with him into the prison, with their swords drawn, and se they cut the throats of those that were in custody there. The grand lie and pretence these men made for so flagrant an enormity was this, that these men had had conferences with the Romans for a surrender of Jerusalem to them; and so they said they had slain only such as were traitors to their common liberty. On the whole they grew the more insolent upon this bold prank of theirs, as though they had been the benefactors and saviours of the city.

*

So

6. Now the people were come to that degree of meanness and fear, and these robbers to that degree of madness, that these last took upon them to appoint high-priests. when they had disannulled the succession, according to those families out of which the high-priests used to be made, they ordained certain unknown and ignoble persons for that office, that they might have their assistance in their wicked undertakings; for such as obtained this highest of all honours, without any desert, were forced to comply with those that bestowed it on them. They also set the principal men at variance one with another by several sorts of contrivances and tricks, and gained the opportunity of doing what they pleased, by the mutual quarrels of those who might have obstructed their measures; till at length, when they were satiated with the unjust actions they had done towards men, they transferred their contumelious behaviour to God himself, and came into the sanctuary with polluted feet.

7. And now the multitude were going to rise against them already; for Ananus, the ancientest of the high-priests, persuaded them to it. He was a very prudent mau, and had perhaps saved the city if he could but have escaped the hand of those that plotted against him. Those men made the temple of God a strong hold for them, and a place whither they

* Here we may discover the utter disgrace and ruin of the highpriesthood among the Jews, when undeserving, ignoble, and vile persons were advanced to that noble office by the seditious; which sort of high-priests, as Josephus well remarks here, were thereupon obliged to comply with, and assist those that advanced them in their impious practices. The names of these high-priests, or rather ridiculous and profane persons, were Jesus the son of Damneus. Jesus the son of Gamaliel, Matthias the son of Theophilus, and that prodigious ignoramus Phannias, the son of Samuel; all which we shall meet with in Josephus' future history of this war; nor do we meet with any other so much as pretended high-priest after Phannias, tilk Jerusalem was taken and destroyed.

VOL. VI.

might resort, in order to avoid the troubles they feared from the people; the sanctuary was now become a refuge, and a shop of tyranny. They also mixed jesting among the miseries they introduced, which was more intolerable thau what they did; for in order to try what surprise the people would be under, and how far their own power extended, they undertook to dispose of the high-priesthood by casting lots for it, whereas, as we have said already, it was to descend by succession in a family. The pretence they made for this strange attempt was an ancient practice, while they said that of old it was determined by lot; but in truth, it was no better than the dissolution of an undeniable law, and a cunning contrivance to seize upon the government, derived from those that presumed to appoint governors as they themselves pleased.

8. Hereupon they sent for one of the pontifical tribes, which is called * Eniachim, and cast lots which of it should be the high-priest. By fortune the lot fell as to demonstrate their iniquity after the plainest manner, for it fell upon one whose name was Phannias, the son of Samuel, of the village Aptha. He was a man not only unworthy of the high-priesthood but that did not well know what the high-priesthood was, such a mere rustic was he; yet did they hail this man, without his own consent, out of the country, as if they were acting a play upon the stage, and adorned him with a counterfeit face they also put upon him the sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who, at a distance saw their law made a jest of to shed tears, and sorely to lament the dissolution of such a sacred dignity.

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9. And now the people could no longer bear the insolence of this procedure, but did altogether run zealously, in order to overthrow that tyranny: and indeed they were Gorion the son of Josephus, and Symeon the son of Gamaliel, who

This tribe or course of the high-priests or priests called Eniakim, seems to the learned Mr. Lowth, one well versed in Josephus, to be that 1 Chron. xxiv. 12. the course of Jakim, where some copies have the course of Eliakim; and I think this to be by no means an improbable conjecture.

This Symeon, the son of Gamaliel, is mentioned as the presi dent of the Jewish Sanhedrim, and one that perished in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Jewish Rabbins, as Reland observes on this place. He also tells us, that those rabbins mention one Jesus, the

encouraged them, by going up and down when they were as sembled together in crowds, and as they saw them alone to bear no longer, but to inflict punishment upon these pests and plagues of their freedom, and to purge the temple of these bloody polluters of it. The best esteemed also of the highpriests, Jesus the son of Gamala, and Ananus the son of Ananus, when they were at their assemblies, bitterly reproached the people for their sloth, and excited them against the zealots; for that was the name they went by, as if they were zealous in good undertakings, and were not rather zealous in the worst actious, and extravagant in them beyond the example of others.

