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CONCERNING FLORUS THE PROCURATOR, WHO NECESSITATED THE JEWS TO TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST THE ROMANS. THE CONCLUSION.

1. NOW Gessius Florus, who was sent as successor to Albinus by Nero, filled Judea with abundance of miseries. He was by birth of the city of Clazomene, and brought along with him his wife Cleopatra, (by whose friendship with Poppea, Nero's wife, he obtained this government,) who was no way different from him in wickedness. This Florus was so wicked, and so violent in the use of his authority, that the Jews took Albinus to have been [comparatively] their benefactor; so excessive were the mischiefs that he brought upon them. For Albinus concealed his wickedness, and was careful that it might not be discovered to all men; but Gessius Florus, as though he bad been sent on purpose to show his crimes to every body, made a pompous ostentation of them to our nation, as never omitting any sort of violence, nor any unjust sort of punishment; for he was not to be moved by pity, and never was satisfied with any degree of gain that came in his way; nor had he any more regard to great than to small acquisitions, but became a partner with the robbers themselves. For a great many fell then into that practice without fear, as having him for their security, and depending on him, that he would save them harmless in their particular robberies; so that there were no bounds set to the nation's miseries; but the unhappy Jews, when they were not able to bear the devastations which the robbers made among them, were all under a necessity of leaving their own habitations, and of flying away, as hoping to dwell more easily any where else in the world among foreigners [than in their own country]. And what need I say any more upon this head? since it was this Florus who necessitated us to take up arms against the Romans, while we thought it better to be destroyed at once, than by little and little. Now this war began in the second year of the government of Florus, and the twelfth year of the reign of Nero. But then what actions we were forced to do, or what miseries we were enabled to suffer, may be accurately known by such as will peruse those books which I have written about the Jewish war.

2. I shall now, therefore, make an end here of my Antiquities; after the conclusion of which events, I began to write that account of the war; and these Antiquities contain what hath been delivered down to us from the original creation of man, until the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, as to what hath befallen the Jews, as well in Egypt as in Syria and in Palestine, and what we have suffered from the Assyrians and Babylonians, and what afflictions the Persians and Macedonians, and after them the Romans, have brought upon us; for I think I may say that I have composed this history with sufficient accuracy in all things. I have attempted to enumerate those high priests that we have had during the interval of two thousand years; I have also carried down the succession of our kings, and related their actions, and political administration, without [considerable] errors, as also the power of our monarchs; and all according to what is written in our sacred books; for this it was that I promised to do in the beginning of this history. And I am so bold as to say, now I have so completely perfected the work I proposed to myself to do, that no other person, whether he were a Jew or foreigner, had he ever so great an inclination to it, could so accurately deliver these accounts to the Greeks as is done in these books. For those of my own nation freely acknowledge that I far exceed them in the learning belonging to Jews; I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning; on which account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors with great patience to obtain this learning, there have yet hardly been so many as two or three that have succeeded therein, who were immediately well rewarded for their pains.

3. And now it will not be perhaps an invidious thing, if I treat briefly of my own family, and of the actions of my own life while there are still living such as can either prove what I say to be false, or can attest that it is true; with which accounts I shall put an end to these Antiquities, which are contained in twenty books, and sixty thousand verses. And if God permit me, I will briefly run over this war, and to add what befell them further to that very day, the 13th of Domitian, or A.D. 03, is not, that I have observed, taken distinct notice of by any one; nor do we ever again, with what befell us therein to this very day, which is the thirteenth year of the reign of Caesar Domitian, and the fifty-sixth year of my own life. I have also an intention to write three books concerning our Jewish opinions about God and his essence, and about our laws; why, according to them, some things are permitted us to do, and others are prohibited.

Antiquities of the Jews 20.11.1-3, Flavius Josephus

3090c AM, 3800 JP, 914 BC, 1 SK, 5 NK

509. SK-At the end of the forty-first year of his reign, Asa died and was buried in a sepulchre which he had prepared in the city of David. The tomb was filled with sweet odours and spices. {#2Ch 16:13,14} He had been a good father, and an even better son succeeded him, called Jehoshaphat. At the very latter end of the fourth year of Ahab's reign, Jehoshaphat started to reign over Judah and ruled for twenty-five years. {#1Ki 22:41,42 2Ch 20:31}

3092c AM, 3802 JP, 912 BC, 3 SK, 7 NK

510. SK-When Jehoshaphat was established in his kingdom, he began removing the high places and the groves. In the third year of his reign, he sent out the Levites and other chief men into all the cities to instruct the people. [E46] Jehoshaphat attacked some of his enemies to prevent them from invading him. God gave him peace. {#2Ch 17:7-10}

3097d AM, 3807 JP, 907 BC, 8 SK, 12 NK

511. SK-Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, king of Israel, married Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. This union resulted from the marriage alliance Jehoshaphat made with Ahab. {#2Ch 18:1} [L67] She had a son named Ahaziah who at the age of twenty-two succeeded Jehoram to the kingdom. {#2Ki 8:18,26,27 2Ch 21:6 22:2}

3106d AM, 3816 JP, 898 BC, 17 SK, 21 NK

516. SK-As Ahab had done, Jehoshaphat made his son, also called Jehoram, viceroy of the kingdom. Jehoram, the other son of Ahab, later succeeded his brother Ahaziah as king over the Israelites in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. {#2Ki 3:1} This Jehoram is said to have begun his reign in the second year of his brother-in-law Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat. {#2Ki 1:17}

3107d AM, 3817 JP, 897 BC, 18 SK, 22,2 NK

518. SK-Jehoshaphat visited Ahab at the very end of the third year of the peace which Ahab had made with the Syrians. He was invited by Ahab to go with him to the siege of Ramothgilead. After being entreated, he agreed to join him, and barely escaped from there with his life. {#1Ki 22:1-53 2Ch 18:1-34} When he returned home, the prophet Jehu, the son of Hanani, reproved him for helping such a wicked king. {#2Ch 19:1,2}

3108a AM, 3817 JP, 897 BC

521. SK-When Jehoshaphat had built a fleet, he sent it to Ophir for gold. Ahaziah, the wicked son of Ahab, went into partnership with him in this venture. At first Jehoshaphat refused the joint venture, but later agreed to it. {#1Ki 22:49} For so doing, God destroyed the fleet and reproved him through his prophet Eliezer, the son of Dodavah. {#2Ch 20:35-37}

3112c AM, 3822 JP, 892 BC, 23,1 SK, 5 NK

526. SK-When Jehoshaphat was old, he desired to settle his estate. He gave the rest of his sons many gifts, along with fortified cities in Judah. His oldest son, Jehoram, (whom he had formerly employed as his vice-regent) was made viceroy with him in the kingdom. He reigned for eight years. This was in the fifth year of Jehoram, king of Israel. {#2Ch 21:2,3,5,20 2Ki 8:16,17} [L70]

3115c AM, 3825 JP, 889 BC, 4 SK, 8 NK

527. Jehoshaphat died and was buried in the city of David. {#1Ki 22:50 2Ch 21:1} This good king's wicked son Jehoram ruled alone for four years.

Annals of the World, Archbishop James Ussher.

"I shall return."

- Douglas MacArthur, on being forced to leave the Philippines, WWII


(I bow to your superior quotation skills, iamnotaparakeet!)

An Account of the Persecutions in Italy, Under the Papacy

We shall now enter on an account of the persecutions in Italy, a country which has been, and still is, The center of popery. The seat of the pontiff. The source of the various errors which have spread themselves over other countries, deluded the minds of thousands, and diffused the clouds of superstition and bigotry over the human understanding.
In pursuing our narrative we shall include the most remarkable persecutions which have happened, and the cruelties which have been practised,
By the immediate power of the pope. Through the power of the Inquisition. By the bigotry of the Italian princes.

In the twelfth century, the first persecutions under the papacy began in Italy, at the time that Adrian, an Englishman, was pope, being occasioned by the following circumstances:
A learned man, and an excellent orator of Brescia, named Arnold, came to Rome, and boldly preached against the corruptions and innovations which had crept into the Church. His discourses were so clear, consistent, and breathed forth such a pure spirit of piety, that the senators and many of the people highly approved of, and admired his doctrines.
This so greatly enraged Adrian that he commanded Arnold instantly to leave the city, as a heretic. Arnold, however, did not comply, for the senators and some of the principal people took his part, and resisted the authority of the pope.

Adrian now laid the city of Rome under an interdict, which caused the whole body of clergy to interpose; and, at length he persuaded the senators and people to give up the point, and suffer Arnold to be banished. This being agreed to, he received the sentence of exile, and retired to Germany, where he continued to preach against the pope, and to expose the gross errors of the Church of Rome.

Adrian, on this account, thirsted for his blood, and made several attempts to get him into his hands; but Arnold, for a long time, avoided every snare laid for him. At length, Frederic Barbarossa arriving at the imperial dignity, requested that the pope would crown him with his own hand. This Adrian complied with, and at the same time asked a favor of the emperor, which was, to put Arnold into his hands. The emperor very readily delivered up the unfortunate preacher, who soon fell a martyr to Adrian's vengeance, being hanged, and his body burnt to ashes, at Apulia. The same fate attended several of his old friends and companions.
Encenas, a Spaniard, was sent to Rome, to be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith; but having conversed with some of the reformed, and having read several treatises which they put into his hands, he became a Protestant. This, at length, being known, one of his own relations informed against him, when he was burnt by order of the pope, and a conclave of cardinals. The brother of Encenas had been taken up much about the same time, for having a New Testament in the Spanish language in his possession; but before the time appointed for his execution, he found means to escape out of prison, and retired to Germany.

Faninus, a learned layman, by reading controversial books, became of the reformed religion. An information being exhibited against him to the pope, he was apprehended, and cast into prison. His wife, children, relations, and friends visited him in his confinement, and so far wrought upon his mind, that he renounced his faith, and obtained his release. But he was no sooner free from confinement than his mind felt the heaviest of chains; the weight of a guilty conscience. His horrors were so great that he found them insupportable, until he had returned from his apostasy, and declared himself fully convinced of the errors of the Church of Rome. To make amends for his falling off, he now openly and strenuously did all he could to make converts to Protestantism, and was pretty successful in his endeavors. These proceedings occasioned his second imprisonment, but he had his life offered him if he would recant again. This proposal he rejected with disdain, saying that he scorned life upon such terms. Being asked why he would obstinately persist in his opinions, and leave his wife and children in distress, he replied, "I shall not leave them in distress; I have recommended them to the care of an excellent trustee." "What trustee?" said the person who had asked the question, with some surprise: to which Faninus answered, "Jesus Christ is the trustee I mean, and I think I could not commit them to the care of a better." On the day of execution he appeared remarkably cheerful, which one observing, said, "It is strange you should appear so merry upon such an occasion, when Jesus Christ himself, just before his death, was in such agonies, that he sweated blood and water." To which Faninus replied: "Christ sustained all manner of pangs and conflicts, with hell and death, on our accounts; and thus, by his sufferings, freed those who really believe in him from the fear of them." He was then strangled, his body was burnt to ashes, and then scattered about by the wind.

Dominicus, a learned soldier, having read several controversial writings, became a zealous Protestant, and retiring to Placentia, he preached the Gospel in its utmost purity, to a very considerable congregation. One day, at the conclusion of his sermon, he said, "If the congregation will attend to-morrow, I will give them a description of Antichrist, and paint him out in his proper colors."

A vast concourse of people attended the next day, but just as Dominicus was beginning his sermon, a civil magistrate went up to the pulpit, and took him into custody. He readily submitted; but as he went along with the magistrate, he made use of this expression: "I wonder the devil hath let me alone so long." When he was brought to examination, this question was put to him: "Will you renounce your doctrines?" To which he replied: "My doctrines! I maintain no doctrines of my own; what I preach are the doctrines of Christ, and for those I will forfeit my blood, and even think myself happy to suffer for the sake of my Redeemer." Every method was taken to make him recant for his faith, and embrace the errors of the Church of Rome; but when persuasions and menaces were found ineffectual, he was sentenced to death, and hanged in the market place.

