Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, A plain description of Jerusalem from Joshua's time to the year 1517, both from Scripture and ancient history.pdf/18

Nero had ſo great a contempt for the Jews, that Ceſtius made it his ſuit to the high prieſts to bethink themſelves of ſome way of numbering their people; and this he did out of a deſire to give Nero to underſtand, that the Jewiſh nation was not ſo deſpicable as he imagined; ſo that they took their time to enter upon the computation, at the celebration of their paſchal feaſt; When offering up ſacrifice to be eaten afterwards, in the ninth hour of the day to the eleventh; and the ſacrifice to be eaten afterwards, in their families, by ten at leaſt, and ſometimes twenty to a lamb; they reckoned upon two hundred and ſixty-ſix thouſand, five hundred oblations; which at the rate of ten to a lamb, amounted to two millions, ſix hundred and ſixty-five thouſand perfons, all pure and ſound. For neither lepers, ſcorbutis, men troubled with gonnorhoeas, women in their monthly ſickneſs, or people labouring under any inalignant diſtempers, were admitted to any part, in this ſolemnity: No more were any ſtrangers, but what came thither for religion. So that this mighty concourſe of people from abroad before the ſiege, was afterwards by the righteous Providence of God, cooped up in that city, as in a priſon: And the number of the ſlain in that ſiege, was the heavieſt judgement of that kind that ever was heard of. Some were killed openly, others kept in cuſtody by the Romans,