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gold, sharp at the ends, lest birds should sit thereon, and defile the holy place.
Our Saviour was born in the year of the world 4004, and in the 43d year of Augustus Cæsar; many remarkable things were seen in the heavens, which caused the wise men to conclude, that some more than an ordinary person would appear on the earth; the learned thought it to be Augustus Cæsar, who then reigned prosperously; but others thought it to be he whom the prophet Isaiah speaks of that should have the government on his shoulders, even the Saviour of the world, whom the Evangelists mention, that the angels declared to the shepherds, and the star directed the wise men of the east to find out the place of his birth. So that,
As the new earth with a new sun was blest,
So heaven with a new glorious star was drest.
At Christ's birth, the temple at Rome, dedicated to the god Pan, fell to the earth; and when it was built, the Romans addressed the oracle of Apollo, to know how long it should endure; who answered, "Till a Virgin should bring forth a son," which they judged impossible, therefore they believed that their temple should last eternally.
The night that Christ was born, there appeared in Spain at midnight, a cloud with so great a light, that it seemed like mid-day. St Jerom writes, that when the Virgin fled with her son into Egypt, all the images of the gods tumbled
