People who being given up to their Senses could not have any conceptions of an Invisible God On the contrary they were stupid and rebellious as much if not more than any other People But that invisible God in his nature made himself so sensible by his continual Miracles and Moses inculcated them with so much force that at length that sensual People were overcome by the pure Idea of a God who made all things by his word of a God who who was only Spirit Reason and Intelligence So that whilst Idolatry so mightily encreased since Abraham's time was spread over all the Face of the Earth the only Posterity of that Patriarch was free from it Their Enemies bore that Testimony of them and the People where the truth of Tradition was not yet utterly abolished and worn out declared with astonishment that there was not seen an Idol in Jacob neither any superstitious Presages nor Divinations nor Witchcrafts but they were a People who trusted in the Lord their God whose Power was invincible To fix and imprint in their minds the Unity of God and the perfect Uniformity which he requires in his worship Moses often repeats that in the promised Land this only God would chuse out a place in which alone the Feasts and Sacrifices Numb xii xiv xv xvi xvii c. and all the publick Service should be performed Whilst they were waiting for this desired place during the time the People wandered in the wilderness Moses built the Tabernacle the Temple which was carried about where the Children of Israel offered up their Prayers to God who had made heaven and earth and who did not disdain with reverence may I say it to travel with them and to be their Guide Upon this Principle of Religion upon this Sacred Foundation was built all the Law a Law holy just beneficent honest wise provident and simple which bound the Society of men among themselves by the holy Society of Man with God To this Holy Institution he added Majestical Ceremonies Feasts that recalled to mind the Remembrances of the Miracles whereby the People of Israel had been delivered Deut. xxvii xxviii c. and what no other Legislator ever durst do particular Assurances that all things should be prosperous with them so long as they liv'd in subjection to the Law whereas their Disobedience should be pursued with a manifest and inevitable vengeance He must needs be very much assured by God to be able to give such a Foundation to his Laws and the event hath justifyed that Moses had not spoke of his own head As to the numerous observances which he laid upon the Hebrews tho' now they seem superfluous to us they were in those days requisite and necessary to separate the people of God from the rest of Mankind and served as a Barrier to Idolatry lest it should bewitch and ensnare the people of God into Compliances with their ways of worship To maintain the Religion and all the Traditions of the People of God among the twelve Tribes one Tribe was chosen to which God gives in share with the Tithes and Oblations the care of Sacred things Levi and his Children are themselves consecrated to God as the Tenth of all his People In Levi Aaron is chosen to be the High Priest and the Priesthood is made hereditary in his Family Thus the Altars had their Ministers the Law her particular Defenders and the course of the People of God is justified by the Succession of its Priests who came without Iâ—terruption from Aaron the first of them all But what was still more lovely in this Law was that it prepared the way for a Law more August and Noble less clogg'd with Ceremonies and more fruitful in Divine Virtues Moses to keep the People in expectation of that Law confirmed to them the coming of that great Prophet who was to proceed from Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Deut. 18.15 18. The Lord thy God saith he will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of Thee of thy Brethren like unto me unto him Ye shall hearken That Prophet like unto Moses a Legislator as he was who could he be unless the Messiah whose Doctrine was one day to influence and sanctifie all the World And there arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses Deut. 34.10 whom the Lord knew face to face and who gave Laws to his People So even unto the time of the Messiah the People in all times and under all difficulties rested themselves only upon Moses As Rome paid Reverence to the Laws of Romulus Numa and the twelve Tables as Athens had recourse to those of Solon as Lacedemonia preserved and respected those of Lycurgus So the Hebrews were continually alledging those of Moses Now the Legislator had so well adjusted all things in it that never was there an occasion to change any thing Wherefore the Body of the Jewish Law is not a Recollection of divers Laws made at several times and upon different occasions Moses being illuminated by the Spirit of God had foreseen all things We do see none of the Ordinances of David or of Solomon or of Jehosaphat or of Hezekiah though they were all very zealous for Justice The good Princes only observed the Law of Moses 1 Kings 2.3 Deut. 4.2.12.32 and were contented to recommend the observance of it to their Successors Either to add to it or to diminish one Tittle from it was an attempt which the People looked upon with horror There was a continual need of the Law to regulate not only their Feasts their Sacrifices and their Ceremonies but also all their other publick and private Actions Judgments Concracts Marriages Successions Funerals the very form of their Clothes and in general whatsoever respected manners There was no other Book wherein the Precepts of good living were studied They were to examine and meditate on it night day and to remember the Sentences and to have them always before their Eyes That the Children learnt to read The only Rule of Education which was given to their Parents to teach them and to inculcate into them and to make them observe that holy Law which alone was able to make them wise from their Childhood So likewise was it to be in the hands of all the World Besides the constant daily readily which every one was obliged to in private there was a publick reading of it at the end of every Seven years Deut. 31.10 2 Esdras 8.17 18. in the Solemnity of the year of Release and it was as a new publication at the Feast of Tabernacles where all the People were assembled for eight days Moses caused the Original of Deuteronomy Deut. 31.26 which was an abstract of the whole Law to be put in the side of the Ark of the Covenant But for fear lest in futurity of time it might be altered by the malice or negligence of men Besides the Copies which ran among the People there were made
