(God forbid the event should be so!) yet can we
undergo nothing that will be harder to be borne than what these
men have already brought upon us. How then can we
avoid shedding of tears, when we see the Roman donations in our
temple, while we withal see those of our own nation taking our
spoils, and plundering our glorious metropolis, and slaughtering
our men, from which enormities those Romans themselves would have
abstained? to see 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 comparatively
much greater moderation than our own people have? For
truly, if we may suit our words to the things they represent,
it is probable one may hereafter find the Romans to be the
supporters of our laws, and those within ourselves the
subverters of them. And now I am persuaded that every one of
you here comes satisfied before I speak that these
overthrowers of our liberties deserve to be destroyed, and that
nobody can so much as devise a punishment that they have not
deserved by what they have done, and that you are all provoked
against them by those their wicked actions, whence you have
suffered so greatly. But perhaps many of you are aftrighted at
the multitude of those zealots, and at their audaciousness, as
well as at the advantage they have over us in their being higher
in place than we are; for these circumstances, as they have been