Galeacius, a Protestant gentleman, who resided near the castle of St. Angelo, was apprehended on account of his faith. Great endeavors being used by his friends he recanted, and subscribed to several of the superstitious doctrines propogated by the Church of Rome. Becoming, however, sensible of his error, he publicly renounced his recantation. Being apprehended for this, he was condemned to be burnt, and agreeable to the order was chained to a stake, where he was left several hours before the fire was put to the fagots, in order that his wife, relations, and friends, who surrounded him, might induce him to give up his opinions. Galeacius, however, retained his constancy of mind, and entreated the executioner to put fire to the wood that was to burn him. This at length he did, and Galeacius was soon consumed in the flames, which burnt with amazing rapidity and deprived him of sensation in a few minutes.

Soon after this gentleman's death, a great number of Protestants were put to death in various parts of Italy, on account of their faith, giving a sure proof of their sincerity in their martyrdoms.
An Account of the Persecutions of Calabria
In the fourteenth century, many of the Waldenses of Pragela and Dauphiny, emigrated to Calabria, and settling some waste lands, by the permission of the nobles of that country, they soon, by the most industrious cultivation, made several wild and barren spots appear with all the beauties of verdure and fertility.

The Calabrian lords were highly pleased with their new subjects and tenants, as they were honest, quiet, and industrious; but the priests of the country exhibited several negative complaints against them; for not being able to accuse them of anythying bad which they did do, they founded accusations on what they did not do, and charged them,

With not being Roman Catholics.
With not making any of their boys priests.
With not making any of their girls nuns.
With not going to Mass.
With not giving wax tapers to their priests as offerings.
With not going on pilgrimages.
With not bowing to images.

The Calabrian lords, however, quieted the priests, by telling them that these people were extremely harmless; that they gave no offence to the Roman Catholics, and cheerfully paid the tithes to the priests, whose revenues were considerably increased by their coming into the country, and who, of consequence, ought to be the last persons to complain of them.
Things went on tolerably well after this for a few years, during which the Waldenses formed themselves into two corporate towns, annexing several villages to the jurisdiction of them. At length they sent to Geneva for two clergymen; one to preach in each town, as they determined to make a public profession of their faith. Intelligence of this affair being carried to the pope, Pius the Fourth, he determined to exterminate them from Calabria.

To this end he sent Cardinal Alexandrino, a man of very violent temper and a furious bigot, together with two monks, to Calabria, where they were to act as inquisitors. These authorized persons came to St. Xist, one of the towns built by the Waldenses, and having assembled the people, told them that they should receive no injury, if they would accept of preachers appointed by the pope; but if they would not, they should be deprived both of their properties and lives; and that their intentions might be known, Mass should be publicly said that afternoon, at which they were ordered to attend.

The people of St. Xist, instead of attending Mass, fled into the woods, with their families, and thus disappointed the cardinal and his coadjutors. The cardinal then proceeded to La Garde, the other town belonging to the Waldenses, where, not to be served as he had been at St. Xist, he ordered the gates to be locked, and all avenues guarded. The same proposals were then made to the inhabitants of La Garde, as had previously been offered to those of St. Xist, but with this additional piece of artifice: the cardinal assured them that the inhabitants of St. Xist had immediately come into his proposals, and agreed that the pope should appoint them preachers. This falsehood succeeded; for the people of La Garde, thinking what the cardinal had told them to be the truth, said they would exactly follow the example of their brethren at St. Xist.
The cardinal, having gained his point by deluding the people of one town, sent for troops of soldiers, with a view to murder those of the other. He, accordingly, despatched the soldiers into the woods, to hunt down the inhabitants of St. Xist like wild beasts, and gave them strict orders to spare neither age nor sex, but to kill all they came near. The troops entered the woods, and many fell a prey to their ferocity, before the Waldenses were properly apprised of their design. At length, however, they determined to sell their lives as dear as possible, when several conflicts happened, in which the half-armed Waldenses performed prodigies of valor, and many were slain on both sides. The greatest part of the troops being killed in the different rencontres, the rest were compelled to retreat, which so enraged the cardinal that he wrote to the viceroy of Naples for reinforcements.

The viceroy immediately ordered a proclamation to be made thorughout all the Neapolitan territories, that all outlaws, deserters, and other proscribed persons should be surely pardoned for their respective offences, on condition of making a campaign against the inhabitants of St. Xist, and continuing under arms until those people were exterminated.
Many persons of desperate fortunes came in upon this proclamation, and being formed into light companies, were sent to scour the woods, and put to death all they could meet with of the reformed religion. The viceroy himself likewise joined the cardinal, at the head of a body of regular forces; and, in conjunction, they did all they could to harass the poor people in the woods. Some they caught and hanged up upon trees, cut down boughs and burnt them, or ripped them open and left their bodies to be devoured by wild beasts, or birds of prey. Many they shot at a distance, but the greatest number they hunted down by way of sport. A few hid themselves in caves, but famine destroyed them in their retreat; and thus all these poor people perished, by various means, to glut the bigoted malice of their merciless persecutors.
The inhabitants of St. Xist were no sooner exterminated, than those of La Garde engaged the attention of the cardinal and viceroy.

It was offered, that if they should embrace the Roman Catholic persuasion, themselves and families should not be injured, but their houses and properties should be restored, and none would be permitted to molest them; but, on the contrary, if they refused this mercy, (as it was termed) the utmost extremities would be used, and the most cruel deaths the certain consequence of their noncompliance.

Notwithstanding the promises on one side, and menaces on the other, these worthy people unanimously refused to renounce their religion, or embrace the errors of popery. This exasperated the cardinal and viceroy so much, that thirty of them were ordered to be put immediately to the rack, as a terror to the rest.

Those who were put to the rack were treated with such severity that several died under the tortures; one Charlin, in particular, was so cruelly used that his belly burst, his bowels came out, and he expired in the greatest agonies. These barbarities, however, did not answer the purposes for which they were intended; for those who remained alive after the rack, and those who had not felt the rack, remained equally constant in their faith, and boldly declared that no tortures of body, or terrors of mind, should ever induce them to renounce their God, or worship images.
Several were then, by the cardinal's order, stripped stark naked, and whipped to death iron rods; and some were hacked to pieces with large knives; others were thrown down from the top of a large tower, and many were covered over with pitch, and burnt alive.

One of the monks who attended the cardinal, being naturally of a savage and cruel disposition, requested of him that he might shed some of the blood of these poor people with his own hands; when his request being granted, the barbarous man took a large sharp knife, and cut the throats of fourscore men, women, and children, with as little remorse as a butcher would have killed so many sheep. Every one of these bodies were then ordered to be quartered, the quarters placed upon stakes, and then fixed in different parts of the country, within a circuit of thirty miles.
The four principal men of La Garde were hanged, and the clergyman was thrown from the top of his church steeple. He was terribly mangled, but not quite killed by the fall; at which time the viceroy passing by, said, "Is the dog yet living? Take him up, and give him to the hogs," when, brutal as this sentence may appear, it was executed accordingly.

Sixty women were racked so violently, that the cords pierced their arms and legs close to the bone; when, being remanded to prison, their wounds mortified, and they died in the most miserable manner. Many others were put to death by various cruel means; and if any Roman Catholic, more compassionate than the rest, interceded for any of the reformed, he was immediately apprehended, and shared the same fate as a favorer of heretics.

The viceroy being obliged to march back to Naples, on some affairs of moment which required his presence, and the cardinal being recalled to Rome, the marquis of Butane was ordered to put the finishing stroke to what they had begun; which he at length effected, by acting with such barbarous rigor, that there was not a single person of the reformed religion left living in all Calabria.

Thus were a great number of inoffensive and harmless people deprived of their possessions, robbed of their property, driven from their homes, and at length murdered by various means, only because they would not sacrifice their consciences to the superstitions of others, embrace idolatrous doctrines which they abhorred, and accept of teachers whom they could not believe.
Tyranny is of three kinds, viz., that which enslaves the person, that which seizes the property, and that which prescribes and dictates to the mind. The two first sorts may be termed civil tyranny, and have been practiced by arbitrary sovereigns in all ages, who have delighted in tormenting the persons, and stealing the properties of their unhappy subjects. But the third sort, viz., prescribing and dictating to the mind, may be called ecclesiastical tyranny: and this is the worst kind of tyranny, as it includes the other two sorts; for the Romish clergy not only do torture the body and seize the effects of those they persecute, but take the lives, torment the minds, and, if possible, would tyrannize over the souls of the unhappy victims.
Account of the Persecutions in the Valleys of Piedmont

Many of the Waldenses, to avoid the persecutions to which they were continually subjected in France, went and settled in the valleys of Piedmont, where they increased exceedingly, and flourished very much for a considerable time.

Though they were harmless in their behavior, inoffensive in their conversation, and paid tithes to the Roman clergy, yet the latter could not be contented, but wished to give them some distrubance: they, accordingly, complained to the archbishop of Turin that the Waldenses of the valleys of Piedmont were heretics, for these reasons:

That they did not believe in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. That they made no offerings or prayers for the dead. That they did not go to Mass. That they did not confess, and receive absolution. That they did not believe in purgatory, or pay money to get the souls of their friends out of it.

Upon these charges the archbishop ordered a persecution to be commenced, and many fell martyrs to the superstitious rage of the priests and monks.

At Turin, one of the reformed had his bowels torn out, and put in a basin before his face, where they remained in his view until he expired. At Revel, Catelin Girard being at the stake, desired the executioner to give him a stone; which he refused, thinking that he meant to throw it at somebody; but Girard assuring him that he had no such design, the executioner complied, when Girard, looking earnestly at the stone, said, "When it is in the power of a man to eat and digest this solid stone, the religion for which I am about to suffer shall have an end, and not before." He then threw the stone on the ground, and submitted cheerfully to the flames. A great many more of the reformed were oppressed, or put to death, by various means, until the patience of the Waldenses being tired out, they flew to arms in their own defence, and formed themselves into regular bodies.

Exasperated at this, the bishop of Turin procured a number of troops, and sent against them; but in most of the skirmishes and engagements the Waldenses were successful, which partly arose from their being better acquainted with the passes of the valleys of Piedmont than their adversaries, and partly from the desperation with which they fought; for they well knew, if they were taken, they should not be considered as prisoners of war, but tortured to death as heretics.
At length, Philip VII, duke of Savoy, and supreme lord of Piedmont, determined to interpose his authority, and stop these bloody wars, which so greatly disturbed his dominions. He was not willing to disoblige the pope, or affront the archbishop of Turin; nevertheless, he sent them both messages, importing that he could not any longer tamely see his dominions overrun with troops, who were directed by priests instead of officers, and commanded by prelates instead of generals; nor would he suffer his country to be depopulated, while he himself had not been even consulted upon the occasion.

The priests, finding the resolution of the duke, did all they could to prejudice his mind against the Waldenses; but the duke told them, that though he was unacquainted with the religious tenets of these people, yet he had always found them quiet, faithful, and obedient, and therefore he determined they should be no longer persecuted.

The priests now had recourse to the most palpable and absurd falsehoods: they assured the duke that he was mistaken in the Waldenses for they were a wicked set of people, and highly addicted to intemperance, uncleanness, blasphemy, adultery, incest, and many other abominable crimes; and that they were even monsters in nature, for their children were born with black throats, with four rows of teeth, and bodies all over hairy.

The duke was not so devoid of common sense as to give credit to what the priests said, though they affirmed in the most solemn manner the truth of their assertions. He, however, sent twelve very learned and sensible gentlemen into the Piedmontese valleys, to examine into the real character of the inhabitants.

