phis, and so the Septuagint write it. It is known to the Arabians by the name of Mazar. The Chaldeans name it Alchabyr; and Tudalensis, Mizraim.

Pelusium, which Vatablus, Pagnin, Junius, and our English write Sin, the Septuagint call Sais, and Montanus Lebna; is not the same with Damiata, as e Gul. Tyrius witnesseth. In the time of Baldwin III. Pelusium was called Belbeis: Belbeis, saith Tyrius, quæ olim dicta est Pelusium; "Belbeis, that in times past was called Pe"lusium."

The city of No, the fSeptuagint call Diospolis; of which name there are two or three in Egypt. Jerome converts it Alexandria, by anticipation, because it was so called in the future.

Bubastus (for so Jerome and Zeigler write it) is the same which the g Hebrews call Pibeseth.

To make the story the more perceivable, I have added a description of the land of Gosen, in which the Israelites inhabited, with those cities and places so often remembered in the scripture; as of Taphnes or Zoan, Heliopolis or Bethsemes, Balsephon, Succoth, and the rest; together with Moses's passage through the deserts of Arabia the Stony. For all story, without the knowledge of the places wherein the actions were performed, as it wanteth a great part of the pleasure, so it no way enricheth the knowledge and understanding of the reader; neither doth any thing serve to retain what we read in our memories, so well as these pictures and descriptions do. In which respect I am driven to digress in many places, and to interpose some such discourse, otherwise seeming impertinent, taking for my authority, after many others more ancient, that great learned man Arias Montanus; who, in his preface to the story of the Holy Land, hath these words: Si enim absque locorum observatione res gestæ narrentur, aut sine topographic cognitione historiæ legantur, adeo confusa atque pertur

G. Tyr. 1. 20. c. 17. lib. 2. c. 5. f Ezek. xxx. 15, 16.

8 Ezek. xxx. 17.

bata erunt omnia, ut ex iis nihil non obscurum, nihil non difficile elici possit; "If narration," saith he, " be made of "those things which are performed, without the observa❝tion of the places wherein they were done, or if histories "be read without topographical knowledge, all things will appear so intricate and confused, as we shall thereby un"derstand nothing but obscurely, nor draw thence any knowledge but with the greatest difficulty."

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SECT. III.

Of the cruelty against the Israelites' young children in Egypt; and of Moses's preservation and education.

BUT to return to the story itself. It appeareth that notwithstanding the labour and slavery which the Israelites endured, yet they decreased not in numbers; insomuch as Pharaoh considering the danger of discontented poverty, and the able bodies of an oppressed multitude, how perilous they might be to his estate, by suggestion of the Devil resolved to slaughter all the male children of the Hebrews, as soon as they should be born. To which end he sent for Sephora and Thura, women the most famous and expert amongst them; quæ præerant, saith Comestor, multitudini obstetricum: "who had command given them over all mid"wives;" by whom, as it seemeth, he gave order to all the rest for the execution of his edict. For to have called all the midwives of Egypt together, had been a strange parliament. Now whether these two before named were of the Hebrews or of the Egyptians, it is diversely disputed. St. Augustine calls them Hebrews, because it is written, Exod. i. 15. The king of Egypt commanded the midwives of the Hebrew women, &c. But hJosephus, Abulensis, and Pererius believe them to be Egyptians. Whosoever they were, when it pleased God to frustrate the execution of that secret murder, to the end the world might witness both the wickedness of the Egyptians, and the just cause, thereby made manifest, of his future indignation and reh Joseph. Ant. 1. 2. c. 5. Abul. et Perer. in Exod.

venge; Pharaoh, finding those women filled with piety and the fear of God, commanded others of his people to execute his former intent; and publicly, or howsoever, to destroy all the male Hebrew children born within his dominions.

