surrendered, Vespasian and Titus kept me in bonds, but obliged me to attend them continually. Afterwards I was set at liberty, and accompanied Titus when he came from Alexandria to the siege of Jerusalem. During this time nothing was done which escaped my knowledge. What happened in the Roman camp I saw, and wrote down carefully. As to the information the deserters brought out of the city, I was the only man that understood it. Afterwards I got leisure at Rome; and when all my materials were prepared, I procured the help of one to assist me in writ ing Greek. Thus I composed the history of those transactions, and I appealed both to Titus and Vespasian for the truth of it; to which also Julius Archelaus, Herod, and king Agrippa, bore their testimony." All remark here is needless; but it should not be forgotten, that Josephus was a Jew, obstinately attached to his religion; and that, although he has circumstantially related every remarkable event of that period, he seems studiously to have avoided such as had any reference to JESUS CHRIST, whose history, and even the genuineness of this is disputed, he sums up in about twelve lines. No one, therefore, can reasonably entertain a suspicion, that the service he has rendered to Christianity, by his narrative of the transactions of the Jewish war, was at

all the effect of design. The fidelity of Josephus, as an historian, is indeed, universally admitted; and Scaliger even affirms, that, not only in the affairs of the Jews, but in those of foreign nations also, he deserves more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put together.

Nor is the peculiar character of Titus, the chief commander in this war, unworthy of our particular regard. Vespasian, his father, had risen out of obscurity, and was elected emperor, contrary to his avowed inclination, about the commencement of the conflict; and thus the chief command devolved upon Titus, the most unlikely man throughout the Roman armies to become a scourge to Jerusalem. He was eminently distinguished for his great tenderness and humanity, which he displayed in a variety of instances during the siege. He repeatedly made pacific overtures to the Jews, and deeply lamented the infatuation that rejected them. In short, he did every thing which a military commander could do, to spare them, and to preserve their city and temple, but without effect. Thus was the will of GOD accomplished by the agency, although contrary to the wish, of Titus; and his predicted interposition, to punish his rebellious and apostate people, in this way rendered more conspicuously evident.

The history of the Jews, subsequently to the time of Josephus, still further corroborates the truth of our SAVIOUR'S prophecies concerning that oppressed and persecuted people. Into this inquiry, however, the limits of the present essay will not allow us to enter particularly. Our LORD foretold, generally, that they should "fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations; and that Jerusalem should be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled;" (Luke XXI. 24.) and these predictions may be regarded as a faithful epitome of the circumstances of the Jews, and also of their city, from the period in which it was delivered, down even to our own times.

In order to demonstrate the accomplishment of these predictions, we appeal, therefore, to universal history, and to every country under heaven.

"In the reign of Adrian," says Bishop Newton, "nine hundred and eighty-five of their best towns were sacked and demolished, five hundred and eighty thousand men fell by the sword, in battle, besides an infinite multitude who perished by famine, and sickness, and fire; so that Judea was depopulated, and an almost incredible number of every age, and of each sex, were sold like horses, and dispersed over the face of the earth." (Newton, vol.

II. dis. XVIII.) The war which gave rise to these calamities happened about sixty-four years after the destruction of Jerusalem; during which time the Jews had greatly multiplied in Judea. About fifty years after the latter event, Ælius Adrian built a new city on Mount Calvary, and called it Ælia, after his own name; but no Jew was suffered to come near it. He placed in it a heathen colony, and erected a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, on the ruins of the temple of JEHOVAH. This event contributed greatly to provoke the sanguinary war to which we have just alluded. The Jews afterwards burnt the new city; which Adrian, however, rebuilt, and reestablished the colony. In contempt of the Jews, he ordered a marble statue of a sow to be placed over its principal gate, and prohibited them entering the city under pain of death, and forbade them even to look at it from a distance. He also ordered fairs to be held annually for the sale of captive Jews, and banished such as dwelt in Canaan into Egypt. Constantine greatly improved the city, and restored to it the name of Jerusalem; but still he did not permit the Jews to dwell there. To punish an attempt to recover the possession of their capital, he ordered their ears to be cut off, their bodies to be marked as rebels, and dispersed them through all the provinces of the

empire as vagabonds and slaves. Jovian having revived the severe edicts of Adrian, which Julian had suspended, the wretched Jews even bribed the soldiers with money, for the privi lege only of beholding the sacred ruins of their city and temple, and weeping over them, which they were particularly solicitous to do on the anniversary of that memorable day, on which they were taken and destroyed by the Romans. In short, during every successive age, and in all nations, this ill-fated people have been constantly persecuted, enslaved, contemned, harrassed, and oppressed-banished from one country to another, and abused in all-while countless multitudes have, at different periods, been barbarously massacred, particularly in Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; and in Germany, Hungary, France, and Spain.

The undisputed facts are, that Jerusalem has not since been in possession of the Jews, but has been successively occupied by the Romans, Arabic Saracens, Franks, Mamalukes, and lastly by the Turks, who now possess it. It has never regained its former distinction and prosperity. It has always been trodden down. The eagles of idolatrous Rome, the crescent of Mahomet, and the banner of Popery, have by turns been displayed amidst the ruins of the sanctuary; and a Mahomedan mosque, to the extent of a mile in circumference, now