onquered unexpectedly. It is very plain that we shall be taken
within a day's time; but it is still an eligible thing to die after a
glorious manner, together with our dearest friends. This is what our
enemies themselves cannot by any means hinder, although they be very
desirous to take us alive. Nor can we propose to ourselves any more
to fight them, and beat them. It had been proper indeed for us to have
conjectured at the purpose of God much sooner, and at the very first,
when we were so desirous of defending our liberty, and when we received
such sore treatment from one another, and worse treatment from our
enemies, and to have been sensible that the same God, who had of old
taken the Jewish nation into his favor, had now condemned them to
destruction; for had he either continued favorable, or been but in a
lesser degree displeased with us, he had not overlooked the destruction
of so many men, or delivered his most holy city to be burnt and
demolished by our enemies. To be sure we weakly hoped to have preserved
ourselves, and ourselves alone, still in a state of freedom, as if we
had been guilty of no sins ourselves against God, nor been partners with
those of others; we also taught other men to preserve their liberty.
Wherefore, consider how God hath convinced us that our hopes were in
vain, by bringing such distress upon us in the desperate state we are
now in, and which is beyond all our expectations; for the nature of this
fortress which was in itself unconquerable, hath not proved a means of
our deliverance; and even while we have still great abundance of food,
and a great quantity of arms, and other necessaries more than we want,
we are openly deprived by God himself of all hope of deliverance; for
that fire which was driven upon our enemies did not of its own accord
turn back upon the wall which we had built; this was the effect of God's
anger against us for our manifold sins, which we have been guilty of
in a most insolent and extravagant manner with regard to our own
countrymen; the punishments of which let us not receive from the Romans,
but from God himself, as executed by our own hands; for these will be
more moderate than the other. Let our wives die before they are abused,
and our children before they have tasted of slavery; and after we
have slain them, let us bestow that glorious benefit upon one another
mutually, and preserve ourselves in freedom, as an excellent funeral
monument for us. But first let