10. And now, when the multitude were gotten together to an assembly, and every one was in indignation at these men's seizing upon the sanctuary, at their rapine and murders, but had not yet begun their attacks upon them, the (reason of which was this, that they imagined it to be a difficult thing to suppress these zealots, as indeed the case was.) Ananus stood in the midst of them, and casting his eyes frequently at the temple, and having a flood of tears in his eyes, he said, "Certainly it had been good for me to die "before I had seen the house of God full of so many abomina“tions, or these sacred places, that ought not to be trodden upon at random, filled with the feet of these blood shedding "villains; yet do I, who am clothed with the vestments of "the high-priestshod, and am called by that most venerable "name [of high-priest,] still live, and am but two fond of liv"ing, and cannot endure to undergo a death, which would be "the glory of my old age; and if I were the only person "concerned, and as it were in a desert I would give up my "life, aud that alone for God's sake; for to what purpose is it to live among a people insensible of their calamities, and "where there is no notion remaining of any remedy of the "miseries that are upon them? For when you are seized upon you bear it, and when you are beaten you are silent, " and when people are murdered, nobody dares so much as "send out a groan openly. O bitter tyranny that we are un"der! But why do I complain of the tyrants? Was it not 66 you, and your sufferance of them that have nourished them? "Was it not you that overlooked those that first of all got

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son of Gamala, as once an high-priest, but this long before the destruction of Jerusalem; so that if he were the same person with this Jesus the son of Gamala, in Josephus, he must have lived to be very old, or they have been very bad chronologers,

"together, for they were then but a few, and by your silence "made them grow to be many, and by conuiving at them "when they took arms, in effect armed them against your"selves? You ought to have then prevented their first at"tempts, when they fell a reproaching your relations; but "by neglecting that care in time, you have encouraged these wretches to plunder men. When houses were pillaged, "nobody said a word, which was the occasion why they car"ried off the owners of those houses, and when they were "drawn through the midst of the city, nobody came to their "assistance. They then proceeded to put those whom you "have betrayed into their hands into bonds; I do not say how many, and of what characters those men were whom they thus served, but certainly they were such as were accused "by none, and condemned by noue; aud since nobody suc"coured them when they were put into bonds, the conse

quence was, that you saw the same persons slain. We "have seen this also; so that still the best of the herd of brute "animals, as it were, have been still led to be sacrificed, "when yet nobody said one word, or moved his right hand "for their preservation. Will you bear, therefore, will you bear to see your sanctuary trampled on? and will you lay steps for these profane wretches, upon which they may "mount to higher degrees of insolence? Will not you pluck “them down from their exaltation? For even by this time "they had proceeded to higher enormities, if they had been "able to overthrow any thing greater than the sanctuary. “They have seized upon the strongest place of the whole "city; you may call it the temple if you please, though it "be like a citadel or fortress. Now while you have ty ran86 ny in so great a degree walled in, and see your enemies over your heads, to what purpose is it to take counsel? And what have you to support your minds withal? Perhaps you wait for the Romans, that they may protect our holy places; are our matters then brought to that pass? ❝and are we come to that degree of misery, that our enemies "themselves are expected to pity us? Q wretched creatures! "will not you rise up, and turn upon those that strike you? which you may observe in wild beasts themselves, that they may avenge themselves on those that strike them. "Will you not call to mind every one of you the calamities you yourselves have suffered ? nor lay before your eyes what afflictions you yourselves have undergone? And

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"will not such things sharpen your souls to revenge? Is "therefore that most honourable and most natural of our pas"sions utterly lost, I mean the desire of liberty? Truly we "are in love with slavery, and in love with those that lord it "over us, as if we had received that principle of subjection from our ancestors; yet did they undergo ma66 ny and great wars for the sake of liberty, nor were "they so far overcome by the power of the Egyptians, "or the Medes, but that they still did what they thought "fit, notwithstanding their commands to the contrary."And what occasion is there now for a war with the "Romans? (I meddle not with determining whether it be "an advantageous and profitable war or not :) what pre"tence is there for it? Is it not that we may enjoy our liberty? Besides shall we not bear the lords of the habitable earth to be lords over us, and yet bear tyrants of our own "country? Although I must say that submission to foreigners may be born, because fortune hath already doomed us “to it, while submission to wicked people of our own nation "is too unmanly, and brought upon us by our own consent. "However, since I have had occasion to mention the "Romans, I will not conceal a thing that, as I am speaking, "comes into my mind, and affects me considerably; it is "this, that though we should be taken by them, (God "forbid the event should be so,) yet can we undergo "nothing that will be harder to be borne then what these "men have already brought upon us. How then can we

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To see

"avoid shedding of tears, when we see the Roman dona"tions in our temple, while we withal see those of our own "nation taking our spoils and plundering our glorious me"tropolis, and slaughtering our men, from which enormities "those Romans themselves would have abstained. "those Romans never going beyond the bounds allotted to profane persons, nor venturing to break in upon any of our "sacred customs, nay, having a horror on their minds when "they view at a distance those sacred walls, while some that "have been born in this very country, and brought up in our "customs, and called Jews, do walk about in the midst of "the holy places, at the very time when their hands are still

warm with the slaughter of their own countrymen. "Besides, can any one be afraid of a war abroad, and that "with such as will have comparitively much greater mode “ration than our own people have? For truly, if we may