shall they lay their hands upon you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake. And many shall be offended. Ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren, and kinsfolk and friends: and some of you shall they cause to be put to death, and ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake. But there shall not a hair of your head perish. And many false prophets will arise and will deceive many: and, because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. And the gospel must first be published among all nations, and then shall the end come. When ye, therefore, shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, and the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place, and where it ought not, then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him which is in the midst of it depart out. Let him which is on the house-top not go down into the house, neither enter therein to take any thing out of his house. Neither let him that is in the field turn back again for to take up his garment, for these are the days of vengeance. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days; for there will be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people; and they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive into all nations. There shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled. This generation shall not pass away till all these things be done.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees; fill ye up the measure of your fathers. Behold, I send unto you

r Matt. xxiv. Mark xiii. Luke xxi.

prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye will scourge scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city. All these things shall be done in this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; for I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.s

"When he came near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."t

These prophecies, from the Old Testament and from the New, repel the charge of ambiguity. They are equally copious and clear. History attests the truth of each and all of them; and a recapitulation of them forms an enumeration of the facts. False Christs appeared. Simon Magus boasted that he was some great one. Dositheus, the Samaritan, pretended that he was the lawgiver prophesied of by Moses. Theudas, promising the performance of a miracle, persuaded a great multitude to follow him to Jordan, and deceived many." The country was filled with impostors and deceivers, who induced the people to follow them into the wilderness;-their credulity bes Matt. xxiii. 29, 32, 34, 36-39.

+ Luke xix. 41-44.

Joseph. Ant. lib. xx. cap. v. § 1; lib. xx. cap. vii. § 5.

came the punishment of their previous scepticism, and, in one instance, the tumult was so great that the soldiers took two hundred prisoners, and slew twice that number. There were wars and rumours of wars; nation rose against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. The Jews resisted the erection of the statue of Caligula in the temple; and such was the dread of Roman resentment, that the fields remained uncultivated.x At Cæsarea, the Jews and the Syrians contended for the mastery of the city. Twenty thousand of the former were put to death, and the rest were expelled. Every city in Syria was then divided into two armies, and multitudes were slaughtered. Alexandria and Damascus presented a similar scene of bloodshed. About fifty thousand of the Jews fell in the former, and ten thousand in the latter. The Jewish nation rebelled against the Romans; Italy was convulsed with contentions for the empire; and, as a proof of the troubles and warlike character of the period, within the brief space of two years, four emperors, Nero, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, suffered death. There were famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. In the reign of Claudius Cæsar there were different famines. They continued to be severe for several years throughout the land of Judea. Pestilence succeeded them. In the same reign there were earthquakes at Rome, at Apamea, and at Crete. In that of Nero there was an earthquake in Campania, and another in which Laodicea, Hierapolis, and Colosse were overthrown, and others are recorded to have happened in various places, before the destruction of the city of Jerusalem."

Joseph. de Bello, lib. ii. cap. xviii. §§ 1, 2.

Joseph. ibid. lib. ii. c. xiii.; c. xviii. §§ 1, 2, 7, 8.

"The

Suet. Vit. Claud. cap. xviii. Tac. Ann. lib. xii. c. xliii.; lib. xiv. c. xxvii. Jos. lib. iv. c. vi.

lib. xii. cap. xliii. lviii.

Tac. lib. xiv. c. xxvii.;

constitution of nature," says the Jewish historian,3 66 was confounded for the destruction of men, and one might easily conjecture that no common calamities were portended." And there were fearful sights and signs from heaven. Tacitus and Josephus agree in relating and in describing events so surprising and supernatural, that their narrative perfectly accords with the previous prediction. And the fact cannot be disputed, that, whatever these sights were, the minds of men were impressed with the idea that they were indeed signs from heaven: and even this could never have been foreseen by man. There is surely something at least unaccountable in their prediction and in their relation by historians, unprejudiced and unfriendly to the cause which their testimony supports. The disciples of Jesus were persecuted, im prisoned, afflicted, and hated of all nations, for his name's sake, and many of them were put to death. Peter, Simon, and Jude were crucified: Paul was beheaded: Matthew, Thomas, James, Matthias, Mark, and Luke, were put to death in different countries, and in various manners. There was a war against They were accused of hatred to the human race. The prejudices and the interest of the supporters of paganism were everywhere against them; and, in one memorable instance, Nero, to screen himself from the guilt of being the incendiary of his capital, accused the innocent but hated Christians of that atrocious deed, and inflicted upon them the most ex

the

very name.

Joseph. lib. iv. cap. iv.

"Evenerant prodigia, quæ neque hostiis neque votis piare fas habet gens superstitioni obnoxia, religionibus adversa. Visa per cœlum concurrere acies, rutilantia arma, et subito nubium igne collucere templum. Expassæ repente delubri fores, et audita major humanâ vox, excedere deos; simul ingens motus excedentium." (Tacit. Hist. lib. v. cap. xiii.) Cave's Lives of the Apostles. Dupin.

cruciating tortures. He made their sufferings a spectacle and a sport to the Romans. To compensate for his disappointment in not trampling on the ashes of Rome, as well as to cloak his iniquity, the monster (for the man and the monarch were both laid aside) gratified his savage lust of cruelty, by the substitution of one feast for another: he selected the Christians for his victims, from the general odium under which they lay; and their very name became the warrant for that selection, and sufficed to sanction the infliction of unheard of barbarities. Many shall be offended, and shall betray one another; and the love of many shall wax cold. The apostle of the Gentiles often complained of false brethren, that many turned away from him, and that he stood alone, forsaken by all, when he first appeared before Nero. And Tacitus testifies that very many were convicted, on the evidence of others who had previously been accused. But the gospel was published throughout the world, in defiance of all peril and persecution. In the age of the apostles, epistles were addressed to Christians at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, Thessalonica, and in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. After Christ delivered this prophecy, he was in a little time forsaken by all his disciples, and put to death as a criminal. At their first assembly, they were a little flock, the number of the names together were about a hundred and twenty. And, unpromising as the prospect was, a few fishermen of Galilee, aided afterwards by a tent-maker of Tarsus, circumscribed not their labours, in the preaching of the gospel, by the boundaries of the Roman empire. Could the reception or the fate of Christ himself have warranted such a conclusion? Did ever any cause triumph by such means? or was ever any cause opposed like his?

a Tacit. Annal. lib. xv. cap. xliv..