ture and obligations of religious Vows; my next will contain an application of this subject, in serious and persuasive addresses to several classes of persons, who are under solemn vows to Gon.

T.

THE CALAMITIES OF THE JEWS,

INFLICTED IN CONSEQUENCE

OF THEIR CRUCIFYING THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Translated for the Panoplist, from the French of M. SAURIN. Written in the beginning of the last century.

Luke xxiii. 26-31. "His blood be upon us and upon our children," said the Jews to Pilate, as a reason why he should permit them to imbrue their hands in the precious blood of Jesus Christ. At their intreaty Pilate consented to the horrid murder, and the dreadful calamities, which they impiouslyimprecated, came upon them and upon their posterity to the

uttermost.

For the purpose of contemplat. ing these calamities, transport yourselves in imagination into Egypt. There was, according to Philo, a million of Jews in that country. The Alexandrians profaned their Oratories, by erecting in them the statues of the most unworthy emperor, who ever disgraced the throne of the Cæsars. I speak of Caligula, who to the numerous other excesses, to which he was addicted, added the desire of being adored as a God, even when he was un. worthy to be respected as a man. From that time this kingdom became a place of executions, where these wretched victims were sacrificed in great numbers. Some were slaughtered, others consum

ed in the flames, and others dragged into theatres, and compelled to fight each other like gladiators, or rather like savage beasts.

From Egypt pass into Greece; there you will find that in one assault, or rather in one massa cre, which was committed upon the Jewish people, it is comput. ed that 50,000 of them were destroyed.

From Greece proceed to Babylon and Mesopotamia; there you behold the same spectacle, but still more deeply encrimsoned with blood: even to such a degree that those who have described it, declare it to have been the most dreadful massacre that history had ever before recorded.

But passing over other parts of the world, let us fix our station in the country of Judea, as the most astonishing theatre of the divine vengeance, and there behold a literal com. mentary upon all the predictions of Jesus Christ concerning this devoted people. Under the government of Judas, you will observe the prevalence of that fam ine, which Josephus styles, by way of eminence, the great famine; and which had been predicted by the prophet Agabus (Acts xxi.) To Judas succeeded Cumanus. He stationed, during the Passover, a cohort of his troops round the temple to prevent the disorders, which so great a mul titude might excite. A certain soldier committed an immodest action. The Jews exclaimed not only against him but against the governor, who had sent him. The governor was incensed; he caused his troops to approach; terror pervaded the Temple ; each one eager to escape from a place where he expected to be sac.

rificed, met his destruction in those very steps, which he took for his safety. There was according to St. Jerome, Eusebius, and Orosius, more than 30,000 persons crushed to death in the crowd.

Under Felix who came after Cumanus, a false Prophet assembled 30,000 Jews, among whom were 4000 assassins, who plundered and murdered indiscrimi. nately all those who could not like themselves erect the standard of rebellion against the Romans; and they continued their robberies under Festus, the successor of Felix.

Albinus, who followed Festus did perhaps more injury. There membrance of his barbarities was effaced only by those of Florus,

his successor who came into Judea to gratify all those sordid passions by which he was actuated; among which those which held the highest rank, were an insatiable thirst for gold, and a thirst if possible, still more insa. tiable for blood. He was sup. ported by a woman still more sordid and sanguinary than himself; whom the favor of Poppœa, the wife of Nero, had rendered intolerably insolent. By such a fury he suffered him. self to be directed; and after having exhausted the houses of private individuals; he had the impious audacity to hunt after gold in the Temple itself, and to plunder it of 16 talents; and when the Jews came to him in a body to conjure him to respect that sacred place; he ordered his troops to put them all to the sword; who slew 4,000 of them in one attack, and crucified a great number more. But all this was yet, as what Jesus had pre

dicted, but the beginning of sorrows, was but a prelude to those bloody tragedies, which Providence had reserved for this miserable people.