These gentlemen, after travelling through all their towns and villages, and conversing with people of every rank among the Waldenses returned to the duke, and gave him the most favorable account of these people; affirming, before the faces of the priests who vilified them, that they were harmless, inoffensive, loyal, friendly, industrious, and pious: that they abhorred the crimes of which they were accused; and that, should an individual, through his depravity, fall into any of those crimes, he would, by their laws, be punished in the most exemplary manner. "With respect to the children," the gentlemen said, "the priests had told the most gross and ridiculous falsities, for they were neither born with black throats, teeth in their mouths, nor hair on their bodies, but were as fine children as could be seen. And to convince your highness of what we have said, (continued one of the gentlemen) we have brought twelve of the principal male inhabitants, who are come to ask pardon in the name of the rest, for having taken up arms without your leave, though even in their own defence, and to preserve their lives from their merciless enemies. And we have likewise brought several women, with children of various ages, that your highness may have an opportunity of personally examining them as much as you please."

The duke, after accepting the apology of the twelve delegates, conversing with the women, and examining the children, graciously dismissed them. He then commanded the priests, who had attempted to mislead him, immediately to leave the court; and gave strict orders, that the persecution should cease throughout his dominions.

The Waldenses had enjoyed peace many years, when Philip, the seventh duke of Savoy, died, and his successor happened to be a very bigoted papist. About the same time, some of the principal Waldenses proposed that their clergy should preach in public, that every one might know the purity of their doctrines: for hitherto they had preached only in private, and to such congregations as they well knew to consist of none but persons of the reformed religion.
On hearing these proceedings, the new duke was greatly exasperated, and sent a considerable body of troops into the valleys, swearing that if the people would not change their religion, he would have them flayed alive. The commander of the troops soon found the impracticability of conquering them with the number of men he had with him, he, therefore, sent word to the duke that the idea of subjugating the Waldenses, with so small a force, was ridiculous; that those people were better acquainted with the country than any that were with him; that they had secured all the passes, were well armed, and resolutely determined to defend themselves; and, with respect to flaying them alive, he said, that every skin belonging to those people would cost him the lives of a dozen of his subjects.

Terrified at this information, the duke withdrew the troops, determining to act not by force, but by stratagem. He therefore ordered rewards for the taking of any of the Waldenses, who might be found straying from their places of security; and these, when taken, were either flayed alive, or burnt.

The Waldenses had hitherto only had the New Testament and a few books of the Old, in the Waldensian tongue; but they determined now to have the sacred writings complete in their own language. They, therefore, employed a Swiss printer to furnish them with a complete edition of the Old and New Testaments in the Waldensian tongue, which he did for the consideration of fifteen hundred crowns of gold, paid him by those pious people.

Pope Paul the third, a bigoted papist, ascending the pontifical chair, immediately solicited the parliament of Turin to persecute the Waldenses, as the most pernicious of all heretics.
The parliament readily agreed, when several were suddenly apprehended and burnt by their order. Among these was Bartholomew Hector, a bookseller and stationer of Turin, who was brought up a Roman Catholic, but having read some treatises written by the reformed clergy, was fully convinced of the errors of the Church of Rome; yet his mind was, for some time, wavering, and he hardly knew what persuasion to embrace.

At length, however, he fully embraced the reformed religion, and was apprehended, as we have already mentioned, and burnt by order of the parliament of Turin.

A consultation was now held by the parliament of Turin, in which it was agreed to send deputies to the valleys of Piedmont, with the following propositions:

That if the Waldenses would come to the bosom of the Church of Rome, and embrace the Roman Catholic religion, they should enjoy their houses, properties, and lands, and live with their families, without the least molestation. That to prove their obedience, they should send twelve of their principal persons, with all their ministers and schoolmasters, to Turin, to be dealt with at discretion. That the pope, the king of France, and the duke of Savoy, approved of, and authorized the proceedings of the parliament of Turin, upon this occasion. That if the Waldenses of the valleys of Piedmont refused to comply with these propositions, persecution should ensue, and certain death be their portion.

To each of these propositions the Waldenses nobly replied in the following manner, answering them respectively:

That no considerations whatever should make them renounce their religion. That they would never consent to commit their best and most respectable friends, to the custody and discretion of their worst and most inveterate enemies. That they valued the approbation of the King of kings, who reigns in heaven, more than any temporal authority. That their souls were more precious than their bodies.

These pointed and spirited replies greatly exasperated the parliament of Turin; they continued, with more avidity than ever, to kidnap such Waldenses as did not act with proper precaution, who were sure to suffer the most cruel deaths. Among these, it unfortunately happened, that they got hold of Jeffery Varnagle, minister of Angrogne, whom they committed to the flames as a heretic.
They then solicited a considerable body of troops of the king of France, in order to exterminate the reformed entirely from the valleys of Piedmont; but just as the troops were going to march, the Protestant princes of Germany interposed, and threatened to send troops to assist the Waldenses, if they should be attacked. The king of France, not caring to enter into a war, remanded the troops, and sent word to the parliament of Turin that he could not spare any troops at present to act in Piedmont. The members of the parliament were greatly vexed at this disappointment, and the persecution gradually ceased, for as they could only put to death such of the reformed as they caught by chance, and as the Waldenses daily grew more cautious, their cruelty was obliged to subside, for want of objects on whom to exercise it.

After the Waldenses had enjoyed a few years tranquillity, they were again disturbed by the following means: the pope's nuncio coming to Turin to the duke of Savoy upon business, told that prince he was astonished he had not yet either rooted out the Waldenses from the valleys of Piedmont entirely, or compelled them to enter into the bosom of the Church of Rome. That he could not help looking upon such conduct with a suspicious eye, and that he really thought him a favorer of those heretics, and should report the affair accordingly to his holiness the pope.
Stung by this reflection, and unwilling to be misrepresented to the pope, the duke determined to act with the greatest severity, in order to show his zeal, and to make amends for former neglect by future cruelty. He, accordingly, issued express orders for all the Waldenses to attend Mass regularly on pain of death. This they absolutely refused to do, on which he entered the Piedmontese valleys, with a formidable body of troops, and began a most furious persecution, in which great numbers were hanged, drowned, ripped open, tied to trees, and pierced with prongs, thrown from precipices, burnt, stabbed, racked to death, crucified with their heads downwards, worried by dogs, etc.

Those who fled had their goods plundered, and their houses burnt to the ground: they were particularly cruel when they caught a minister or a schoolmaster, whom they put to such exquisite tortures, as are almost incredible to conceive. If any whom they took seemed wavering in their faith, they did not put them to death, but sent them to the galleys, to be made converts by dint of hardships.

The most cruel persecutors, upon this occasion, that attended the duke, were three in number, viz. 1. Thomas Incomel, an apostate, for he was brought up in the reformed religion, but renounced his faith, embraced the errors of popery, and turned monk. He was a great libertine, given to unnatural crimes, and sordidly solicitous for plunder of the Waldenses. 2. Corbis, a man of a very ferocious and cruel nature, whose business was to examine the prisoners. 3. The provost of justice, who was very anxious for the execution of the Waldenses, as every execution put money in his pocket.

These three persons were unmerciful to the last degree; and wherever they came, the blood of the innocent was sure to flow. Exclusive of the cruelties exercised by the duke, by these three persons, and the army, in their different marches, many local barbarities were committed. At Pignerol, a town in the valleys, was a monastery, the monks of which, finding they might injure the reformed with impunity, began to plunder the houses and pull down the churches of the Waldenses. Not meeting with any opposition, they seized upon the persons of those unhappy people, murdering the men, confining the women, and putting the children to Roman Catholic nurses.

The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the valley of St. Martin, likewise, did all they could to torment the neighboring Waldenses: they destroyed their churches, burnt their houses, seized their properties, stole their cattle, converted their lands to their own use, committed their ministers to the flames, and drove the Waldenses to the woods, where they had nothing to subsist on but wild fruits, roots, the bark of trees, etc.

Some Roman Catholic ruffians having seized a minister as he was going to preach, determined to take him to a convenient place, and burn him. His parishioners having intelligence of this affair, the men armed themselves, pursued the ruffians, and seemed determined to rescue their minister; which the ruffians no sooner perceived than they stabbed the poor gentleman, and leaving him weltering in his blood, made a precipitate retreat. The astonished parishioners did all they could to recover him, but in vain: for the weapon had touched the vital parts, and he expired as they were carrying him home.

The monks of Pignerol having a great inclination to get the minister of a town in the valleys, called St. Germain, into their power, hired a band of ruffians for the purpose of apprehending him. These fellows were conducted by a treacherous person, who had formerly been a servant to the clergyman, and who perfectly well knew a secret way to the house, by which he could lead them without alarming the neighborhood. The guide knocked at the door, and being asked who was there, answered in his own name. The clergyman, not expecting any injury from a person on whom he had heaped favors, immediately opened the door; but perceiving the ruffians, he started back, and fled to a back door; but they rushed in, followed, and seized him. Having murdered all his family, they made him proceed towards Pignerol, goading him all the way with pikes, lances, swords, etc. He was kept a considerable time in prison, and then fastened to the stake to be burnt; when two women of the Waldenses, who had renounced their religion to save their lives, were ordered to carry fagots to the stake to burn him; and as they laid them down, to say, "Take these, thou wicked heretic, in recompense for the pernicious doctrines thou hast taught us." These words they both repeated to him; to which he calmly replied, "I formerly taught you well, but you have since learned ill." The fire was then put to the fagots, and he was speedily consumed, calling upon the name of the Lord as long as his voice permitted.

As the troops of ruffians, belonging to the monks, did great mischief about the town of St. Germain, murdering and plundering many of the inhabitants, the reformed of Lucerne and Angrogne, sent some bands of armed men to the assistance of their brethren of St. Germain. These bodies of armed men frequently attacked the ruffians, and often put them to the rout, which so terrified the monks, that they left the monastery of Pignerol for some time, until they could procure a body of regular troops to guard them.

The duke not thinking himself so successful as he at first imagined he should be, greatly augmented his forces; he ordered the bands of ruffians, belonging to the monks, to join him, and commanded that a general jail-delivery should take place, provided the persons released would bear arms, and form themselves into light companies, to assist in the extermination of the Waldenses.

The Waldenses, being informed of the proceedings, secured as much of their properties as they could, and quitted the valleys, retired to the rocks and caves among the Alps; for it is to be understood that the valleys of Piedmont are situated at the foot of those prodigious mountains called the Alps, or the Alpine hills.

The army now began to plunder and burn the towns and villages wherever they came; but the troops could not force the passes to the Alps, which were gallantly defended by the Waldenses, who always repulsed their enemies: but if any fell into the hands of the troops, they were sure to be treated with the most barbarous severity.

A soldier having caught one of the Waldenses, bit his right ear off, saying, "I will carry this member of that wicked heretic with me into my own country, and preserve it as a rarity." He then stabbed the man and threw him into a ditch.
A party of the troops found a venerable man, upwards of a hundred years of age, together with his granddaughter, a maiden, of about eighteen, in a cave. They butchered the poor old man in the most inhuman manner, and then attempted to ravish the girl, when she started away and fled from them; but they pursuing her, she threw herself from a precipice and perished.

The Waldenses, in order the more effectually to be able to repel force by force, entered into a league with the Protestant powers of Germany, and with the reformed of Dauphiny and Pragela. These were respectively to furnish bodies of troops; and the Waldenses determined, when thus reinforced, to quit the mountains of the Alps, (where they must soon have perished, as the winter was coming on,) and to force the duke's army to evacuate their native valleys.

The duke of Savoy was now tired of the war; it had cost him great fatigue and anxiety of mind, a vast number of men, and very considerable sums of money. It had been much more tedious and bloody than he expected, as well as more expensive than he could at first have imagined, for he thought the plunder would have dischanged the expenses of the expedition; but in this he was mistaken, for the pope's nuncio, the bishops, monks, and other ecclesiastics, who attended the army and encouraged the war, sunk the greatest part of the wealth that was taken under various pretences. For these reasons, and the death of his duchess, of which he had just received intelligence, and fearing that the Waldenses, by the treaties they had entered into, would become more powerful than ever, he determined to return to Turin with his army, and to make peace with the Waldenses.

