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[235]
When Herod heard this confession, he was all over anger and fear,
some parts seeming to him reproachful, and some made him suspicious of
dangers that attended him, insomuch that on both accounts he was provoked,
and bitterly afraid lest some more heavy plot was laid against him than
he should be then able to escape from; whereupon he did not now make an
open search, but sent about spies to watch such as he suspected, for he
was now overrun with suspicion and hatred against all about him; and indulging
abundance of those suspicions, in order to his preservation, he continued
to suspect those that were guiltless; nor did he set any bounds to himself,
but supposing that those who staid with him had the most power to hurt
him, they were to him very frightful; and for those that did not use to
come to him, it seemed enough to name them [to make them suspected], and
he thought himself safer when they were destroyed. And at last his domestics
were come to that pass, that being no way secure of escaping themselves,
they fell to accusing one another, and imagining that he who first accused
another was most likely to save himself; yet when any had overthrown others,
they were hated; and they were thought to suffer justly who unjustly accused
others, and they only thereby prevented their own accusation; nay, they
now executed their own private enmities by this means, and when they were
caught, they were punished in the same way. Thus these men contrived to
make use of this opportunity as an instrument and a snare against their
enemies; yet when they tried it, were themselves caught also in the same
snare which they laid for others: and the king soon repented of what he
had done, because he had no clear evidence of the guilt of those whom he
had slain; and yet what was still more severe in him, he did not make use
of his repentance, in order to leave off doing the like again, but in order
to inflict the same punishment upon their accusers.
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