I hasten to that fatal period in which the Jews had the presumption to wage war with the Romans and to undertake to con. quer the conquerors of the whole earth. From that time Judea became a perfect slaughter-house, and not a city could be found which did not flow with the blood of its inhabitants. The cruel ravages which were committed there, served as a signal for the destruction of the Jews, to all the other nations of the earth. You will dispense with my not pursuing here the order either of times or of places. The imagi. nation is confounded, by the multitude of tragical objects, and the memory is overwhelmed by the myriads of people slaughter. ed, burnt, or drowned. At Cæsarea the Syrians butchered 20,000 Jews. At Ascalon, Tyre, and Polemais, the people marched over their carcasses. Greeks fell upon those at Scy. thopolis and massacred 13,000. At this spectacle one of the miserable victims in the sight of his murderers, killed his father, his mother, his wife, and children, and then plunged his sword into his own bosom. At Alexandria, the Roman legions destroyed 50,000. At Antioch, the massacre was more general, so that his torians were not able to compute the number of those who perished. At Gadara all the inhabitants fell by the sword of Vespasian's army; which marching to Josaphat, took it by storm, and put to death 40,000. Ves pasian sent Trajan to Sapha

The

where 15,000 men were put to the sword by that general, and the women and children sold for slaves. Cerealis by his own order, attacked the city of Joppa, every heart was struck with terror, and the Jews tofthe number of 40,000, attempting to escape in their'ships, were swallowed up in the waves. He committed to his son Titus the seige of Gamala where 4,000 men were slain, and 5,000 cast themselves down a precipice. Ah! thou sword of the LORD, drunk with blood, return into thy scabbard; but the LORD hath given thee a charge against Jerusalem. Jerusalem is about to present to our view a catastrophe far more terrible than all we have hitherto beheld or understood.

There was in this devoted city, when it was besieged, no less than three millions of people. Cestius Gallus gave information to Nero, that there was ordinarily this number there at the time of the Passover. The priests formed an estimate of it from the number of lambs which were slain upon this occasion, from the third to the fifth hour in the evening; which was found to be an hundred and fifty thousand and six hundred. One lamb serv. ed for twenty persons at the most, and for seventeen at the least and to take this latter calculation only it will make about two millions, five hundred and sixty thousand; to which if you add those who may have had some legal pollution; and for whom no lamb was sacrificed, you will find the whole amounting to the number of three millions, who became so many vic. tims to the divine justice. Great God! what an amazing specta

cle is this! Here I see the Idùmeans called in to the aid of Je rusalem, who enter less in the spirit of allies, than of enemies, who signalize their entrance by the massacre of eight thousand of those, whom they pretend they came to assist. There I see three different parties making three intestine wars, ravaging the holy city, under a pretext of defending it, profaning the sacred utensils, and polluting the sanctuary; they spare neither age, nor sex, nor virtue, nor condition; they tear infants from the breast, strangle them in their cradles, murder the venerable fathers, massacre the women with child, and prove ten thousand times more formidable within than the Romans do without! Here I see wretches, seeking a retreat from Jerusalem through subterranean passages, but discovered by Titus, and crucified by hundreds in a day, in the sight of the besieged, with a view to reduce them by fear. There I see the soldiers ripping open the bowels of certain fugitives, and searching in their yet palpitating entrails for gold, which they suspected them to have swallowed to secure it from their avarice. Here I see the pestilence aggravating the horrors of war, and famine aggravating the horrors of the pestilence, a famine so terrible as to compel husbands to snatch from the mouths of their wives a few morsels of food hastily cooked by stealth, wives snatching it from the mouths of their husbands, children from the mouths of their parents, and parents from the mouths of their children; each one contending for this miserable aliment, which could at the utmost, only pro

tract for a few moments the remains of a wretched existence. There I see a mother committing a fact the most barbarous to which despair and famine could impel, tearing to pieces with her teeth, and nourishing herself with the flesh of her own child, causing those to tremble with horror at a deed so unnatural, who had long forgotten to tremble with fear; verifying in this manner the prediction of our Savior : Blessed are the barren! blessed are the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck. Here I see the Roman battering-ram shaking the towers and the walls to their foundation, overthrowing them with violence, and crushing thousands to death by their fall. There I see people weary with burying the dead, casting them over the walls of the city, to deliver themselves from their contagion, and to annoy their enemies by this unheardof species of combat; driving them back by the putrid exha. lation of the dead, since the power of the living is utterly insufficient to repel their assaults.

