Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, A plain description of Jerusalem (2).pdf/20

 came out of its own bowels, in that infernal race of vapours that it brought forth to eat out the belly of the mother.

While Titus was now taking a view of the ruins of this glorious city, the works, the fortifications, and especially the turrets which the tyrants had so sottishly abandoned: while Cæsar, I say, was entertaining himself in the contemplations of these towers, the design, workmanship and curiosity of the fabric, with the wonderful contrivance of the whole, he let fall this expression, 'Well, says he, if God had not fought for us and with us, we could never have been masters of these forts. It was God, in fine, that assisted us, and that fought against the Jews, for this was not an undertaking to be compassed with hands or machines.'

This was in fine the issue of the siege; and when the soldiers had neither rapine nor bloodshed for their spleen to work upon, (as they would not have been idle, if they had matter,) Titus ordered them to lay the city and temple level with the ground and to leave nothing standing, but the three famous turrets, Pasael, Hippicos, and Mariamne, that overtopped all the rest; and a piece of wall to the westward of the town, where he designed a garrison. The towers to remain so many monuments to posterity of the Roman's power and conduct in taking them. This order was punctually executed, and all the rest laid so flat, that the place looked as if it had never been inhabited. This was the end of the Jerusalem sanction; a mad and seditious