This resolution he executed, though greatly against the will of the ecclesiastics, who were the chief gainers, and the best pleased with revenge. Before the articles of peace could be ratified, the duke himself died, soon after his return to Turin; but on his deathbed he strictly enjoined his son to perform what he intended, and to be as favorable as possible to the Waldenses.
The duke's son, Charles Emmanuel, succeeded to the dominions of Savoy, and gave a full ratification of peace to the Waldenses, according to the last injunctions of his father, though the ecclesiastics did all they could to persuade him to the contrary.
An Account of the Persecutions in Venice

While the state of Venice was free from inquisitors, a great number of Protestants fixed their residence there, and many converts were made by the purity of the doctrines they professed, and the inoffensiveness of the conversation they used.

The pope being informed of the great increase of Protestantism, in the year 1542 sent inquisitors to Venice to make an inquiry into the matter, and apprehend such as they might deem obnoxious persons. Hence a severe persecution began, and many worthy persons were martyred for serving God with purity, and scorning the trappings of idolatry.

Various were the modes by which the Protestants were deprived of life; but one particular method, which was first invented upon this occasion, we shall describe; as soon as sentence was passed, the prisoner had an iron chain which ran through a great stone fastened to his body. He was then laid flat upon a plank, with his face upwards, and rowed between two boats to a certain distance at sea, when the two boats separated, and he was sunk to the bottom by the weight of the stone.

If any denied the jurisdiction of the inquisitors at Venice, they were sent to Rome, where, being committed purposely to damp prisons, and never called to a hearing, their flesh mortified, and they died miserably in jail.

A citizen of Venice, Anthony Ricetti, being apprehended as a Protestant, was sentenced to be drowned in the manner we have already described. A few days previous to the time appointed for his execution, his son went to see him, and begged him to recant, that his life might be saved, and himself not left fatherless. To which the father replied, "A good Christian is bound to relinquish not only goods and children, but life itself, for the glory of his Redeemer: therefore I am resolved to sacrifice every thing in this transitory world, for the sake of salvation in a world that will last to eternity."

The lords of Venice likewise sent him word, that if he would embrace the Roman Catholic religion, they would not only give him his life, but redeem a considerable estate which he had mortgaged, and freely present him with it. This, however, he absolutely refused to comply with, sending word to the nobles that he valued his soul beyond all other considerations; and being told that a fellow-prisoner, named Francis Sega, had recanted, he answered, "If he has forsaken God, I pity him; but I shall continue steadfast in my duty." Finding all endeavors to persuade him to renounce his faith ineffectual, he was executed according to his sentence, dying cheerfully, and recommending his soul fervently to the Almighty.

What Ricetti had been told concerning the apostasy of Francis Sega, was absolutely false, for he had never offered to recant, but steadfastly persisted in his faith, and was executed, a few days after Ricetti, in the very same manner.

Francis Spinola, a Protestant gentleman of very great learning, being apprehended by order of the inquisitors, was carried before their tribunal. A treatise on the Lord's Supper was then put into his hands and he was asked if he knew the author of it. To which he replied, "I confess myself to be the author of it, and at the same time solemnly affirm, that there is not a line in it but what is authorized by, and consonant to, the holy Scriptures." On this confession he was committed close prisoner to a dungeon for several days.

Being brought to a second examination, he charged the pope's legate, and the inquisitors, with being merciless barbarians, and then represented the superstitions and idolatries practised by the Church of Rome in so glaring a light, that not being able to refute his arguments, they sent him back to his dungeon, to make him repent of what he had said.

On his third examination, they asked him if he would recant his error. To which he answered that the doctrines he maintained were not erroneous, being purely the same as those which Christ and his apostles had taught, and which were handed down to us in the sacred writings. The inquisitors then sentenced him to be drowned, which was executed in the manner already described. He went to meet death with the utmost serenity, seemed to wish for dissolution, and declaring that the prolongation of his life did but tend to ret*d that real happiness which could only be expected in the world to come.

An Account of Several Remarkable Individuals, Who Were Martyred in Different Parts of Italy, on Account of Their Religion

John Mollius was born at Rome, of reputable parents. At twelve years of age they placed him in the monastery of Gray Friars, where he made such a rapid progress in arts, sciences, and languages that at eighteen years of age he was permitted to take priest's orders.
He was then sent to Ferrara, where, after pursuing his studies six years longer, he was made theological reader in the university of that city. He now, unhappily, exerted his great talents to disguise the Gospel truths, and to varnish over the error of the Church of Rome. After some years residence in Ferrara, he removed to the university of Behonia, where he became a professor. Having read some treatises written by ministers of the reformed religion, he grew fully sensible of the errors of popery, and soon became a zealous Protestant in his heart.
He now determined to expound, accordingly to the purity of the Gospel, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in a regular course of sermons. The concourse of people that continually attended his preaching was surprising, but when the priests found the tenor of his doctrines, they despatched an account of the affair to Rome; when the pope sent a monk, named Cornelius, to Bononia, to expound the same epistle, according to the tenets of the Church of Rome. The people, however, found such a disparity between the two preachers that the audience of Mollius increased, and Cornelius was forced to preach to empty benches.

Cornelius wrote an account of his bad success to the pope, who immediately sent an order to apprehend Mollius, who was seized upon accordingly, and kept in close confinement. The bishop of Bononia sent him word that he must recant, or be burnt; but he appealed to Rome, and was removed thither.

At Rome he begged to have a public trial, but that the pope absolutely denied him, and commanded him to give an account of his opinions, in writing, which he did under the following heads:

Original sin. Free-will. The infallibility of the church of Rome. The infallibility of the pope. Justification by faith. Purgatory. Transubstantiation. Mass. Auricular confession. Prayers for the dead. The host. Prayers for saints. Going on pilgrimages. Extreme unction. Performing services in an unknown tongue, etc., etc.

All these he confirmed from Scripture authority. The pope, upon this occasion, for political reasons, spared him for the present, but soon after had him apprehended, and put to death, he being first hanged, and his body burnt to ashes, A.D. 1553.

The year after, Francis Gamba, a Lombard, of the Protestant persuasion, was apprehended, and condemned to death by the senate of Milan. At the place of execution, a monk presented a cross to him, to whom he said, "My mind is so full of the real merits and goodness of Christ that I want not a piece of senseless stick to put me in mind of Him." For this expression his tongue was bored through, and he was afterward burnt.

A.D. 1555, Algerius, a student in the university of Padua, and a man of great learning, having embraced the reformed religion, did all he could to convert others. For these proceedings he was accused of heresy to the pope, and being apprehended, was committed to the prison at Venice.
The pope, being informed of Algerius's great learning, and surprising natural abilities, thought it would be of infinite service to the Church of Rome if he could induce him to forsake the Protestant cause. He, therefore, sent for him to Rome, and tried, by the most profane promises, to win him to his purpose. But finding his endeavors ineffectual, he ordered him to be burnt, which sentence was executed accordingly.

A.D. 1559, John Alloysius, being sent from Geneva to preach in Calabria, was there apprehended as a Protestant, carried to Rome, and burnt by order of the pope; and James Bovelius, for the same reason, was burnt at Messina.

A.D. 1560, Pope Pius the Fourth, ordered all the Protestants to be severely persecuted throughout the Italian states, when great numbers of every age, sex, and condition, suffered martyrdom. Concerning the cruelties practiced upon this occasion, a learned and humane Roman Catholic thus spoke of them, in a letter to a noble lord:

"I cannot, my lord, forbear disclosing my sentiments, with respect to the persecution now carrying on: I think it cruel and unnecessary; I tremble at the manner of putting to death, as it resembles more the slaughter of calves and sheep, than the execution of human beings. I will relate to your lordship a dreadful scene, of which I was myself an eye witness: seventy Protestants were cooped up in one filthy dungeon together; the executioner went in among them, picked out one from among the rest, blindfolded him, led him out to an open place before the prison, and cut his throat with the greatest composure. He then calmly walked into the prison again, bloody as he was, and with the knife in his hand selected another, and despatched him in the same manner; and this, my lord, he repeated until the whole number were put to death. I leave it to your lordship's feelings to judge of my sensations upon this occasion; my tears now wash the paper upon which I give you the recital. Another thing I must mention--the patience with which they met death: they seemed all resignation and piety, fervently praying to God, and cheerfully encountering their fate. I cannot reflect without shuddering, how the executioner held the bloody knife between his teeth; what a dreadful figure he appeared, all covered with blood, and with what unconcern he executed his barbarous office."

A young Englishman who happened to be at Rome, was one day passing by a church, when the procession of the host was just coming out. A bishop carried the host, which the young man perceiving, he snatched it from him, threw it upon the ground, and trampled it under his feet, crying out, "Ye wretched idolaters, who neglect the true God, to adore a morsel of bread." This action so provoked the people that they would have torn him to pieces on the spot; but the priests persuaded them to let him abide by the sentence of the pope.

When the affair was represented to the pope, he was so greatly exasperated that he ordered the prisoner to be burnt immediately; but a cardinal dissuaded him from this hasty sentence, saying that it was better to punish him by slow degrees, and to torture him, that they might find out if he had been instigated by any particular person to commit so atrocious an act.

This being approved, he was tortured with the most exemplary severity, notwithstanding which they could only get these words from him, "It was the will of God that I should do as I did."
The pope then passed this sentence upon him.

That he should be led by the executioner, naked to the middle, through the streets of Rome. That he should wear the image of the devil upon his head. That his breeches should be painted with the representation of flames. That he should have his right hand cut off. That after having been carried about thus in procession, he should be burnt.

When he heard this sentence pronounced, he implored God to give him strength and fortitude to go through it. As he passed through the streets he was greatly derided by the people, to whom he said some severe things respecting the Romish superstition. But a cardinal, who attended the procession, overhearing him, ordered him to be gagged.

When he came to the church door, where he trampled on the host, the hangman cut off his right hand, and fixed it on a pole. Then two tormentors, with flaming torches, scorched and burnt his flesh all the rest of the way. At the place of execution he kissed the chains that were to bind him to the stake. A monk presenting the figure of a saint to him, he struck it aside, and then being chained to the stake, fire was put to the fagots, and he was soon burnt to ashes.

A little after the last-mentioned execution, a venerable old man, who had long been a prisoner in the Inquisition, was condemned to be burnt, and brought out for execution. When he was fastened to the stake, a priest held a crucifix to him, on which he said, "If you do not take that idol from my sight, you will constrain me to spit upon it." The priest rebuked him for this with great severity; but he bade him remember the First and Second Commandments, and refrain from idolatry, as God himself had commanded. He was then gagged, that he should not speak any more, and fire being put to the fagots, he suffered martyrdom in the flames.

An Account of the Persecutions in the Marquisate of Saluces

The Marquisate of Saluces, on the south side of the valleys of Piedmont, was in A.D. 1561, principally inhabited by Protestants, when the marquis, who was proprietor of it, began a persecution against them at the instigation of the pope. He began by banishing the ministers, and if any of them refused to leave their flocks, they were sure to be imprisoned, and severely tortured; however, he did not proceed so far as to put any to death.

Soon after the marquisate fell into the possession of the duke of Savoy, who sent circular letters to all the towns and villages, that he expected the people should all conform to go to Mass. The inhabitants of Saluces, upon receiving this letter, returned a general epistle, in answer.
The duke, after reading the letter, did not interrupt the Protestants for some time; but, at length, he sent them word that they must either conform to the Mass, or leave his dominions in fifteen days. The Protestants, upon this unexpected edict, sent a deputy to the duke to obtain its revocation, or at least to have it moderated. But their remonstrances were in vain, and they were given to understand that the edict was absolute.

Some were weak enough to go to Mass, in order to avoid banishment, and preserve their property; others removed, with all their effects, to different countries; and many neglected the time so long that they were obliged to abandon all they were worth, and leave the marquisate in haste. Those, who unhappily stayed bheind, were seized, plundered, and put to death.