Now besides the doubts which Pharaoh had of the multitudes of the Hebrews, the greatest part of whom he might have assured, by affording them the justice which every king oweth to his vassals, and the rest he might have employed or sent away at his pleasure, i Josephus giveth another cause of his rage against them; namely, that it was prophetically delivered him by an Egyptian priest, that among the Hebrews there should be born a child, who, growing to man's estate, should become a plague and terror to his whole nation. To prevent which, (and presuming that he could resist the ordinance of God by a mean contrary to the laws of heaven and of nature,) he stretched out his bloody and merciless hand to the execution of his former intent. The same prevention Herod long after practised, when fearing the spiritual kingdom of Christ, as if it should have been temporal, he caused all the male children at that time born to be slaughtered. And that Pharaoh had some kind of foreknowledge of the future success, it may be gathered by these his own words in Exod. i. 10. Come, let us work wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, if there be war, they join themselves also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them out of the land. But we see, and time hath told it us from the beginning, how God derideth the wisdom of the worldly men, when, forgetting the Lord of all power, they rely on the inventions of their own most feeble and altogether darkened understanding. For even by the hands of the dearly beloved daughter of this tyrant, was that great prophet and minister of God's marvellous works taken out of Nilus, being thereinto turned off, in an ark of reeds, a sucking and powerless infant. And this princess having beheld the child's form and beauty, though but yet in the blouth, so pierced her compassion, as she did not only preserve it,

i Joseph. Ant. 1. 2. c. 5.

and cause it to be fostered, but commanded that it should be esteemed as her own, and with equal care to the son of a king nourished. And for memory that it was her deed, she called the child Moses, as it were extractus, or ereptus, taken out, to wit, out of the water; or after Josephus and Glycas, Moy, a voice expressing water, and hises; as much as to say, that which is drawn out of water, or thence taken. Clemens Alexandrinus was of opinion that Moses was circumcised before he was put into the ark of reeds, and that Amram his father had named him Joachim. In his youth he was carefully bred, by the care and at the charge of Pharaoh's daughter, and by men of the most understanding taught and instructed: Quem regio more educavit, præfectis ei sapientibus Ægyptiorum magistris, a quibus erudiretur, saith Basil; "Unto whom she

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gave princely education, appointing over him wise mas"ters of the Egyptians for his instructors." Thereby, saith Josephus and Philo, he became excellently learned in all the doctrine of the Egyptians; which also the martyr Stephen, in the seventh of the Acts, confirmeth: And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. Which wisdom or sapience, such as it was, or at least so much thereof as Sixtus Senensis hath gathered, we have added, between the death of Moses and the reign of Joshua.

SECT. IV.

Of Moses's flying out of Egypt; and the opinions of certain ancient historians of his war in Ethiopia, and of his marriage there. Philo's judgment of his pastoral life, and that of Pererius of the books of Genesis and Job.

WHEN Moses was grown to man's estate, Josephus and Eusebius, out of Artapanus, tell us of ten years war that he made against the Ethiopians; of the besieging of Saba, afterwards by Cambyses called Meroe; and how he recovered that city by the favour of Tharbis, a daughter of Ethiopia, whom he took to wife. So hath Comestor a pretty tale of Moses; How after the end of that war, Thar1 Phil. de Vita Moys.

* Strom. 1. 1.

bis resisting his return into Egypt, Moses, most skilful in astronomy, caused two images to be engraven in two precious stones; whereof the one increased memory, the other caused forgetfulness. These he set in two rings, whereof he gave the one, to wit, that of oblivion, to his wife Tharbis, reserving the other of memory for himself; which ring of forgetfulness, after she had a while worn, she began to neglect the love she bare her husband; and so Moses without danger returned into Egypt. But leaving these fancies to the authors of them; it is true, that about the 40th year of Moses's age, when he beheld an Egyptian offering violence to one of the oppressed Hebrews, moved by compassion in respect of his brother, and stirred up by disdain against the other, in the contention he slew the Egyptian. Soon after which act, finding a disposition in some of his own nation to accuse him, for whose defence he had thus greatly endangered his own life; by the ordinance and advice of God, whose chosen servant he was, he fled into Arabia Petræa, the next bordering country to Egypt; where wandering all alone, as a man left and forsaken, in a place unknown unto him, as among a nation of barbarous strangers, and who in future times were the irreconcileable enemies of the Hebrews; it pleased God (working the greatest things by the weakest worldly means) to make the watering of a few sheep, and the assisting of the daughters of Raguel the Madianite, an occasion whereby to provide him a wife of one of those, and a father-in-law, that fed him and sustained him in a country nearest Egypt, fittest to return from; necessary to be known, because interjacent between Egypt and Judæa, through which he was to lead the Israelites; and wherein God held him, till the occasion, which God presented, best served. And lastly, where the glory of the world shined least, amidst mountainous deserts, there the glory of God, which shineth most, covered him over, and appeared unto him, not finding him as a king's son, or an adopted child of great Pharaoh's daughter, but as a meek and humble shepherd, sitting at a mountain foot; a keeper and commander of those poor beasts only.

RALEGH, HIST. WORLD. VOL. II.

F