christ, that his coming should be like a thief in the night, and like lightning shining under the whole heavens.

The furious contending factions of the Jews, on finding themselves environed with the Roman armies, laid aside (for the moment) their party contentions, sallied out, rushed furiously on their common foe, and came near utterly destroying the tenth legion of the Roman army.This panic among the Romans, occasioned a