Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, A plain description of Jerusalem from Joshua's time to the year 1517, both from Scripture and ancient history.pdf/7

Rh mention, that the angels declared to the ſhepherds, and the ſtar directed the wiſe men of the eaſt to find out the place of his birth. So that,

At Chriſt's birth, the temple at Rome, dedicated to the god Pan, fell to the earth; and when it was built, the Romans addreſsed the oracle of Apollo, to know how long it fhould endure; who anſwered, “ Till a Virgin ſhould bring forth a ſon,” which they judged impoſſible, therefore they believed that their temple ſhould laſt eternally.

The night that Chriſt was born, there appeared in Spain at midnight, a cloud with ſo great a light, that it ſeemed like mid-day. St. Jerom writes, that when the Virgin fled with her Son into Egypt, all the Images of the Gods tumbled from their altars to the very ground: and that the Oracles, or Anſwers which theſe Gods, or rather Devils, uſed to give them, ceaſed, and never anſwered afterwards.

In the firſt year after CHRIST'S birth, many ſtrange things happened in Germany, and in Rome, and a terrible eclipſe of the ſun. At the twelfth year of his age he diſputed with the doctors, and at that time there appeared a terrible comet, ſo