terms. Vespasian, Adrian, and Julius Severus, removed with part of their armies from Britain to Palestine, the extreme points of the Roman world. The eagle was the standard of their armies, and the utmost activity and expedition were displayed in the reduction of Judea. They were a nation of fierce countenance, a race distinct from the effeminate Asiatic troops. At Gadara and Gamala, throughout many parts of the Roman empire, and, in repeated instances, at Jerusalem itself, the slaughter of the Jews was indiscriminate, without distinction of age or sex. The inhabitants were enslaved and banished, all their possessions confiscated, and the kingdom of Israel, humbled at first into a province of the Roman empire, became at last the private property of the emperor. Throughout all the land of Judea every city was besieged and taken; and their high and fenced walls were razed from the foundation. But the prophet particularizes incidents the most shocking to humanity, which mark the utmost possible extremity of want and wretchedness; the last act to which famine could prompt despair, and the last subject of a prediction that could have been uttered by man: "And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee; so that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath nothing left him in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil to : ward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her young one, and toward her children which she shall bear for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine enemy shall dis tress thee in thy gates." Six hundred years posterior to this prediction, when Samaria, then the capital of Israel, was besieged by all the host of the king of Syria, the most loathsome substitute for food was of great price, and an ass's head was sold for eighty pieces of silver." When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, the famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land. And Josephus relates the direful calamities of the Jews in their last siege, before they ceased to have a city. The famine was too powerful for all other passions, for what was otherwise reverenced was in this case despised. Children snatched the food out of the very mouths of their fathers; and even mothers, overcoming the tenderest feelings of nature, took from their perishing infants the last morsels that could sustain their lives. In every house where there was the least shadow of food, a contest arose ; and the nearest relatives struggled with each other for the miserable means of subsistence. He adds a most revolting detail. While, in all these cases, the eye of man was thus evil towards his brother, in the siege and in the straitness wherewith their enemies distressed them, the unparalleled inhuman compact between the two women of Samaria; the bitter lamentation of Jeremiah over the miseries of the siege which he witnessed, "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children, they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people ;" and the harrowing recital, by Josephus, of the noble lady killing, with her own hands, and eating, secretly, her own suckling, (the discovery of which struck even the whole suffering city with horror,) which are all recorded as facts, without the least allusion to the prediction,―too faithfully realize, to the very letter, the dread denunciations of the prophet. When any wellauthenticated facts, of so singular and appalling a nature, were predicted for ages, they could not possibly have been revealed but by inspiration from that omniscience which alone can foresee the termination of the iniquities of nations. Moses, and the other prophets, foretold also that the Jews would be left few in number, that they would be slain before their enemies, that the pride of their power would be broken, that their cities would be laid waste, that they would be destroyed and brought to nought, plucked from off the land, sold for slaves, and that none would buy them,-that their high places were to be desolate, and their bones to be scattered around their altars,-that Jerusalem was to be encamped round about, to be besieged with a mount, to have forts raised against it, to be ploughed over as a field, and to become heaps,-that the end was to come upon it, and that the Lord would judge them according to their ways, and recompense them for all their abominations; the sword without, and the pestilence and the famine within: ❝he that is in the field shall die with the sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him."p These predictions relative to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, which are recorded in the Pentateuch and in the subsequent prophecies, accord with the minute prophetic narrative which Jesus gave of P Lev. xxvi. 30, &c. Ezek. vi. 5. Micah iii. 12. Deut. xxviii. 62, &c. Isa. xxix. 3. the same sad event. Any adequate delineation of it alone would far surpass the limits of this treatise. But the subject has been fully and frequently illustrated, and the prediction harmonizes so completely with the unimpeachable testimony of impartial historians, that it is merely necessary, for the elucidation of its truth, to compare the prophetic description with the historical facts. Besides frequent allusions, in his discourses and parables, the predictions of Christ, concerning Jerusalem, are recorded at length by three of the evangelists. They are omitted by the apostle John, in whose writings alone, from the age to which he lived, their insertion would have been suspicious. They were delivered to the disciples of Christ in answer to those direct questions which they put, in their surprise and alarm, at his declaration of the fate of the temple, "When shall these things be? What shall be the sign of them, and of the end of the world ?” The reply embraces all the subjects of the query, and is equally circumstantial and distinct. The death of Christ happened thirty-seven years previous to the destruction of Jerusalem. By the unanimous testimony of antiquity, the three gospels were published, and at least two of the evangelists were dead, several years before that event. Copies of the gospels were disseminated so extensively and rapidly, that any deceit must have been instantaneously detected by the powerful, and numerous, and watchful enemies of the cross. And the evidence of the prior publicity of the gospels was so strong, that it remained unchallenged by Julian, by Porphyry, or by Celsus. The authenticity of the prophecy thus rests on sure grounds, and the facts in which it received its accom Matt. xxi. 18, 19, 33-44; xxii. 1–7; xxv. 14-30. Mark xi. 12–20, &c. Luke xiii. 6–9; xiv. 16-24; xx. 9–18; xxiii. plishment are incontestable. Josephus was one of the most distinguished generals in the commencement of the Jewish war; he was an eye-witness of the facts which he records; he appeals to Vespasian and to Titus for the truth of his history; it received the singular attestation of the subscription of the latter to its accuracy; it was published while the facts were recent and notorious; and the extreme carefulness with which he avoids the mention of the name of Christ, in the history of the Jewish war, is not less remarkable than the great precision with which he describes the events that verify his predictions. Not a few of the transactions are also related by Tacitus, Philostratus, and Dion Cassius. The different prophecies of Christ respecting Jerusalem may be condensed into a single view. ،، And Jesus went out and departed from the temple; and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you; for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. And the time draws near; and ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars, -or commotions: these things must first come to pass, but the end is not yet. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights; and great signs shall there be from heaven. All these things are the beginning of sorrows. But, before all these things, |