resentments again rekindled, and broke out in great fury. The faction under Eleazer was swallowed up in the other two, under John and Simon. Slaughter, conflagration and plunder endued. A portion of the centre of the city was burned, and the inhabitants became as prisoners to the two furious parties. The Romans here saw their own proverb verified: "Quos Deus vult perdere prim dementat." "Whom God will destroy, he gives up to madness."
The invading armies knew how to profit by the madness of the Jews. They were soon found by the Jews to have possession of the two outer walls of their city. This alarm reached the heart of the factions, and once more united them against the common enemy. But they had already proceeded too far to retreat from the effects of their madness. Famine, with its ghastly horrors, stared them in the face. It had, as might be expected, been making a silent approach; and some of the more
obscure had already fallen before it. But even this did not annihilate the fury of faction, which again returned with redoubled fury, and presented new scenes of wo. As the famine increased, the sufferers would snatch bread from each other's mouths, and devour their grain
unprepared. To discover handfuls of food, tortures were inflicted. Food was violently taken by husbands from wives, and wives from husbands; and even by mothers from their famishing infants. The breast itself was robbed from the famishing suckling, as our Lord denounced: "Wo to them that give suck in those days."
This terror produced a new scene of righteous retribution. Multitudes of the Jews were forced by hunger to flee to the enemy's camp. Here, instead of pitying and relieving them, the Romans cut off the hands of
many, and sent them back; but most of them they crucified as fast as they could lay their hands on them; till wood was wanting for crosses, and space on which to erect them. Behold here thousands of those despairing Jews suspended on crosses round the walls of Jerusalem! Verily, the Lord is known by the judgments that he executeth!" Yea. this did not suffice. Behold two thousand Jews who had lied to the mercy of their
