Galilee, and adjoining to Hus, the country of Job, and to Such the city of Bildad the Shuite, as both such chorographers who best knew those parts do plainly shew, and the holy text makes manifest. For Job is said to have exceeded in riches, and Solomon in wisdom, all the people of the east; not the inhabitants of mount Seir, which lay due south from Palestina. True it is, that Eliphaz the son of Esau had a son called Teman, but that fathers were wont in those days to take name of their sons, I no where find. And Ishmael also had a son called Thema, of whom it is not unlike that Theman in the east had the name; forasmuch as in the seventh chapter of the book of Judges, the Midianites, Amalekites, and all they of the east, are called Ishmaelites. And he that well considers how great and strong a nation Amalek was, which durst give battle to the host of Israel, wherein were 600,000 able men, will hardly believe that such a people were descended from one of Esau's grandchildren. For how powerful and numberless must the forces of all Edom have been, if one tribe of them, yea, one family of a tribe, had been so great! surely mount Seir, and all the regions adjoining, could not have held them. But we nowhere find that Edom had to do with Amalek, or assisted the Amalekites, when Saul went to root them out. For Amalek is nowhere in scripture named as a tribe of Edom, but a nation of itself, if distinct from the Ishmaelites. The like may be said of Midian, that the founder thereof being son to Abraham by Keturah, doubtless was no Edomite. And thus much in general for all the seigniory of the Red sea coast, which Bozius imagines the Edumeans to have held: if the Edomites in aftertimes held some places, as Elan and Ezion-gaber on the Red sea shore, yet in Moses's time, which was long after the building of Tyre, they held them not. For Moses himself saith, that Israel did compass all the borders of Edom; within which limits had Midian stood, Moses must needs have known it, because he had sojourned long in that country, and there had left his wife and children, when he went into Egypt.

But conjectural arguments, how probable soever, are

needless in so manifest a case. For in the 83d Psalm, Edom, Amalek, and Tyre, are named as distinct nations; yea, the Tyrians and Sidonians being one people, as all good authors shew, and Bozius himself confesseth, were Canaanites, as appears Gen. x. 15, 19. appointed by God to have been destroyed, and their lands given to the children of Asher, Josh. xxix. because they were idolaters, and of the cursed seed of Canaan, not cousins to Israel, nor professors of the same religion. For though Hiram said, Blessed be God who hath sent king David a wise son; we cannot infer that he was of David's religion. The Turk hath said as much of Christian princes, his confederates. Certain it is that the Sidonians then worshipped Astaroth, and drew Solomon also to the same idolatry.

Whereas Hiram aided Solomon in building the temple, he did it for his own ends, receiving therefore of Solomon great provision of corn and oil, and the offer of twenty towns or villages in Galilee. And if we rightly consider things, it will appear that Hiram in all points dealt merchant-like with Solomon. He allowed him timber, with which Libanus was and yet is overpestered, being otherwise apt to yield silks; as the Andarine silks, which come from thence, and other good commodities. For corn and oil, which he wanted, he gave that which he could well spare to Solomon. Also gold for land; wherein Solomon was the wiser, who having got the gold first, gave to Hiram the worst villages that he had, with which the Tyrian was ill pleased. But it was a necessary policy which enforced Tyrus to hold league with Israel. For David had subdued Moab, Ammon, Edom, the Aramites, and a great part of Arabia, even to Euphrates; through which countries the Tyrians were wont to carry and recarry their wares on camels to their fleets on the Red sea, and back again to Tyrus; so that Solomon, being lord of all the countries through which they were to pass, could have cut off their trade.

But the Israelites were no seamen, and therefore glad to share with the Tyrians in their adventures. Yet Solomon,

as lord of the sea-towns, which his father had taken from the Philistines, might have greatly distressed the Tyrians, and perhaps have brought them even into subjection. Which Hiram knowing, was glad (and no marvel) that Solomon rather meant as a man of peace to employ his father's treasure in magnificent works, than in pursuing the conquest of all Syria. Therefore he willingly aided him, and sent him cunning workmen, to increase his delight in goodly buildings, imageries, and instruments of pleasure.