Figure of Future Time the Ark wherein God discovered himself to be present by his Oracles and in which the Tables of the Law were kept the Advancement of Aaron the Brother of Moses the High-Priest the Ceremonies of their Consecration and the Form of their mysterious Habits the Priests Functions the Sons of Aaron those of the Levites with the other Observances of Religion and that which is most beautiful and decent the Rules of good Manners the Policy and Government of his chosen People of whom he would be himself the Legislator This is what is observable in the Epocha of the Written Law Afterwards we see the Journey continued in the Wilderness the Revolts the Idolatries the Punishments and Consolations of the People of God whom this Almighty Legislator reduced by these means by degrees the Anointing of Eleazor Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1452 the High-Priest and the Death of his Years of the World 2552 Father Aaron the Zeal of Phineas the Son of Eleazor and the Priesthood secured to his Posterity by a particular Promise During this time the Aegyptians continued the Establishment of their Colonies in divers Places chiefly in Greece where Danaus the Aâ—gyptian was made King of Argos and dispossess'd the Ancient Kings that came Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1451 from Inachus Towards the end of the Israelites Years of the World 2553 Journying in the Wilderness we see the Beginnings of Wars which are rendred successful through the Prayers of Moses But he dies and leaves to the Israelites their whole History which he had carefully digested from the beginning of the World even to the time of his Death This History is continued by the command of Josuah and his Successors This afterwards was divided into several Books and hence it is that we have the Book of Josuah the Book of Judges and the Four Books of Kings The History which Moses wrote and in which all the Law was included was also divided into Five Books which are called the Pentateuch and which are the Ground of Religion After the Death of that Man of God we read of the Wars of Josuah Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1445 the Conquest and Division of the Holy Land Years of the World 2559 and the Rebellions of the People punished and re-established at divers times There Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1405 are likewise the Victories of Othoniel the Son Years of the World 2599 Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1325 of Kenaz the Brother of Caleb who delivered Years of the World 2679 him from the Tyranny of Chausan-Rishathaim King of Mesopotamia and Eighty years after That of Ehud the Son of Gera Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1322 over Eglon King of Moab About this Years of the World 3682 time Pelops the Phrygian the Son of Tantalus reigned in Peloponnesus and called that famous Country by his Name Bel the King of the Chaldeans received from those People Divine Honours The ungrateful Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1305 murmuring Israelites fall again into Servitude Years of the World 1699 Jabin King of Chanaan subjecteth Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1285 them but Deborah the Prophetess who Years of the World 2719 judged the People and Baruc the Son of Ahinoam overcame Sisera the General of Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1245 that Kings Army Thirty years after this Years of the World 2759 Gideon that mighty Man of Valour even without fighting pursues and overcomes the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1236 Medianites Abimelech his Son usurped the Years of the World 2768 Authority by the Murther of his Brethren exercised it after a Tyrannical manner and Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1187 at last loseth it and his Life together Jephtha Years of the World 2817 makes his Victory bloody by a Sacrifice that was not to be excused but by a secret Order and Dispensation from Heaven concerning which it hath not pleased him to reveal any thing to us In this Age there hapned very remarkable things among the Gentiles Herod l. 1. c. 26. For according to Herodotus his Account which seems to be the most exact Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1267 we are to reckon for that time 514. years Years of the World 2737 before Rome Gen. x. 11. and from the time of Deborah Ninus the Son of Bel and the Foundation of the first Empire of the Assyrians The Court was established at Nineveh an Ancient City and then pretty Famous but it was made more Splendid and Glorious by Ninus Those who ascribe 1300 years to the first Assyrians have their Foundation from the Ancientness of the City and Herodotus who allows them but 500 speaks only of the Empires Duration since its beginning under Ninus the Son of Bel to extend it self into the Upper Asia A little after and in that Conqueror's Reign Jos xix 20. Joseph Antiq 8.2 we are to fix the Foundation or the Renewal of the ancient City of Tyre whose Navigation and whose Colonies rendred it so Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1252 considerable At last a little after Abimelech's Years of the World 2752 time we meet with the memorable Combates of Hercules the Son of Amphitryon and those of Theseus King of Athens who made but one great City of the twelve Towns of Cecrops and instituted a better Form of Government among the Atheninians During Jephtha's time whilst Semiramis who came from Ninus and was the Governess of Ninyas inlarged the Assyrian Empire by her Victories The Famous City of Troy already taken once by the Greeks under Laomedon its third King was Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1184 utterly reduced again by the Greeks under Years of the World 2820 Priam the Son