Having brought these charges against them in the beginning of his book, and shewn beforehand the reasons for the later predictions that he is to bring against them, he goes on to say, "Your land is desolate," though it was not desolate at the time when he prophesied : "Your cities are burnt with fire." Nor had this yet taken place, and strangers had not devoured their land. And yet he says, "Your land, (64) strangers devour it before your eyes," and that which follows. But if you came down to the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of those He sent, and to the present time, you would find all the sayings fulfilled. For the daughter of Zion (by whom was meant the worship celebrated on Mount Zion) from the time of the coming of our Saviour has (b) been left as a tent in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, or as anything that is more desolate than these. And strangers devour the land before their eyes, now exacting tax and tribute, and now appropriating for themselves the land which belonged of old to Jews. Yea, and the beauteous Temple of their mother-city was laid low, being cast down by alien peoples, and their cities were burnt with fire, and Jerusalem became truly a besieged city. But (c) since, when all this happened, the choir of the Apostles, and those of the Hebrews who believed in Christ, were preserved from among them as a fruitful seed, and going through every race of men in the whole world, filled every city and place and country with the seed of Christianity and Israel, so that like corn springing from it, the churches which are founded in our Saviour's name have come into being, the divine prophet naturally adds to his previous threats against them: "We should have been as Sodom, (d) and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Which the holy Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans more clearly defines and interprets.