As these passages between Solomon and Hiram are no strong arguments of piety in the Tyrians, so those other proofs, which Bozius frames negatively upon particular examples, are very weak. For what the religion of Cadmus was, I think, no man knows. It seems to me, that having more cunning than the Greeks, and being very ambitious, he would fain have purchased divine honours, which his daughters, nephews, and others of his house obtained, but his own many misfortunes beguiled him of such hopes, if he had any. Thales and Pherecydes are but single examples. Every savage nation hath some whose wisdom excelleth the vulgar, even of civil people. Neither did the moral wisdom of these men express any true knowledge of the true God only they made no good mention of the gods of Greece, whom, being newly come thither, they knew not. It is no good argument to say, that Cadmus and Thales being Tyrians are not known to have taught idolatry, therefore the, Tyrians were not idolaters. But this is of force, that Carthage, Utica, Leptis, Cadiz, and all colonies of the Tyrians (of which I think the islands before mentioned in the Red sea to have been, for they traded in all seas) were idolaters, even from their first beginnings; therefore the Tyrians who planted them, and to whom they had reference, were so likewise.

This their idolatry from Solomon's time onwards is acknowledged by Bozius, who would have us think them to have been formerly a strange kind of devout Edomites. In which fancy he is so peremptory, that he styleth men of contrary opinion impios politicos; as if it were impiety to think that

God (who even among the heathen, which have not known his name, doth favour virtue and hate vice) hath often rewarded moral honesty with temporal happiness. Doubtless this doctrine of Bozius would better have agreed with Julian the apostate than with Cyril. For if the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and all those nations of the Gentiles, did then prosper most, when they drew nearest unto the true religion; what may be said of the foul idolatry which grew in Rome, as fast as Rome itself grew; and was enlarged with some new superstition, almost upon every new victory? How few great battles did the Romans win, in which they vowed not either a temple to some new god, or some new honour to one of their old gods? Yea, what one nation, save only that of the Jews, was subdued by them, whose gods they did not afterwards entertain in their city? Only the true God, which was the God of the Jews, they rejected, upbraiding the Jews with him, as if he were unworthy of the Roman majesty. Shall we hereupon enforce the lewd and foolish conclusion, which heathen writers used against the Christians in the primitive church, that such idolatry had caused the city of Rome to flourish, and that the decay of those abominations did also bring with it the decay of the empire? It might well be thought so, if prosperity were a sign or effect of true religion. Such is the blind zeal of Bozius, who writing against those whom he falsely terms impious, gives strength to such as are impious indeed. But such indiscretion is usually found among men of his humour; who, having once either foolishly embraced the dreams of others, or vainly fashioned in their own brains any strange chimeras of divinity, condemn all such in the pride of their zeal, as atheists and infidels, that are not transported with the like intemperate ignorance. Great pity it is that such mad dogs are oftentimes encouraged by those who, having the command of many tongues, when they themselves cannot touch a man in open and generous opposition, will wound him secretly by the malicious virtue of an hypocrite.

RALEGH, HIST. WORLD, VOL. II.

U

CHAP. IX.

Of the tribe of Ephraim; and of the kings of the ten tribes, whose head was Ephraim.

SECT. I.

Of the memorable places in the tribe of Ephraim.

HAVING now passed over Phoenicia, we come to the

next territory adjoining, which is that of Ephraim; sometime taken, iper excellentiam, for the whole kingdom of the ten tribes. Ephraim was the second son of Joseph, whose issues, when they left Egypt, were in number 45,000; all which dying in the deserts, Joshua excepted, there entered the Holy Land of their children, grown to be able men, 32,500, who sat down on the west side of Jordan, between Manasseh and Benjamin; who bounded Ephraim by the north and south, as Jordan and the Mediterranean sea did by the east and west.

The first and chief city which Ephraim had was Samaria, the metropolis of the kingdom of Israel, built by Amris, or Homri, king thereof, and seated on the top of the mountain Somron, which overlooketh all the bottom, and as far as the sea-coast. It was afterwards called Sebaste, or Augusta, in honour of Augustus Cæsar. This city is often remembered in the scriptures, and magnificent it was in the first building; for, as Brochard observeth, the ruins which yet remain, and which Brochard found greater than those of Jerusalem, tell those that behold them what it was when it stood upright; for to this day there are found great store of goodly marble pillars, with other hewn and carved stone, in great abundance, among the rubble.

It was beaten to the ground by the sons of Hyrcanus the high priest; restored and built by the first Herod, the son of Antipater; who, to flatter Cæsar, called it Sebaste. Herein were the prophets Helisæus and Abdias buried,

i Psalm lix. lxxviii, cviii. Par. 25.