14. "The Jews who lived out of Palestine, in the Roman provinces, did not yield to those of Jerusalem in point of cruelty to the innocent disciples of Christ. We learn from the history of the Acts of the Apostles, and other records of unquestionable authority, that they spared no labor, but zealously seized every occasion of animating the magistrates against the Christians, and setting on the multitude to demand their destruction. The high priest of the nation and the Jews who dwelt in Palestine were instrumental in inciting the rage of these foreign Jews against the infant Church, by sending messengers to exhort them, not only to avoid all intercourse with the Christians, but also to persecute them in the most vehement manner. For this inhuman order they endeavored to find out the most plausible pretexts; and therefore, they gave out that the Christians were enemies to the Roman emperor, since they acknowledged the authority of a certain person whose name was Jesus, whom Pilate had punished capitally as a malefactor by a most righteous sentence, and on whom, nevertheless, they conferred the royal dignity."--(Mosheim, "Ecclesiastical History," Cent. I, Part I, 5:2.) 15. In the latter half of the first century, the scene of Judaistic persecution of the church had shifted from Jerusalem to the outlying provinces; and the cause of this was the general exodus of Christians from the city whose destruction had been decreed.--(See Note 4, end of chapter.) Our Lord's predictions as to the fate of Jerusalem and His warnings to the people--(See Luke 21:5-9, 20-24.) had been very generally heeded. Eusebius--(Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History," Book III, ch. 5.) informs us that the body of the Church had moved from Jerusalem into the provinces beyond the Jordan, and thus largely escaped the calamities of the Jews who remained. NOTES