Vespasian had formed a camp during the siege, and afterwards settled a colony of eight hundred veterans;† and this colony was afterwards restored by Alexander Severus; but by whom the name of Nicopolis, or the city of victory, was given, seems doubtful. A great part of the Jewish nation was utterly destroyed by the war, and their country becoming forfeited to the Romans, Vespasian ordered all their lands, cities, and towns, to be sold, and the produce to be paid into the imperial treasury. Nor was this all, for the people themselves were sold for slaves, to such an extent as to become absolutely of little or no value.¶

The Jews in Egypt having shewed some disposition to imitate the rebellion of their brethren in Judea, Vespasian ordered the temple at Onias to be also destroyed, but it was only shut up, after being stripped of all its riches and valuables.**

THE DISPERSION.

THE immediate result of these transactions, was the destruction and termination of the Jewish polity, and the future observance of the Mosaic ritual rendered physically impos sible by the hand of God himself, for none of the Levitical sacrifices could be offered elsewhere than at Jerusalem;†† and

* Crevier, vi. 178.

+ Crevier, vi. 262. Crevier, viii. 272.

Jones, in his Waldenses, gives an account from Lipsius, tha more than one million five hundred thousand were destroyed during the war, specifying the numbers at each place. Vol. i. 213.

Crevier, vi. 262.

Kidder, i. 150. ii. 197, 198. ** Crevier, vi. 264. Rollin, ix.

++ Deut. xii. 11-13. 2 Chron. vii. 12. Dr. Outram on Sacrifices,

p. 19, &c. and the other authorities there cited.

thus HE who retaineth all power in his own hands, and with whom a thousand years are but as one day, seems to have established an ingredient in that very ritual, by which he could at a moment put an end to its performance, whenever it seemed good to him, or whenever it had accomplished the object for which it had been instituted; and, therefore, from that lamentable period to the present moment, have the Jews been "without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim."*

Oh that the seed of Abraham would seriously ask themselves, for what greater crime than idolatry can it be that they have thus endured so long, so incalculable an alienation from the favour of God; and experienced a series of calamity altogether without parallel, and so immeasurably greater than their almighty protector had ever inflicted, even for that abhorred crime of idolatry itself! Oh that they would even now turn to him whom they have pierced, and mourn, even as one mourneth for an only son !†

The dispersion of the remnant of this unhappy people amongst all the nations of the world immediately followed ;§ and so signal has been their preservation amidst unheard of

Hosea, iii. 4. Without king, and without ruler, and without sacrifice, and without statue, and without ephod and teraphim Bp. Horsley's Translation of Hosea; where see some learned and curious criticisms on this passage, and on the structure and use of the ephod, 10–65.

+ Zech. xii. 10.

See Tovey on the Persecutions of the Jews, Gibbon, iii. 303. ix. 251, and Basnage passim; and compare them with Deut. xxviii. § See the prophecies as to their dispersion and present state, collected in Keith, 75. And much useful information as to their general history, present state, &c. collected by Dr. Thornton, in his notes on Virgil's Fourth Eclogue.

of God,

persecutions, that they have increased and multiplied beyond comparison, and whilst all other nations have been lost of absorbed amongst the new races of mankind, they only have preserved their original distinctions; and to this day a Jes is a standing miracle, and so stubborn as well as awful witness for the truth of revelation, and the purposes that they have always proved the most inconvenient obstacle in the way of infidels and scoffers. Thus Frederick, the infidel king of Prussia, could say, that whatever king of government ventured to meddle with the Jews would be sure to smart for it. And thus has God continually shewn, that though he had thought fit to cut them off, yet that be has always had a yearning of tenderness towards them, as branches that in his own good time were to be grafted again into their own olive tree.*

For half a century the Jews continued broken, dispersed, and dismayed, in consequence of the events connected with the siege and fallt of Jerusalem; but in the reign of the em peror Trajan, they broke into open revolt in several of the provinces where they were distributed; and according to some writers, shewed great cruelty where their power ex tended. Lupus, the prefect of Egypt, was defeated by them under the command of a king named Lucua, and obliged t shut himself up in Alexandria; but they were finally over powered, although not without difficulty, by Martius Turb who drove the Jews out of Egypt, Cyrene, and the isle of Cyprus. Lusius Quietus was sent against those who had rebelled in Mesopotamia; and having defeated them in a

*Rom. xi. 23. "And thus he reproaches those who dealt hardly with them; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with great jealousy, and I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease; for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction," Zech. i. 14, 15.

pitched and hard fought battle, he exterminated a vast number of them, and was by Trajan entrusted with the government of Palestine.*

When Adrian, however, succeeded to the empire, distrusting for some reason the fidelity of Quietus, he removed him from his command, and appointed Martius Turbo in his stead, who succeeded in suppressing the insurrection at that time.†

Not broken in spirit, however, by these events, about eighteen years afterwards, many of them having congregated at Jerusalem and erected dwellings amongst the ruins, the emperor Adrian sent a colony of Romans there also, probably for the purpose of keeping them in order; and having erected a temple to Jupiter, where that of Jehovah formerly stood, he named the new colony Elia Capitolina. Already well enough disposed to revolt, and fired to madness at the sight of the pagan idolatry being established upon the site of their holy place, as well as encouraged by their long cherished but often defeated expectation of a Messiah, they at length again broke out into open revolt. An impostor who took the name of Barchochebas, or the son of a star,§ who, pretending that Balaam's prophesy was fulfilled in him, assumed their command, and not only destroyed the Greeks and Romans, but more unmercifully the Christians, who would neither renounce their faith in Jesus, the true Messiah, nor take any part in the revolt against the Roman government. And so formidable an aspect did the revolt in Judea assume, that Adrian sent for Julius Severus out of Britain, to command the army destined to act against them. That officer by a judicious mode of warfare subdued the revolt, having taken Bitther,||

Crevier, vii. 116-118. + Crevier, iii. 142. Gibb. ii. 279. § His real name was Akiba, Kidder on the Messiah, i. 128. iii. 167.; in which invaluable work see all the prophecies relating to Christ illustrated, and a history of all the false Messiahs.

Crevier, vii. 189.

a strong town near Jerusalem, where Barchochebas was slain. It is said that this war lasted three years, during which period five hundred and eighty thousand Jews perished by the sword; it is impossible to tell the number of those who ended their miserable days by hunger, sickness, or fire; all those who escaped this shocking disaster were sold for slaves, and carried away into foreign countries, so that Judea was almost entirely depopulated. Neither was the result arrived at without an immense loss of Roman soldiers, so that when Adrian wrote an account to the senate, he abstained from styling him self emperor.*

The destruction of the Jews under Adrian was complete; they not only did not recover themselves, but any attempts they made to throw off the yoke were but trifling and without effect.

Adrian, to prevent their revolting, used an effective precaution, which was this, to forbid them the very sight of Jerusalem, where they were not permitted to enter but on one day of the year, the anniversary of the destruction of the city. St. Jerome thus describes their assembling on that melancholy day, their wretched lamentations, and the severities they suffered from the guards placed at every avenue. He was an eye-witness of all this, for he dwelt there; these are his own words: "The treacherous husbandmen," says he, alluding to the parable in the Gospel," after

* Gibbon confirms this account, but alleges that the cruelties of the Jews had almost merited it. "In Cyrene they massacred two hundred and twenty thousand; in Cyprus, two hundred and forty thousand; in Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder, according to a precedent to which David had given the sanction of his example. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the blood, and twisted the entrails like a girdle round their bodies. Dion Cassius, lib. lxviii. p. 1145." Gibb. ii. 384.