alatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,"
when he announces "the fiery trial" which was "to try" them, [168:1] and
when he tells them of "judgment" beginning "at the house of God."
[168:2] If Nero enacted that the profession of Christianity was a
capital offence, his law must have been in force throughout the Roman
world; and an early ecclesiastical writer positively affirms that he was
the author of such sanguinary legislation. [168:3] The horror with which
his name was so long regarded by members of the Church in all parts of
the Empire [168:4] strongly corroborates the statement that the attack
on the disciples in the capital was only the signal for the commencement
of a general persecution.

Nero died A.D. 68, and the war which involved the destruction of
Jerusalem and of upwards of a million of the Jews, was already in
progress. The holy city fell A.D. 70; and the Mosaic economy, which had
been virtually abolished by the death of Christ, now reached its
practical termination. At the same period the prophecy of Daniel was
literally fulfilled; for "the sacrifice and the oblation" were made to
cease, [168:5] as the demolition of the temple and the dispersion of the
priests put an end to the celebration of the Levitical worship. The
overthrow of the metropolis of Palestine contributed in various ways to
the advancement of the Christian cause. Judaism, no longer able to
provide for the maintenance of its ritual, was exhibited to the world as
a defunct system; its institutions, now more narrowly examined by the
spiritual eye, were discovered to be but types of the blessings of a
more glorious dispensation; and many believers, who had hitherto adhered
to the ceremonial law, discontinued its observances. Christ, forty years
before, had predicted the siege and desolation of Jerusalem; [169:1] and
the remarkable verification of a prophecy, delivered at a time when the
catastrophe was exceedingly improbable, appears to have induced not a
few to think more favourably of the credentials of the gospel. In
another point of view the ruin of the ancient capital of Judea proved
advantageous to the Church. In the subversion of their chief city the
power of the Jews sustained a shock from which it has never since
recovered; and the disciples were partially delivered from the attacks
of their most restless and implacable persecutors.

Much obscurity rests upon the history of the period which immediately
follows the destruction of Jerus