Fox’s Book of Martyrs
By John Fox
Chapter 6, Part 1

3923b AM, 4633 JP, 81 BC

4059. Julius Caesar was sent by Marcus Thermus to be the praetor of Asia.

4064. When Gaius Julius Caesar captured Mitylene, he was rewarded by Marcus Thermus with the Civic Crown. {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 2. 1:39} Mitylene was demolished to the ground, when it had been the only city still in arms after Mithridates was defeated. {*Livy, l. 89. 14:113} So, by the law of war and right of conquest, this noble city was brought under the jurisdiction of the people of Rome. {*Cicero, Agrarian Law II, l. 1. c. 15. 6:413}

3929b AM, 4639 JP, 75 BC

4108. When Julius Caesar was twenty-five years old, he planned to sail to Rhodes to study under Apollonius Molon, who was the most eminent teacher of oratory at that time. While he was on his way in the winter time, the pirates captured him near the island of Pharmacussa, which was near the Asian shore, north of Miletus. These pirates were so well-equipped with ships, that they controlled the seas. When the pirates demanded twenty talents from him for his ransom, Caesar laughed at them, because they did not know how important a man he was. He promised that he would give them fifty talents. He immediately sent his companions and servants to the cities of Asia to get the money for his release. He only kept a physician and two others with him, to attend to his personal needs. He was alone with these three for thirty-eight days in a company of Cilicians who were the most savage people in the world. He behaved himself so well that he filled them with both terror and reverence. He did not remove his shoes or unclothe himself, in case this should happen to cause some extraordinary change of appearance and they would suspect him of something. He had no guard other than their watchful eyes. Whenever he went to rest, he sent someone to them to tell them to be quiet. He would play and exercise with them as if they had been in his retinue and not he a prisoner of theirs. He wrote verses and orations which he recited to them. If any of them did not admire and applaud them, he would publicly call them dull fellows, barbarians, and often in jest, would threaten to crucify them. His humour pleased them greatly and they attributed his free-spokenness to his simplicity and youth. {*Velleius Paterculus, l. 2. c. 41. 1:141} {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 4. 1:39,41} {*Plutarch, Caesar, l. 1. c. 3. 7:447} It was reported that, while he was in custody, he cried out: {*Plutarch, Crassus, l. 1. c. 7. s. 5. 3:333}

"Oh Crassus, how great a pleasure will you taste, when you hear of my captivity."

4109. The money from all the cities was brought to Caesar from Miletus. Caesar would not pay the fifty talents until he had forced the pirates to release the hostages to the cities. After this, he was put ashore. The next night, he got as large a fleet as he could quickly assemble and sailing out from the port of the Milesians, he went toward the same island where the pirates were still anchored. He forced part of their fleet to flee while he sank most of the other ships. He captured the remaining ships with their crews. He was overjoyed with the victory of the night's expedition and handed over to his company the pirates' money he had seized as his own booty. He imprisoned the pirates at Pergamum. When he had finished that, he went to Junius, the proconsul of Asia, who was in Bithynia. Junius had command of Asia and Bithynia, which had recently been established as a province. [K180] Demanding that justice be done to the captives, he had them crucified. This he had foretold the pirates while he was a prisoner, but they had thought he was just joking. {*Velleius Paterculus, l. 2. c. 41. 1:141} {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 4. 1:39,41} {*Plutarch, Crassus, l. 1. c. 7. s. 5. 3:333} Before he captured them, he had sworn that he would crucify them. He ordered that their throats be cut first and they then be fastened to the crosses. {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 74. s. 1. 1:125}

3938b AM, 4648 JP, 66 BC

4393. Farther Spain was allocated to Gaius Julius Caesar when he was a quaestor. He was ordered by the praetor to travel around the various countries and decide matters of law. When he came to Gades, he saw Alexander the Great's statue in Hercules' temple. He was grieved that he had done nothing of note by the time he was thirty-four, the age at which Alexander had conquered the world. He became greatly depressed and begged that he might be sent back to Rome so that he could attempt some noble thing at the first opportunity. He left before his time expired and went to some Italian colonies that were in rebellion. He would have stirred them to do something had not the consuls kept them under control with their legions which had been raised to go into Cilicia. {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 7,8. 1:43,45}

3939a AM, 4648 JP, 66 BC

4428. A few days before Gaius Julius Caesar assumed the office of aedile, he was suspected of involvement in a conspiracy with Marcus Crassus, the consul. Publius Sulla and Lucius Antronius were also suspected, when their term as consuls expired. They were condemned for having tried to overthrow the republic at the beginning of the year. (January 1st corresponded to October on the Julian calendar, when Cotta and Torquatus entered the consulship.) They had planned to invade the Senate and kill whomever they pleased, while Crassus was to become the dictator and Caesar would be called the master of his cavalry. The whole state would be run as they saw fit and the consulship would be restored to Sulla and Antronius. It was with reference to this that Cicero, in a letter to Axius, stated that when Caesar was consul, he settled the kingdom as he had planned to do when he was an aedile. {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 9. s. 1,2. 1:45}

3944b AM, 4654 JP, 60 BC

4613. Meanwhile, Gaius Julius Caesar came to Rome to demand the consulship. [K275] Pompey allied himself with him and promised that he would do his best to help Caesar become a consul. By so doing, Pompey hoped that the acts he had done in the provinces beyond the seas, which were opposed by so many, would finally be confirmed by Caesar when he was consul. Pompey and Crassus had been at great odds ever since they had held the consulship together. Caesar reconciled them and entered into an alliance with both of them. According to this contract, nothing would be done in the state which displeased any of the three. This conspiracy proved destructive to the city, to all the world and to themselves, also. {*Livy, l. 103. 14:127} {*Velleius Paterculus, l. 2. c. 44. 1:145,147} {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 19. s. 2. 1:57} {*Plutarch, Lucullus, l. 1. c. 42. s. 6. 2:607} {*Plutarch, Crassus, l. 1. c. 14. s. 1,2. 3:355} {*Plutarch, Pompey, l. 1. c. 47. s. 1,2. 5:237} {*Plutarch, Caesar, l. 1. c. 13. s. 2,3. 7:471,473} {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 2. (9) 3:245,247} {*Dio, l. 37. (54,55) 3:187,189}

3956a AM, 4665 JP, 49 BC

4869. Julius Caesar was made dictator. After eleven days, he and Publius Servilius Isauricus were declared consuls and so Caesar resigned his dictatorship. {*Caesar, Civil Wars, l. 3. (1,2) 2:197,199} {*Plutarch, Caesar, l. 1. c. 37. s. 1. 7:531,533} {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 7. (48) 3:317}

4870. It was from this first dictatorship of Caesar that the Macedonians of Syria began their reckoning of the time of the Caesars. (This fact was mentioned on an old marble monument. {Gruter, Inscriptions, p. 287.}) The date was the 24th of the Julian September. {Ussher, Macedonian and Asiatic Year} From that day, not only the Macedonian, but also the Roman, emperors began their indictions, or their cycle of fifteen years.

3960a AM, 4669 JP, 45 BC

5082. In the month of October Caesar, who had now conquered all, entered Rome and pardoned all who had fought against him. {*Velleius Paterculus, l. 2. c. 56. s. 1. 1:173} After he had performed the triumph for Spain, at the beginning of this month, he retired from the consulship. He instituted a new order by substituting honorary consuls. He made Quintus Fabius Maximus and Gaius Trebonius the consuls for three months. {*Dio, l. 43. (46) 4:293} {Gruter, Inscriptions, p. 298.} The former of these had been consul and had triumphed for Spain on the 3rd of the Ides of October (October 13th.) {Gruter, Inscriptions, p. 297.} Thereupon, when Chrysippus had seen the ivory towns carried before Caesar in his triumph, and then, a few days later, the wooden ones of Fabius Maximus, he said the latter were nothing more than the cases for Caesar's towns. {Quintilian, l. 6. c. 4.}

5083. Very many and great honours were decreed to Caesar by the Senate. He was declared to be the perpetual dictator and was called Imperator, or Emperor. {*Livy, l. 116. 14:145} {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 76. s. 1. 1:129} This was not in the sense in which, both before and after, the title was given to generals for any victory they had obtained in the wars. This signified the highest power and authority in the state, for it was granted to him that he alone should have soldiers and the command of the militia; {*Dio, l. 43. (44) 4:289} he alone was to take charge of the public money, and it would not be lawful for any other person to make use of either of these. All the magistrates were to be subject to him, including the magistrates of the common people. They were to swear that they would never infringe on any of his decrees. {*Dio, l. 43. (45) 4:291} {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 16. (106) 3:423} Velleius declared the time from this point to his last return to the city to have been: {*Velleius Paterculus, l. 2. c. 56. s. 3. 1:173} [K364]

"His five months of his supreme power."

3960b AM, 4670 JP, 44 BC

5090. The next day, Caesar assumed his fifth and last consulship. He made an edict that thanks should be expressed to Hyrcanus, the high priest and prince of the Jews, as well as to the country of the Jews, for their affection toward him and the people of Rome. Caesar also decreed that Hyrcanus should have the city of Jerusalem and should rebuild its walls and govern it after his own will. He also granted to the Jews that every second year there should be a reduction in their rents and that they should be free from impositions and tributes.

5091. In the same fifth consulship, in the second Julian year, the month of Quintilis was renamed July, in honour of Julius Caesar. Mark Antony, his colleague in the consulship, proposed this law, because Julius was born on the 4th of the Ides of Quintilis. (July 12th) {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 16. (106) 3:423} {*Dio, l. 44. (5) 4:317} {Censorinus, De Die Natali, l. 1. c. 9.} {Macrobius, Saturnalia, l. 1. c. 12.} Thereupon, in the following month of Sextilis, Marcus Brutus, who was the city's praetor and was to hold the games in honour of Apollo after Caesar had been murdered by him, wrote Nonis Jul., the Nones of July. Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus: {*Cicero, Atticus, l. 16. c. 1. 24:369}

"I could go on cursing all day. Could they have insulted Brutus worse than with their July?"

5091. In the same fifth consulship, in the second Julian year, the month of Quintilis was renamed July, in honour of Julius Caesar. Mark Antony, his colleague in the consulship, proposed this law, because Julius was born on the 4th of the Ides of Quintilis. (July 12th) {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 16. (106) 3:423} {*Dio, l. 44. (5) 4:317} {Censorinus, De Die Natali, l. 1. c. 9.} {Macrobius, Saturnalia, l. 1. c. 12.} Thereupon, in the following month of Sextilis, Marcus Brutus, who was the city's praetor and was to hold the games in honour of Apollo after Caesar had been murdered by him, wrote Nonis Jul., the Nones of July. Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus: {*Cicero, Atticus, l. 16. c. 1. 24:369}

"I could go on cursing all day. Could they have insulted Brutus worse than with their July?"

5103. Caesar prepared to leave the city as soon as he could without having given any thought to where he would go. However, four days before he had intended to leave, he was stabbed in the Senate. {*Appian, Civil Wars, l. 2. c. 16. (111) 3:431} Sixty senators and equestrians were involved in this conspiracy. {*Suetonius, Julius, l. 1. c. 80. s. 4. 1:135,137} {Eutropius, l. 6. fin.} {Orosius, l. 6. c. 17.} Marcus Brutus, Gaius

Annals of the World, James Ussher.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities.

Let the high Praise of Yah be on their lips, and a two edged sword in their hand;
To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people;
To bind theirs Kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;
To execute upon them the judgement written; This honor have all his saints.
Praise ye the Lord. Psalm 149: 6-9

The passion for destruction is also a creative passion. M Bakunin

Look at all those ****ing Indians! George A. Custer June 25th, 1876

Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Guy Fawkes

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government. Goethe

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln

Cross of Gold

...Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been by the voters themselves.

