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a sentence of the Areopagus. The whole earth was possessed with the same error: truth dared not make her appearance. The great God, the Creator of the world, had neither temple, nor worship, but in Jerusalem. When the Gentiles sent thither their offerings, they did no other honour to the God of Israel, than that of joining him to the other gods. Judea alone was acquainted with his holy and severe jealousy, and knew that to divide religion between him and other gods, was to destroy it.

And yet, in the latter days, the Jews themselves, who knew him, and who were the depositaries of religion, began (so con stantly are men inclined to weaken the truth) not to forget the God of their fathers, but to mingle in religion superstitions unworthy of him. Under the reign of the Asmoneans, and in the time of Jonathan, the sect of the Pharisees arose among the Jews*. They acquired at first a great reputation, by the purity of their doctrine, and by their strict observance of the law: add to this, that their conduct was mild, though regular, and that they lived in great union among themselvest. The rewards and punishments of the future life, which they zealously asserted, gained them much honour. At last, ambition entered among them. They would govern, and accordingly assumed an absolute power over the

Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 9. + Ibid. 18.
Id. lib. ii. de bell, Jud. 7.

people, set themselves up for arbitrators of. learning and religion, which they insensibly perverted to superstitious practices, subservient to their own interest, and the dominion they wanted to usurp over consciences; and the true spirit of the law was like to be lost.

To these evils was added a greater, pride and presumption; but a presumption which went so far as to arrogate to itself the gift of God. The Jews, accustomed to his benefits, and enlightened so many ages by the knowledge of Him, forgat that his goodness alone had separated them from other nations, and looked upon his favour as their due, Being a chosen race, and always blessed for two thousand years, they judged themselves the only persons worthy to know God, and thought themselves of a different species from other men, whom they saw deprived of the knowledge of him. From this principle, they looked on the Gentiles. with insupportable disdain. To be sprung from Abraham after the flesh, seemed to them a distinction, which set them naturally above all others; and puffed up with so noble an origin, they fancied themselves saints by nature, and not by grace an error, which still prevails amongst them. They were the Pharisees, who, seeking to glorify themselves for their own light, and their strict observance of the ceremonies of the law, introduced this opinion toward the latter times. As their sole aim was to distinguish themselves from other men, they

multiplied external usages without number, and delivered all their notions, however contrary to the law of God, as authentic traditions.

Although these sentiments had never passed by a public decree into tenets of the synagogue, they insensibly stole in amongst the people, who became disquiet, turbulent, and seditious. At length the divisions, which, according to their prophets, were to be the beginning of their decline, broke out on occasion of the quarrels that arose in the house of the Asmoneans *. It was hardly sixty years before JESUS CHRIST, when Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, sons of Alexander Janneus, went to war about the priesthood, to which the kingdom was annexed. This is the fatal moment, on which history fixes the first cause of the destruction of the Jews †. Pompey, whom the two brothers called in to settle their dispute, subjected them both, at the same time that he dispossessed Antiochus, surnamed Asiaticus, the last king of Syria †. These three princes, degraded together, and as it were at one blow, were the signal of the decay marked out in precise terms by the prophet Zechariah. It is certain from history, that this change of affairs in Syria and Judea was made at the same time by Pompey, when, after putting an end to the Mithri

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Zech. xi. 6, 7, 8, &c.

Joseph. Ant. xiv. 8. xx. i. bell. Jud. 4, 5. Appian, bell. Syr. Mithrid. & Liv. li. 5. xi. 8.

Zech.

datic war, being about to return to Rome, he settled the affairs of the East. The prophet has observed only what concerned the destruction of the Jews, who, of two brothers, whom they had seen kings, saw one, a prisoner, adorning Pompey's triumph, and the other (the weak Hyrcanus) from whom the same Pompey took, together with his diadem, great part of his dominions, retaining now but an empty title of authority, which he soon lost. Then it was that the Jews were made tributary to the Romans; and the ruin of Syria brought on theirs, because that great kingdom, reduced into a province in their neighbourhood, so greatly augmented there the Roman power, that there was no more safety but in obeying them. The governors of Syria made continual attempts upon Judea; the Romans rendered themselves absolute masters there, and weakened its government in many respects. By them, at length, the kingdom of Judah passed from the hands of the Asmoneans, to whom it had submitted, into those of Herod, a foreigner and an Idumean. The cruel and ambitious policy of that king, who professed only in appearance the Jewish religion, altered the maxims of the ancient government. They are no longer those Jews, masters of their own fate, under the vast empire of the Persians and first Seleucidæ, when the only thing required of them was to live in peace. Herod, who keeps them almost enslaved under his government, puts every thing in disorder; confounds at his pleasure the succession of the priests; weakens the pontifi

cate, which he renders arbitrary; enervates the authority of the council of the nation, which can no longer do any thing; the whole public power passes into the hands of Herod, and of the Romans, whose slave he is, and he shakes the foundations of the Jewish commonwealth.

The Pharisees, and the people, who were entirely led by their sentiments, bore this state with impatience. The more they felt themselves galled by the yoke of the Gentiles, the greater contempt and hatred did they conceive for them. They no more wanted any Messiah, but a warrior, formidable to the powers that enthralled them. Thus forgetting all the prophecies, which had spoken to them so expressly of his humiliations, they had no longer either eyes or ears, but for those which announced triumphs, though very different ones from those they desired.

VI. Jesus Christ, and his Doctrine,

IN this decline of religion, and of the Jewish affairs, at the end of Herod's reign, and in the time the Pharisees were introducing so many abuses, JESUS CHRIST was sent upon earth, to restore the kingdom into the house of David, after a manner more sublime than the carnal Jews understood it, and to preach the doctrine, which God had resolved should be declared to the whole world. This wonderful child, called by Isaiah, The mighty God, the ever

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