About three years after the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, according to the common account, Judea was invaded by the Roman armies, and Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed, as our Lord had predicted. By this awful calamity, it is supposed that most of the churches in Judea were scattered; for they fled their country at the approach of their enemies, as they were taught by Jesus Christ to do. (Matt. 24:16.) This war resulted not only in the breaking up of the nation, and the destruction of a great portion of the people, but also in bringing a general odium upon the Jews wherever they were found; so that even the Christians of Judea suffered what our Saviour taught them to expect, (Matt. 24:9,) "And ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." These circumstances, added to the enmity which formerly existed between the Gentiles and the Jews, produced a prejudice which had its influence in the church in bringing into disrepute, and in fixing a stigma upon, whatever was regarded as Judaism. "The doctrines of our Saviour and the church, flourishing from day to day, continued to receive constant accessions," says _Eusebius_, "but the calamities of the Jews also continued to grow with one accumulation of evil upon another." The insurrectionary disposition of the conquered Jews in the reign of _Trajan_, in the early part of the second century, and the calamities that followed them, seemed to confirm the opinion that the Jews were given over by the Almighty to entire destruction. But their calamities increased in the reign of _Adrian_, who succeeded _Trajan_, in whose reign the revolt of the Jews again proceeded to many and great excesses, and _Rufus_, the lieutenant governor of Judea, using their madness as a pretext, destroyed myriads of men, women and children, in crowds; and by the laws of war, he reduced their country to a state of absolute subjection, and the degraded race to the condition of slaves. The transformation of the church in Jerusalem is thus described by _Eusebius_: "The city of the Jews being thus reduced to a state of abandonment for them, and totally stripped of its ancient inhabitants, and also inhabited by strangers; the Roman city which subsequently arose changing its name, was called _Ælia_, in honor of the emperor Ælias Adrian; and when the church was collected there of the Gentiles, the first bishop after those of the circumcision was _Marcus_." Thus was extinguished the Hebrew church in Jerusalem, having had a succession of fifteen pastors; "all which," says _Eusebius_, "they say, were Hebrews from the first. At that time the whole church under them," he adds, "consisted of faithful Hebrews, who continued from the time of the Apostles to the siege that then took place."