of Syria, and reduced it into a Province, and 34 years after they did the like to Egypt.  By all these steps the Roman Arms stood up over the Greeks:  and after 95 years more, by making war upon the Jews, they polluted the sanctuary of strength, and took away the daily sacrifice, and then placed the abomination of desolation.  For this abomination was placed after the days of Christ, Math. xxiv. 15.  In the 16th year of the Emperor Adrian, A.C. 132, they placed this abomination by building a Temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, where the Temple of God in Jerusalem had stood.  Thereupon the Jews under the conduct of Barchochab rose up in arms against the Romans, and in the war had 50 cities demolished, 985 of their best towns destroyed, and 580000 men slain by the sword; and in the end of the war, A.C. 136, were banished Judea upon pain of death, and thenceforward the land remained desolate of its old inhabitants.

In the beginning of the Jewish war in Nero’s reign, the Apostles fled out of Judea with their flocks; some beyond Jordan to Pella and other places, some into Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia minor, and elsewhere. Peter and John came into Asia, and Peter went thence by Corinth to Rome; but John staying in Asia, was banished by the Romans into Patmos, as the head of a party of the Jews, whose nation was in war with the Romans.  By this dispersion of the Christian Jews, the Christian religion, which was already propagated westward as far as Rome, spred fast into all the Roman Empire, and suffered many persecutions under it till the days of Constantine the great and his sons:  all which is thus described by Daniel. [11] And such as do wickedly against the covenant, shall he, who places the abomination, cause to dissemble, and worship the heathen Gods; but the people among them who do know their God, shall be strong and act.  And they that understand among the people, shall instruct many:  yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, and by captivity, and by spoil many days.  Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help, viz. in the reign of Constantine the great; and at that time by reason of their prosperity, many shall come over to them from among the heathen, and cleave to them with dissimulation.  But of those of understanding there shall still fall to try God’s people by them and to purge them from the dissemblers, and to make them white even to the time of the end:  because it is yet for a time appointed.