But letus draw a veil over these sanguinary objects. The number of Jews, who perished in this final desolation of Jerusalem, could never be exactly ascertained. It is even impossible to compute, what multitudes the combination of plagues which appeared to fall upon this devoted city, during the siege, swept away. But a certain person by the name of Mannus, who was commissioned to pay the wages of those who cast the carcasses over the walls, assured the emperor Titus that, from the 14th of April to the first of July they cast over elev

en hundred and forty thousand, exclusive of those who were interred. I recollect in this place a reflection of Titus Livius the historian respecting the Equi, ancient enemies of the Romans: "It may appear very surprising," says he, "that after so many victories obtained over that nation, and after such numbers of them were destroyed, I should still introduce them upon the stage, as one must believe that not a sin. gle individual of them remained upon the face of the earth." like manner it should seem that after such torrents of blood had streamed from the Jewish nation, it must be entirely extinct; but we find it still existing after the victories of Titus, and seeming to revive from its ashes, only, however, to serve as a constant object of the wrath of heaven, and a perpetual verification of the fatal predictions of our text.

In

In the reign of the emperor Trajan, the Jews taking up arms in Egypt, in Thebais, and Ly bia Cyrenaica, rendered themselves formidable to their enemies; of which they destroyed, according to the account of Dion, more than two hundred thousand in Lybia, and more than a hundred and forty thousand in the isle of Cyprus. They supported a war against the Romans for three whole years, until Adrian having besieged them anew in Jerusalem, put five hundred and forty thousand of them to the sword; and sold an innumerable multitude of them for slaves at the fair of Terebentha. He also burnt fifty of their castles; and nine hundred and forty-five of their prin. cipal villages, caused the foundations of the temple to be torn up

by the plough, and forbid them ever to approach Jerusalem any more for ever!

But notwithstanding this continuation of massacres, we have seen them multiplying in every part of the world, and perpetu. ating themselves down to the present period. If I may be permitted to mention as credible, the account which has been furnished by themselves, they have still fifty synagogues and twenty thousand families in the Holy Land; in Turkey, or in Barbary more than two hundred synagogues and thirty thousand fami. lies; an hundred and fifty syna. gogues and forty thousand families in Germany; in France thirty synagogues and ten thousand families ; thirty syna gogues and ten thousand families in Italy; five thousand families in the Low Countries, or in your provinces; two hundred in Great Britain; more than fifty thou. sand under persecution in Portu. gal, Spain, and the Brazils; and an

innumerable number in the West Indies; but every where dragging out a life of wretchedness; banished from England under Edward I. in 1290, from France in 1307, under Philip the fair, from Spain, in 1402 by Ferdinaud, from Portugal by Emanuel in 1497; and from Sicily in 1539, under Charles I.

Happy nation! If after all they would make these temporal miseries subservient to their eternal salvation. But, if I may be allowed the expression, faith is more terrified at their spiritual calamities, than sense and imagination are at those natural cal. amities which enveloped them. Their infidelity rises even to a prodigy. It seems to be a consequence of the righteous judg ment of that God, who sends to those who resist the truth, strung delusions, that they should believe a lie (2 Thess. ii. 11.) and indeed the desolation of the Jews should be sufficient to dispel their delusions.

RESTITUTION is that part of justice to which a man is obliged by a precedent contract, or a foregoing fault, by his own act or another man's, either with or without his will. He that bor. rows is bound to pay, and much more he that steals or cheats. For if he that borrows and pays not when he is able, be an unjust person and a robber, because he possesses another man's goods to

the right owner's prejudice; then he that took them at first without leave, is the same thing in every instant of his possession, which the debtor is after the time in which he should and could have made payment. For in all sins we are to distinguish the transient or passing act from the remaining effect or evil. The act of stealing was soon over and cannot be undone, and for it the