Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/142

 not by John only but by the multitude, delivered Cæsar's message in Hebrew, with earnest appeals to them "to spare their country, to disperse the flames that were already licking the sanctuary and to restore to God the customary expiations." This address was received by the people with dejection and silence; the tyrant, on the contrary, after many invectives and imprecations upon Josephus, ended by saying that "he could never fear capture, since the city was God's."

At this Josephus cried aloud:—

"Pure indeed have you kept it for God! The Holy Place too remains undefiled! No impiety are you guilty of against your looked-for Ally and He receives His customary sacrifices! Most impious wretch, should any one deprive you of your daily food, you would consider him an enemy; and do you hope to have God for your ally in the war, whom you have bereft of His everlasting ceremonial? And do you impute these sins to the Romans, who, to this day, are concerned for our laws and are trying to force you to restore to God those sacrifices which you have interrupted? Who would not bewail and lament for the city at this amazing transposition, when aliens and enemies rectify your impiety, while you, a Jew, nurtured in our laws, treat them with greater cruelty even than your foes?

"Yet, be sure, John, it is no disgrace to repent of misdeeds, even at the last; and, if you desire to save your country, you have a noble example set before you in Jeconiah, king of the Jews. He, when in the old days the Babylonian led out his army on his account, of his own free will left the city before it was taken, and with his family endured voluntary captivity, rather than deliver up these holy places to the enemy and suffer the