...But we stand here representing people who are the equals before the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited in its application the definition of a businessman. The man who is employed for wages is as much a businessman as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the crossroads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who go 1,000 feet into the earth or climb 2,000 feet upon the cliffs and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured in the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who in a backroom corner the money of the world.

We come to speak for this broader class of businessmen. Ah. my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast; but those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

...They say we passed an unconstitutional law. I deny it. The income tax was not unconstitutional when it was passed. It was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time. It did not become unconstitutional until one judge changed his mind; and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind.

The income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.

...Why this change? Ah, my friends. is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter? It is because no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers. . . .

...Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country; and my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide upon which side shall the Democratic Party fight. Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses? That is the question that the party must answer first; and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as described by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single state in the Union.

I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the state of New York by saying that when citizens are confronted with the proposition, “Is this nation able to attend to its own business?”—I will not slander either one by saying that the people of those states will declare our helpless impotency as a nation to attend to our own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but 3 million, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation upon earth. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to 70 million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, it will never be the judgment of this people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good but we cannot have it till some nation helps us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

3294c AM, 4004 JP, 710 BC

672. The Medes had up until now lived without a king. After Dejoces refused to judge their causes and controversies any longer, civil disorder ensued. The Assyrians used this occasion to take possession of many cities and places in Media. {See note on 3283 AM. <<634>>} The people did not like the resulting anarchy and submitted unanimously to Dejoces. This was a hundred and fifty years before Cyrus began his reign, according to Ctesias as cited by Herodotus. {*Herodotus, l. 1. c. 96-98. 1:127,129} Both Dionysius {*Dionysius Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, l. 1. c. 2. s. 2. 1:7} and Appian, in the beginning of his Roman Histories, agree. {*Appian, l. 1. c. 0. s. 9. 1:15}

3405d AM, 4115 JP, 599 BC

798. While the king of Babylon ravaged in Judah, God prepared a worm which in due time would eat out this spreading tree, {#Da 4:19-27} for the cry of these suffering people reached the Lord:

"Oh daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery, happy shall he be that shall reward thee, as thou hast served us, who shall take thy children and dash them against the stones." {#Ps 137:8}

799. For in this very year, Cyrus, the Media-Persian, was born, whose father was a Persian and his mother a Mede, as I have shown before. Nebuchadnezzar himself, at the hour of his death, as Abydenus had it, uttered this prophecy:

"There shall come a Persian Mule, who shall make use of your devils, as his fellow-soldiers, to bring you into bondage."

800. This was also foretold by that oracle given to Croesus:

"When a mule king shall be born to the Medes..."

801. The Pythian Priests interpreted this to refer to Cyrus, who was to be born of a father and a mother of two different nations, a Persian and a Mede. {*Herodotus, l. 1. c. 55,91. 1:63,119} However, Isaiah foretold, most plainly and truly, {#Isa 13:1,2} that the Babylonians also should have a time in which they were to endure their own hell of slavery. Their children would one day be dashed against the stones before their eyes, {#Isa 13:16} while these miserable, captive Jews would one day be restored to their liberty. Many years before the time of these events, Isaiah called their deliverer by his proper name of Cyrus. {#Isa 44:28 45:1} God gave him the reason for this unusual revelation:

"For my servant Jacob and for Israel my chosen's sake, have I called thee by thy name and given thee a surname, though thou hast not known me." {#Isa 45:4}

802. As for the age of this Cyrus, Cicero cited it from Dionysius, a Persian writer, as follows: {*Cicero, De Divinatione, l. 1. c. 23. 20:275} [L125]

"The sun appeared to Cyrus in his sleep, standing at his feet. When Cyrus endeavoured to take the sun in his hands three times, the sun turned aside and went away. The Magi, who are counted as wise and learned men among the Persians, said that his three attempts to take hold of the sun meant that he should reign thirty years. This came to pass accordingly, for he started to reign at the age of forty and lived to the age of seventy."

803. From which dream perhaps, expounded in this way by the magicians, Cyrus took his name, for, as Ctesias correctly said:

"Cyrus, in the Persian language, means the sun."

809. In the beginning of Zedekiah's reign, Jeremiah prophesied the captivity and restoration of the Elamites. {#Jer 49:34,39} For Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Astyages the whole province of Elam, including the city of Susa on the Ulai River, and annexed it to his kingdom. {#Jer 25:25 Da 8:1,2} Later, these Elamites combined with the Medes against the Babylonians. {#Isa 21:2} When Belshazzar was overthrown, they recovered their state again under Cyrus, who appointed their chief city of Susa to be the capital of the Persian kingdom. {*Strabo, l. 15. c. 3. s. 2. 7:157} [L126]

3418 AM, 4128 JP, 586 BC

865. When Cyrus had lived twelve years or more with his father in Persia, his grandfather Astyages sent for him. He and his mother Mandane went to him in Media. {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 1. c. 3. s. 1. 5:27}

3421 AM, 4131 JP, 583 BC

868. Cyrus was now almost sixteen years of age. Evilmerodach, the king of Assyria's son, was about to marry a wife called Nicotris. He went with a large army of cavalry and foot soldiers to the borders of Media. There he did as he pleased while hunting in the country. Astyages, with his grandson Cyrus and with Cyaxares, marched out and engaged him in a battle with the cavalry. Cyrus was just old enough to bear arms. They defeated the Assyrians and drove them from their borders of Media. {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 1. c. 4. s. 18-23. 5:61-69}

3444d AM, 4154 JP, 560 BC

902. In the kingdom of Media, when Astyages or Assuerus died, {#/ Apc Tob 14:15} he was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, Cyrus' mother's brother. {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 1. c. 5. s. 2. 5:77} This was in the beginning of the first year of the 55th Olympiad, thirty-one years before the death of Cyrus. Daniel called Cyaxares Darius the Mede, the son of Assuerus.

3445 AM, 4155 JP, 559 BC

...Cyrus was made general of the Persian army by his father Cambyses and all the council of the kingdom. He was sent to Media with thirty thousand soldiers and a thousand commanders all of equal authority under his command. {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 1. c. 5. s. 2. 5:77} When he came, he was made general of the Median forces by his uncle Cyaxares, who had sent for him, and was placed solely in charge of the war against the Babylonians.

3445c AM, 4155 JP, 559 BC

904. The thirty years of Cyrus' reign started from this time, from the end of the first year of the 55th Olympiad. {Julius Africanus, l. 3.} {*Diod. Sic., l. 9. c. 21. 4:31} Thallus, Castor, Polybius, Phlegon, and other chronologers also count this as the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, as cited by Eusebius. {*Eusebius, Gospel, l. 10. c. 10. (488c) 1:523}

3448c AM, 4158 JP, 556 BC

908. Cyaxares and Cyrus marched against the Babylonian king, Croesus and the rest of the confederates, and gained a major victory over them. The king of Babylon fell in the battle and Croesus, with those who were left, broke his camp by night and fled.

3448c AM, 4158 JP, 556 BC

912. Cyrus came to invade the country of Babylon. He stood outside the walls of the city and challenged the new king to a duel. Gadatas was a noble man of whom this new king was jealous, because the king's wife admired him, so he defected to Cyrus.

3464c AM, 4174 JP, 540 BC

932. When Cyrus had subdued Asia Minor, he immediately made war on the Assyrians. He marched with his army against Labynitus or Nabonidus their king. (Herod. l. 1. c. 178, 188.) The news of this came to Babylon two full years before the city was besieged. Jer 51:46 When Cyrus was marching toward Babylon, he was delayed at the river Gnides which runs into the Tigris. For want of boats, he could not cross over it. While he stayed there, one of the white horses which were consecrated to the sun, went into the river and drowned in its swift current. Cyrus was furious about this event and stopped his march to Babylon. That summer he had the river divided into 360 channels. He intended to make it so that a woman may pass through it and not get her knees wet. (Herod. l. 1. c. 189, 190, 202. l. 5. c. 52.)

3465b AM, 4175 JP, 539 BC

934. The next year Cyrus marched to Babylon. Here Cyrus defeated Belshazzar, or Nabonidus.

3466b AM, 4176 JP, 538 BC

936. When Cyrus had spent much time in this work with little to show for it, he finally made a ditch from the river to that vast lake, about forty to fifty miles wide, which Belshazzar's mother, Nicotris, had ordered to be dug. Then he opened the mouths of this and another of various ditches which he had recently built about the city, and let the river flow into them. In this way he made the channel, which was not more than four hundred yards wide, passable for his men to enter into the city. {*Herodotus, l. 1. c. 190,191. 1:237,239} {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 7. c. 5. s. 15-17. 6:267,269} {#Jer 50:38 51:32,36}

937. Cyrus, with his army, went through the water gates in the wall and got into the city on a festival day, while all the men were banqueting. {*Herodotus, l. 1. c. 190,191. 1:237239} {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 7. c. 5. s. 26. 6:271} {#Jer 51:39,57} So vast was that city that, as the inhabitants reported, when the people on its outskirts were surprised and taken by the enemy, those who lived in the heart of the city never heard of it. {*Herodotus, l. 1. c. 191. 1:239} [L145] Jeremiah alluded to this when he said:

"post upon post and messenger upon messenger shall run to tell the king of Babylon that all the outskirts of the city were possessed by the enemies." {#Jer 51:31} [E101]

940. Darius the Mede, son of Ahasuerus (or Cyaxares, the son of Hystages), took over the kingdom which Cyrus had conquered and given to him. {#Da 5:31 9:1}

941. When Cyrus had set everything in order at Babylon, he returned through Media into Persia to his father Cambyses, and Mandane, his mother, who were still living. From there, he returned into Media and married the only daughter and heir of Cyaxares. As a dowry, he was given the whole kingdom of Media. After the marriage, he left for Babylon, taking his new wife with him. From Babylon, he sent governors into all his dominions....

3467a AM, 4176 JP, 538 BC

948. When Cyrus had spent one whole year with his wife in Babylon, he assembled his entire army. It was said to be made up of a hundred and twenty thousand cavalry, two thousand scythe-bearing chariots and six hundred thousand foot soldiers. When he had outfitted his troops, he undertook that campaign in which he was said to have subdued all the countries from Syria to the Red Sea. {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 8. c. 6. s. 19. 6:419,421}

3468a AM, 4177 JP, 537 BC

949. After Cyrus' father Cambyses died in Persia, Cyaxares in Media held all the empire of the east. It was from this year that Xenophon {*Xenophon, Cyropaedia, l. 8. c. 7. s. 1. 6:423} reckoned the beginning of the seven years of Cyrus' reign. Based on the records of the Medes and Persians, the Bible reckoned this as the first year, and stated that it was in this year that Cyrus, king of Persia, made that famous edict of his:

"Into my hand hath God given all the kingdoms of the earth..." {#Ezr 1:2}

950. This was the year which marked the end of the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity, just as had been foretold by Jeremiah and in line with the prophecy of Isaiah, who had mentioned Cyrus by name. {#Isa 44:28 45:13} He gave permission for all the Jews living anywhere in his empire to return to their own country. He ordered those who returned to rebuild the temple of God, leaving them free to build it as large as they wished. {#Hag 2:3} They could use the resources from the king's treasury, and Cyrus restored all the vessels of the house of God which Nebuchadnezzar had removed from there. {#2Ch 36:22,23 Ezr 1:1,2,7 5:13,14 6:2-5} [L147]

951. Cyrus made Sheshbazzar captain of the Jews who were returning to Jerusalem. In line with Cyrus' orders, Mithredath, the treasurer, gave to Sheshbazzar all the vessels belonging to the temple, for the purpose of returning them to Jerusalem. {#Ezr 1:7-11 5:14,15} Sheshbazzar was his Chaldean name, but his Hebrew name was Zerubbabel. {#Ezr 3:8,10 5:16}

3468c AM, 4178 JP, 536 BC

952. ... After this first year of Cyrus, all the Israelites are said to have lived in their own cities. {#Ezr 2:70} In the sixth year of Darius, they are said to have been present at the dedication of the temple, and there to have offered twelve male goats for the sin of all Israel. {#Ezr 6:16,17} ...

