Here I understand a prediction of the earthquake, and of the destruction of the ancient solemnities of the Jewish race, and of the worship practised by them in Jerusalem, the ruin that should overtake them after the coming of our Saviour, when, since they rejected the Christ of God, the true High Priest, leprosy infected their souls, as in the days of Ozias, when the Lord Himself standing on the altar gave leave to him that struck, saying: "Strike the altar." For He shewed this in effect, when He said: "Your house is left unto you desolate." Concurrently, too, with His Passion "The veil of the Temple was rent from the top to the bottom," as Josephus records as happening also in the time of Ozias. Then, first the courts were shaken, when the earth was shaken at the time of His Passion, and not long after, they underwent their final ruin, the striker received authority and struck upon the heads of all.