An Introduction to the Reading of the Holy Scriptures; Intended Chiefly for Young Students in Divinity Written Originally in French - Softcover
Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1806. Excerpt: ... torture, for fear the guilty should escape h. It is justly wondered at, that Josephus should make no mention of the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem", which was done by Herod's order, not long after our Saviour's birth. To account for this omission, some learned men have imagined, that this massacre having been done privately from house to house by a few soldiers, it made no great noise, or else was not set to Herod's account d. But it is most probable that Josephus knew nothing of it,"'since he found it not in the memoirs of Nicolaus Damascenus, an historian of those times; whom he himself charges with having palliated and disguised the most notorious and extravagant cruelties of Herode. It seems however not to have been unknown to a heathen authorf, who speaks of it (though confusedly,) in the following manner: "Augustus having been informed, "that among some children, which Herod had ordered ' to be killed in Syria, (he should have said JudeaJ he "did not spare one of his own sons, said, " That it "was much better to be Herod's swine, than his son," alluding to the Jewish custom of not eating swine's flesh. However this be, as Herod was a Jew, he could not be the author of so barbarous a cruelty without making himself guilty of the utmost impiety, since he did it with a design to cut off the Messiah, being fully satisfied by the answer which he received from the chief priests and elderss, that the new-born infant was the promised Christ. His end, and a very dismal one, being a visible punishment of his wickedness, closely followed this horrid butchery. He died as he had lived, contriving nothing but mischief, and framing the most bloody and inhuman designs'1. His death was looked upon as a very happy 'Id. ibid. p. 19, e Matth. ij. 16. Lami Harm. ...
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