3470c AM, 4180 JP, 534 BC

957. The Samaritans, by bribing certain courtiers of Cyrus, disrupted the Jews in their work of building the temple. {#Ezr 4:5} This was the reason for the three weeks of mourning by the prophet Daniel. He continued his fast, which he had begun about the third day of the first month in the third year of Cyrus, throughout the whole time of the Feast of the Passover. {#Da 10:1-4} After this, on the twenty-fourth day of the first month, while he stood on the bank of Hiddekel or the Tigris River, he had the vision of the kings of Persia, of Alexander the Great and his successors and their kingdoms. This is recorded in Daniel and was the last vision that he had, shortly before his death. {#Da 10:1-12:13}

3475b AM, 4185 JP, 529 BC

960. Cyrus died at the age of seventy years. He had first been made general of the Median and Persian armies a full thirty years earlier. He took Babylon nine years before his death and reigned for seven years, plus a month or so.

Annals of the World, James Ussher

March 23, 1775.

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

- Patrick Henry

I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.

Benjamin Franklin, 1787

3287 AM, 3997 JP, 717 BC

641. When Shalmaneser died, his son Sennacherib reigned in his stead. {#/ Apc Tob 1:18} Herodotus called him the king of both Assyria and Arabia. {*Herodotus, l. 2. c. 17. 1:295} [E70] It could be that at that time the Assyrians ruled over Peraea (or the land of Gilead,) and Hamath (or Iturea,) and also held a part of Arabia-either Petra or the desert. This is because that land known as Ivah, or Ava, about which Sennacherib boasted much, seems to have been conquered either by him or his ancestors. {#2Ki 18:34 19:13 Isa 37:13} This was a country lying in the desert of Arabia. Fran. Junius affirmed this based on the passage in Kings. #2Ki 17:24. The prophet Isaiah foretold the calamity which was to befall the Moabites at the hands of Shalmaneser. {See note on 3278b AM. <<620>>} {See note on 3280b AM. <<632>>} This is taken from Bersus' History of the Chaldeans as cited by Josephus. He said that Sennacherib reigned in Assyria and also that he waged a fierce war on all Asia and Egypt. {*Josephus, Antiq., l. 10. c. 1. s. 1. (4) 6:157}

3291c AM, 4001 JP, 713 BC

642. This war of his on Egypt lasted three whole years, and Syria Palestina also joined with him in the war. This is deduced from Isaiah. {#Isa 20:1-6} Isaiah was told to take off his coat of hairy cloth (belonging to his prophetic function, as in Zechariah {#Zec 13:4}) as well as his shoes. He was commanded to walk up and down naked and barefoot for three years, as a sign to the Egyptians and Ethiopians. This intimated that when that time expired, they likewise would be stripped of their clothes by the king of Assyria and go barefoot into captivity and bondage. The prophet is said to have received this command in the year when Tartan was sent by Sargon, king of Assyria, besieging Ashdod and taking it. {#Isa 20:1} Sargon is also called Sennacherib, and Tartan was one of his commanders. {#2Ki 18:17} [L101] That famous city Azotus, a city of the Philistines near Ashdod, was conquered by King Hezekiah according to Josephus. {See note on 3287 AM. <<640>>} {#2Ki 18:8}

643. Hezekiah had shaken off the king of Assyria's yoke (which his father Ahaz had taken) and would no longer serve him. {#2Ki 17:7} Toward the end of the fourteenth year of his reign, Sennacherib came to make war against the kingdom of Judah. He besieged their fortified cities and took many of them. {#Isa 36:1 2Ki 18:13 2Ch 32:1} When Hezekiah perceived that he intended to attack Jerusalem also, he consulted with his princes. He plugged up all the fountains that were around the city and diverted the brook Kidron which ran through the region. Then he built up all that part of the wall which Joash, the king of Israel, had demolished in the time of Amaziah. He fortified Millo in the city of David and provided arrows and shields in great abundance, setting captains and colonels over the people. He called them together and made a very short speech to them, persuading them to be of good courage and not to have any fear of the king of Assyria or of his army. {#2Ch 32:2-8,30}

644. In those days when Hezekiah was very sick, he was told by Isaiah that he would die. He poured out his tears and prayers to God and was healed, another fifteen years being added to his life. {#Isa 38:1-5,21 2Ki 20:1-7 2Ch 32:24} He composed a song. First he showed the seriousness of his illness and the anxiety he had had. He told of his prayer to God and then acknowledged the great benefit of his recovery received from God. Lastly he testified of his faith in God, and promised to be everlastingly thankful to him. {#Isa 38:9-20}

645. It is true that in the scripture this is recorded after the story of the slaughter of Sennacherib and his army. However, the time was not precisely given but only with a general annotation: In those days. For that this slaughter happened after his sickness, is plainly shown by these scriptures:

"I will add unto thy days fifteen years and will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria and I will defend this city." {#Isa 38:5,6 2Ki 20:6}

646. Now if we subtract these fifteen years from the twenty-nine years which Hezekiah reigned, we shall find that the slaughter of Sennacherib and his army happened toward the end of the fourteenth year of his reign.

3294c AM, 4004 JP, 710 BC

663. When Sennacherib returned from Egypt into Palestine, he besieged Lachish with all his forces. {#2Ch 32:9} Hezekiah sent to him at Lachish to buy his peace and made a pact with him for peace at a certain price. Therefore he drained all his own treasure, of which he had formerly been so proud, as well as the treasury of the temple. He paid him three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. When he had taken the money, Sennacherib broke his agreement and sent Tartan, who had now taken Azotus, and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh with a large army from Lachish to Jerusalem. {#2Ki 18:14-17}

664. When these all arrived at Jerusalem, they stood at the conduit of the upper pool by the highway of the fuller's field. When they called out demanding to speak with the king, Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, the recorder, went out to meet with them. Because they refused to surrender the city, Rabshakeh cried out that Hezekiah vainly relied on God for help and that he himself had been sent by God. After he had reviled the God of Israel and his servant Hezekiah with many reproachful sayings, he tried to make the people rebel and defect to the king of Assyria. [L104] The Assyrians spoke loudly in the Hebrew language, so that the people who stood on the wall might hear and understand what they said. This they did to frighten them and cause anxiety, so that in the resulting tumult they might easily assault and take the city. {#Isa 36:1-22 2Ki 18:17-37 2Ch 32:9-18}

665. When Hezekiah heard of this, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. He sent Eliakim, Shebna and the elders of the priests, all likewise dressed in sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet. They asked him to seek counsel from God about this sad situation and to pray to God for help. The prophet encouraged them, saying that the king of Assyria would hear a rumour, whereupon he would lift his siege and return to his country, where he would be murdered. This all came to pass. {#Isa 37:1-7 2Ki 19:1-7}

666. When Rabshakeh could not take Jerusalem, he returned to Sennacherib. He left Lachish and besieged Libnah. {#Isa 37:8 2Ki 19:8}

667. Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, did not invade Egypt and Syria, as Scaliger groundlessly asserted in his notes on Eusebius (page 72) and in his Isagogical Canons (page 311). Rather, he sent forces to assist and help the Egyptians and Jews. For the Bible is clear that he came to fight against Sennacherib. {#Isa 37:9 2Ki 19:9} Strabo referred to this Tirhakah as Tearco, or Tearko, the Ethiopian, and he also noted from Megasthenes, a writer of the history of India, that he passed over into Europe and went as far as the Pillars of Hercules. {*Strabo, l. 1. c. 3. s. 21. 1:227} {*Strabo, l. 15. c. 1. s. 6. 7:7,9}

668. When Sennacherib at Libnah heard a report that Tirhakah was coming, he sent his commander to Hezekiah with railing letters. He spoke of the God of Israel as if he were like one of the gods of the nations, mere works of men's hands. Hezekiah took it before the Lord in his temple and with many tears sought help and deliverance from God against the Assyrians. God answered him through Isaiah the prophet, who said that God would defend the city and that the king of Assyria would not even come by that way, but would return by the same way he had come. {#Isa 37:9-35 2Ki 19:9-34 2Ch 32:17,19,20}

669. The very same night after these things had happened at Jerusalem, and a few days after his victory over the Ethiopians, which happened about this time as some gather from Isaiah, God sent his angel to their camp. {#Isa 18:1-7 20:1-6} He destroyed every man of valour, every commander and leader in the Assyrian army. The next morning a hundred and eighty-five thousand dead men were discovered. After this, Sennacherib broke camp in shame and returned to his own land to rest at Nineveh. It came to pass that as he was worshipping before his god Nisroch, Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword. They fled at once into the land of Ararat or Armenia, and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead. {#Isa 37:36-38 2Ki 19:35-37 2Ch 32:21} All this had been foretold by the prophet. {#Isa 37:1-38 31:8,9} [E73]

670. The first chapter of the book of Tobit contains the following incidents which belong to this story. When Sennacherib fled from Judah, he killed many of the Jews because of the hatred he had toward the Israelites. Tobit, or Tobias the elder, stole away the dead bodies and gave them a proper burial. When he was accused of this before the king of Nineveh, he fled into hiding for a time. [L105] They plundered and spoiled all his goods, leaving him only Anne, his wife, and Tobias, his son. After forty-five days or, as the Greek copy has it, before fifty-five days, Sennacherib was murdered by his sons. When these fled into the mountains of Ararat, Esarhaddon, his son, reigned in his stead. Some copies incorrectly call him Achirdon or Sarchedon. The new king set Achiacarus, the son of Hananeel, Tobit's brother, over all his father's and his own affairs. He was his steward and keeper of his accounts, as well as the cupbearer having the privy seal, and so his position was that of second man to the king. {#/ Apc Tob 1:17-22}

3394c AM, 4104 JP, 610 BC

754. By God's command, Pharaohnecho, king of Egypt, set out to go into battle against the king of Assyria, who was at war with him at the time, and was planning to besiege Carchemish on the Euphrates River. {#2Ki 23:29 2Ch 35:20-22} Josephus stated that he went to fight against the Medes and Babylonians, who had overthrown the empire of the Assyrians. {*Josephus, Antiq., l. 10. c. 6. s. 1. (84) 6:205} Carchemish, at the time of Sennacherib, belonged to and was occupied by the Assyrians. {#Isa 10:9} However, when that kingdom was destroyed, it returned into the hands of the Babylonians. Just as at the time when the king of Persia defeated Babylon and Assyria, {#Ezr 6:22} he was called king of the Assyrians, so when the king of Babylon defeated Assyria, he was called king of Assyria. In addition, the secular authors also stated that Babylon was formerly part of Assyria, while the Holy Scriptures state that the kingdom of Chaldea was founded by the king of Assyria. {#Isa 23:13 Nu 24:22 Isa 52:4 Ne 9:32}

Annals of the World, James Ussher

Tell General Howard that I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead, Tu-hul-hil-sote is dead. the old men are all dead. It is the young men who now say yes or no. He who led the young men [Joseph's brother Alikut] is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people -- some of them have run away to the hills and have no blankets and no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs, my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

Finity of human wisdom topic

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"If the only two possibilities are either to be right, or to be wrong, then there is only one wrong answer."
The 'Rite Stuff (2008)

On taking a retrospective view of Pharisaism, as we have described it, there is a saying of our Lord which at first sight seems almost unaccountable. Yet it is clear and emphatic. "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do" (Mat_23:3). But if the early disciples were not to break at once and for ever with the Jewish community, such a direction was absolutely needful. For, though the Pharisees were only "an order," Pharisaism, like modern Ultramontanism, had not only become the leading direction of theological thought, but its principles were solemnly proclaimed, and universally acted upon--and the latter, even by their opponents the Sadducees. A Sadducee in the Temple or on the seat of judgment would be obliged to act and decide precisely like a Pharisee. Not that the party had not attempted to give dominance to their peculiar views. But they were fairly vanquished, and it is said that they themselves destroyed the book of Sadducean ordinances, which they had at one time drawn up. And the Pharisees celebrated each dogmatic victory by a feast! What is perhaps the oldest post-Biblical Hebrew book--the "Megillath Taanith," or roll of fasts--is chiefly a Pharisaic calendar of self-glorification, in which dogmatic victories are made days when fasting, and sometimes even mourning, is prohibited. Whatever, therefore, the dogmatic views of the Sadducees were, and however they might, where possible, indulge personal bias, yet in office both parties acted as Pharisees. They were well matched indeed. When a Sadducean high-priest, on the Feast of Tabernacles, poured out the water on the ground instead of into the silver funnel of the altar, Maccabean king though he was, he scarce escaped with his life, and ever afterwards the shout resounded from all parts of the Temple, "Hold up thy hand," as the priest yearly performed this part of the service. The Sadducees held, that on the Day of Atonement the high-priest should light the incense before he actually entered the Most Holy Place. As this was contrary to the views of the Pharisees, they took care to bind him by an oath to observe their ritual customs before allowing him to officiate at all. It was in vain that the Sadducees argued, that the daily sacrifices should not be defrayed from the public treasury, but from special contributions. They had to submit, and besides to join in the kind of half-holiday which the jubilant majority inscribed in their calendar to perpetuate the memory of the decision. The Pharisees held, that the time between Easter and Pentecost should be counted from the second day of the feast; the Sadducees insisted that it should commence with the literal "Sabbath" after the festive day. But, despite argument, the Sadducees had to join when the solemn procession went on the afternoon of the feast to cut down the "first sheaf," and to reckon Pentecost as did their opponents.

