but he contents himself with describing the singular
defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the
greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without
splendor. The season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with
the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated
by most of the poets [199] and historians of that memorable age. [200]

[Footnote 194: The fathers, as they are drawn out in battle array by
Dom Calmet, (Dissertations sur la Bible, tom. iii. p. 295--308,) seem to
cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most
of the moderns.]

[Footnote 195: Origen ad Matth. c. 27, and a few modern critics, Beza,
Le Clerc, Lardner, &c., are desirous of confining it to the land of
Judea.]

[Footnote 196: The celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely
abandoned. When Tertullian assures the Pagans that the mention of the
prodigy is found in Arcanis (not Archivis) vestris, (see his Apology, c.
21,) he probably appeals to the Sibylline verses, which relate it
exactly in the words of the Gospel. * Note: According to some learned
theologians a misunderstanding of the text in the Gospel has given rise
to this mistake, which has employed and wearied so many laborious
commentators, though Origen had already taken the pains to preinform
them. The expression does not mean, they assert, an eclipse, but any
kind of obscurity occasioned in the atmosphere, whether by clouds or any
other cause. As this obscuration of the sun rarely took place in
Palestine, where in the middle of April the sky was usually clear, it
assumed, in the eyes of the Jews and Christians, an importance
conformable to the received notion, that the sun concealed at midday was
a sinister presage. See Amos viii. 9, 10. The word is often taken in
this sense by contemporary writers; the Apocalypse says the sun was
concealed, when speaking of an obscuration caused by smoke and dust.
(Revel. ix. 2.) Moreover, the Hebrew word ophal, which in the LXX.
answers to the Greek, signifies any darkness; and the Evangelists, who
have modelled the sense of their expressions by those of the LXX., must
have taken it in the same latitude. This darkening of the sky usually
precedes earthquakes. (Matt. xxvii. 51.) The Heathen authors furnish us
a number of examples, of which a miraculous explanation was given at the
time. See Ovid. ii. v. 33, l. xv. v. 785. Pliny, Hist. Nat. l. ii. c 30.
Wetst