us falsely could have the impudence to do it, there being no wickedness
wanting to complete their impudent practices but this only, that they
become traitors. And now you Idumeans are come hither already with
your arms, it is your duty, in the first place, to be assisting to your
metropolis, and to join with us in cutting off those tyrants that have
infringed the rules of our regular tribunals, that have trampled upon
our laws, and made their swords the arbitrators of right and wrong; for
they have seized upon men of great eminence, and under no accusation,
as they stood in the midst of the market-place, and tortured them with
putting them into bonds, and, without bearing to hear what they had to
say, or what supplications they made, they destroyed them. You may, if
you please, come into the city, though not in the way of war, and take
a view of the marks still remaining of what I now say, and may see the
houses that have been depopulated by their rapacious hands, with those
wives and families that are in black, mourning for their slaughtered
relations; as also you may hear their groans and lamentations all the
city over; for there is nobody but hath tasted of the incursions of
these profane wretches, who have proceeded to that degree of madness,
as not only to have transferred their impudent robberies out of the
country, and the remote cities, into this city, the very face and head
of the whole nation, but out of the city into the temple also; for that
is now made their receptacle and refuge, and the fountain-head whence
their preparations are made against us. And this place, which is adored
by the habitable world, and honored by such as only know it by report,
as far as the ends of the earth, is trampled upon by these wild beasts
born among ourselves. They now triumph in the desperate condition they
are already in, when they hear that one people is going to fight against
another people, and one city against another city, and that your nation
hath gotten an army together against its own bowels. Instead of which
procedure, it were highly fit and reasonable, as I said before, for you
to join with us in cutting off these wretches, and in particular to
be revenged on them for putting this very cheat upon you; I mean, for
having the impudence to invite you to assist them, of whom they ought to
have stood in fear, as ready to punish them. But if you have some regard
to these men's invitation of you, yet may you lay aside your