We have here referred to only a few of the differences in ritual between the views of the Sadducees and those of the Pharisees. The essential principle of them lay in this, that the Sadducees would hold by the simple letter of the law--do neither more nor less, whether the consequences were to make decisions more severe or more easy. The same principle they applied in their juridical and also in their doctrinal views. It would take us too much into detail to explain the former. But the reader will understand how this literality would, as a rule, make their judicial decisions (or rather such as they had proposed) far more strict than those of the Pharisees, by a rigidly literal application of the principle, "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." The same holds true in regard to the laws of purification, and to those which regulated inheritance. The doctrinal views of the Sadducees are sufficiently known from the New Testament. It is quite true that, in opposition to Sadducean views as to the non-existence of another world and the resurrection, the Pharisees altered the former Temple-formula into "Blessed be God from world to world" (from generation to generation; or, "world without end"), to show that after the present there was another life of blessing and punishment, of joy and sorrow. But the Talmud expressly states that the real principle of the Sadducees was not, that there was no resurrection, but only that it could not be proved from the Thorah, or Law. From this there was, of course, but a short step to the entire denial of the doctrine; and no doubt it was taken by the vast majority of the party. But here also it was again their principle of strict literality, which underlay even the most extreme of their errors.

This principle was indeed absolutely necessary to their very existence. We have traced the Pharisees not only to a definite period, but to a special event; and we have been able perfectly to explain their name as "the separated." Not that we presume they gave it to themselves, for no sect or party ever takes a name; they all pretend to require no distinctive title, because they alone genuinely and faithfully represent the truth itself. But when they were called Pharisees, the "Chaberim," no doubt, took kindly to the popular designation. It was to them--to use an illustration--what the name "Puritans" was to a far different and opposite party in the Church. But the name "Sadducee" is involved in quite as much obscurity as the origin of the party. Let us try to cast some fresh light upon both--only premising that the common derivations of their name, whether from the high-priest Zadok, or from a Rabbi called Zadok, whose fundamental principle of not seeking reward in religion they were thought to have misunderstood and misapplied, or from the Hebrew word "zaddikim"--the righteous--are all unsatisfactory, and yet may all contain elements of truth.

There can be no question that the "sect" of the Sadducees originated in a reaction against the Pharisees. If the latter added to the law their own glosses, interpretations, and traditions, the Sadducee took his stand upon the bare letter of the law. He would have none of their additions and supererogations; he would not be righteous overmuch. Suffice it for him to have to practise "zedakah," "righteousness." We can understand how this shibboleth of theirs became, in the mouth of the people, the byname of a party--some using it ironically, some approvingly. By-and-by the party no doubt took as kindly to the name as the Pharisees did to theirs. Thus far, then, we agree with those who derive the title of Sadducees from "zaddikim." But why the grammatically-unaccountable change from "zaddikim" to "zaddukim?" May it not be that the simple but significant alteration of a letter had, after a not uncommon fashion, originated with their opponents, as if they would have said: "You are 'zaddikim?' Nay, rather, 'zaddukim'" from the Aramaean word "zadu" (wasting or desolation)--meaning, you are not upholders but destroyers of righteousness? This origin of the name would in no way be inconsistent with the later attempts of the party to trace up their history either to the high-priest Zadok, or to one of the fathers of Jewish traditionalism, whose motto they ostentatiously adopted. History records not a few similar instances of attempts to trace up the origin of a religious party. Be this as it may, we can understand how the adherents of Sadducean opinions belonged chiefly to the rich, luxurious, and aristocratic party, including the wealthy families of priests; while, according to the testimony of Josephus, which is corroborated by the New Testament, the mass of the people, and especially the women, venerated and supported the Pharisaical party. Thus the "order" of the "Chaberim" gradually became a popular party, like the Ultramontanes. Finally, as from the nature of it Pharisaism was dependent upon traditional lore, it became not only the prevailing direction of Jewish theological study, but the "Chaber" by-and-by merged into the Rabbi, the "sage," or "disciple of the sages"; while the non-"chaber," or "am ha-aretz," became the designation for ignorance of traditional lore, and neglect of its ordinances. This was specially the case when the dissolution of the Jewish commonwealth rendered the obligations of the "fraternity" necessarily impossible. Under such altered circumstances the old historical Pharisee would often be no small plague to the leaders of the party, as is frequently the case with the original adherents and sticklers of a sect in which the irresistible progress of time has necessarily produced changes.
The course of our investigations has shown, that neither Pharisees nor Sadducees were a sect, in the sense of separating from Temple or Synagogue; and also that the Jewish people as such were not divided between Pharisees and Sadducees. The small number of professed Pharisees (six thousand) at the time of Herod, the representations of the New Testament, and even the curious circumstance that Philo never once mentions the name of Pharisee, confirm the result of our historical inquiries, that the Pharisees were first an "order," then gave the name to a party, and finally represented a direction of theological thought. The New Testament speaks of no other than these two parties. But Josephus and Philo also mention the "Essenes." It is beyond our present scope either to describe their tenets and practices, or even to discuss the complex question of the origin of their name. From the nature of it, the party exercised no great influence, and was but short-lived. They seem to have combined a kind of higher grade Pharisaism with devotional views, and even practices, derived from Eastern mysticism, and more particularly from the Medo-Persian religion. Of the former, the fact that the one object of all their institutions was a higher purity, may here be regarded as sufficient evidence. The latter is apparent from a careful study of their views, as these have been preserved to us, and from their comparison with the Zoroastrian system. And of the fact that "Palestine was surrounded by Persian influences," there are abundant indications.

As a sect the Essenes never attained a larger number than four thousand; and as they lived apart from the rest, neither mingling in their society nor in their worship, and--as a general rule--abstained from marriage, they soon became extinct. Indeed, Rabbinical writings allude to quite a number of what may probably be described as sectaries, all of them more or less distinctly belonging to the mystical and ascetic branch of Pharisaism. We here name, first, the "Vathikin," or "strong ones," who performed their prayers with the first dawn; secondly, the "Toble Shachrith," or "morning baptists," who immersed before morning prayer, so as to utter the Divine Name only in a state of purity; thirdly, the "Kehala Kadisha," or "holy congregation," who spent a third of the day in prayer, a third in study, and a third in labour; fourthly, the "Banaim," or "builders," who, besides aiming after highest purity, occupied themselves with mystical studies about God and the world; fifthly, the "Zenuim," or "secret pious," who besides kept their views and writings secret; sixthly, the "Nekije hadaath," "men of a pure mind," who were really separatists from their brethren; seventhly, the "Chashaim," or "mysterious ones"; and lastly, the "Assiim," "helpers" or "healers," who professed to possess the right pronunciation of the sacred Name of Jehovah, with all that this implied.

If in any of the towns of Judaea one had met the strange apparition of a man dressed wholly in white, whose sandals and garments perhaps bore signs of age--for they might not be put away till quite worn out--but who was scrupulously clean, this man was an Essene. The passers would stop short and look after him with mingled reverence and curiosity. For he was but rarely seen in town or village--the community separating from the rest of the people, and inhabiting desert places, specially the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea; and the character of the "order" for asceticism and self-denial, as well as for purity, was universally known. However strictly they observed the Sabbath, it was in their own synagogues; and although they sent gifts to the altar, they attended not the Temple nor offered sacrifices, partly because they regarded their arrangements as not sufficiently Levitically clean, and partly because they came to consider their own table an altar, and their common meals a sacrifice. They formed an "order," bound by the strictest vows, taken under terrible oaths, and subject to the most rigorous disciplines. The members abstained from wine, meat, and oil, and most of them also from marriage. They had community of goods; were bound to poverty, chastity, and obedience to their superiors. Purity of morals was enjoined, especially in regard to speaking the truth. To take an oath was prohibited, as also the keeping of slaves. The order consisted of four grades; contact with one of a lower always defiling him of the higher grade. The novitiate lasted two years, though at the end of the first the candidate was taken into closer fellowship. The rule was in the hands of "elders," who had the power of admission and expulsion--the latter being almost equivalent to death by starvation, as the Essene had bound himself by a terrible oath not to associate with others. Their day began with sunrise, when they went to prayer. Before that, nothing secular might be spoken. After prayer, they betook themselves to agricultural labour--for they were not allowed to keep herds and flocks--or else to works of charity, specially the healing of the sick. At eleven o'clock they bathed, changed their dress, and then gathered for the common meal. A priest opened and closed it with prayer. They sat according to age and dignity; the eldest engaging in serious conversation, but in so quiet a tone as not to be heard outside. The young men served. Each had bread and salt handed him, also another dish; the elders being allowed the condiment of hyssop and the luxury of warm water. After the meal they put off their clothes, and returned to work till the evening, when there was another common meal, followed by mystical hymns and dances, to symbolise the rapt, ecstatic state of mind.

It is needless to follow the subject farther. Even what has been said--irrespective of their separation from the world, their punctilious Sabbath-observance, and views on purification; their opposition to sacrifices, and notably their rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection--is surely sufficient to prove that they had no connection with the origin of Christianity. Assertions of this kind are equally astonishing to the calm historical student and painful to the Christian. Yet there can be no doubt that among these mystical sects were preserved views of the Divine Being, of the Messiah and His kingdom, and of kindred doctrines, which afterwards appeared in the so-called "secret tradition" of the Synagogue, and which, as derived from the study of the prophetic writings, contain marvellous echoes of Christian truth. On this point, however, we may not here enter.

Christ and the Gospel among Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes! We can now realise the scene, and understand the mutual relations. The existing communities, the religious tendencies, the spirit of the age, assuredly offered no point of attachment--only absolute and essential contrariety to the kingdom of heaven. The "preparer of the way" could appeal to neither of them; his voice only cried "in the wilderness." Far, far beyond the origin of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, he had to point back to the original Paschal consecration of Israel as that which was to be now exhibited in its reality: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." If the first great miracle of Christianity was the breaking down of the middle wall of partition, the second--perhaps we should have rather put it first, to realise the symbolism of the two miracles in Cana--was that it found nothing analogous in the religious communities around, nothing sympathetic, absolutely no stem on which to graft the new plant, but was literally "as a root out of a dry ground," of which alike Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene would say: "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him."

Sketches of Jewish Social Life in History, Chapter 15 - Relation of the Pharisees to the Sadducees and Essenes, and to the Gospel of Christ