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[214]
This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could
not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under;
but there were many of them who were hereby induced to a more bitter hatred
than ordinary against our nation. But for Caesar, he excused himself before
God as to this matter, and said that he had proposed peace and liberty
to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices;
but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace,
war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine. That they had begun with
their own hands to burn down that temple which we have preserved hitherto;
and that therefore they deserved to eat such food as this was. That, however,
this horrid action of eating an own child ought to be covered with the
overthrow of their very country itself, and men ought not to leave such
a city upon the habitable earth to be seen by the sun, wherein mothers
are thus fed, although such food be fitter for the fathers than for the
mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war
against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these. And at the
same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these
men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to
sobriety of mind, after they had endured those very sufferings, for the
avoiding whereof it only was probable they might have repented.
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