of Laomedon after a Siege of ten years V. Epocha The Taking of Troy The fourth Age of the World This Epocha of the Ruin of Troy which hapned about the year 308. after the Departure out of Aegypt and 1164 years after the Deluge is very considerable as well because of the Importance of so great an Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1184 Event celebrated by two of the greatest Years of the World 2820 Poets of Greece and Italy as because that every thing may be brought to this Date which was most remarkable in those called the Fabulous or Hâ—roick Times the Fabulous by reason of the Fables in which the Histories of those Times are wrapt and Heroick by reason of those whom the Poets have called the Sons of the Gods and Heroes Their Lives were not far from this Overthrow For in the time of Laomedon the Father of Priam were all the Heroes of the Golden Fleece Jason Hercules Orpheus Castor and Pollux and all the others that are known to you and in the time of Priam likewise during the last Siege of Troy there were Achilles Agamemnon Menelaus Vlysses Hector Sarâ—edon the Son of Jupiter Aeneas the Son of Venus whom the Romans acknowledged for their Founder and several others from whom the most Illustrious Families and even
A DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY Of the whole WORLD Dedicated to his Royal Highness the Dauphin AND Explicating the Continuance of Religion with the Changes of States and Empires from the Creation till the Reign of Charles the Great Written Originally in French by JAMES BENIGNE BOSSVET sometimes Bishop of Condom and now of Meaux Counsellor of State to the most Christian King heretofore Tutor to the Dauphin and now Chief Almoner to the Dauphiness Faithfully Englished LONDON Printed for Matthew Turner at the Lamb in High-Hollorn MDCLXXXVI TO THE Dauphin The General Design of this Work THough History were little significant to other Men yet it ought to be read by Princes There is no better way to discover to them the various effects and consequences of Passions and Interests Times and Conjunctures good and evil Councils Histories are only composed and made up of such actions as they are engaged in and in them every thing seems to be done for their Vse If experience be necessary for them to obtain that prudence which may enable them to Reign well there can be nothing of greater advantage to their instruction than to join to the examples of former Ages their own daily experiences Whereas otherwise they most an end learn only to judge of the dangerous affairs that occur to them at the expence of both their own Subjects and Glory But by this Relief of History without hazarding any thing they inform their judgments by past Events When they see even into the most secret Vices of Princes notwithstanding all the deceitful Flatteries given them in their Lives exposed to the Eyes of all Men they blush at the vain Joys and Pleasures which such adulation raises in them and sensibly find that there can be no true honour but where there is a just merit Besides it would be a shame I do not say to a Prince alone but in general to any Man of sence and worth to be ignorant of humane kind and of the memorable Changes that have happened in the World through all the Succession of Time If we do not learn from History how to distinguish Times we shall represent Men under the Law of Nature or under the Written Law to be such as are under the Evangelick Law we shall speak of Persians conquered by Alexander as of those victorius Persians under Cyrus we shall make Greece as free in the time of Philip as in that of Themistocles or Miltiades the Roman People as fierce under the Emperors as under the Consuls the Church in as great Tranquillity under Dioclesian as under Constantine and France labouring under the Convulsions of their Civil Wars in the time of Charles the Ninth and Henry the Third as puissant as in the time of Lewis the Fourteenth which being reunited under so great a Monarch by it self triumphs over almost all Europe Now Sir it was to avoid these inconveniences that you have read so many Histories both Antient and Modern It was requisite in the first place to make you acquainted with the Sacred Pages and therein to read the History of the People of God which serves as a good Foundation to Religion Nor have you been suffered to be ignorant in the Greek or Roman History and which was most important to you you have been carefully instructed in the History of this great Kingdom which you are obliged to render happy But lest these Histories and those you are yet to learn should work any confusion in your mind there is nothing more necessary than distinctly to represent to you but as contractedly as we can all the whole Series of Ages This way of Vniuersal History is in regard to the Histories of every Country and People what a general Mapp is to the particular ones In the latter you see only the whole description one Kingdom or Province by it self but in the Vniuersal Mapp you learn how to situate those parts of the World in the whole You see what Paris or the Isle of France is in the Kingdom what the Kingdom is in Europe and what Europe is in the Vniverse So likewise particular Histories represent to you what things have happened to such or such a People with all their Circumstances but to understand the whole clearly you must know what relation every History can have to others which is done by such a way as this is in short where at one glance of your Eye as it were you may see all the order of time Such an Abridgment Sir gives you a very great sight You see all precedent Ages laid as I may say before you in a few hours You see how Empires have succeeded one the other and how Religion in iâ—s different Estates hath equally balanced and supported it self even from the beginning of the World to this present time 'T is the effect of these two things I mean that of Religion and that of Empires which ought to be deeply imprinted in your memory and as Religion and Political Government are the two hinges on which all humane Affairs do turn to see what concerns these things in a small abridged Volume and to discover by this means the exact order and event thereof is to comprehend in his thoughts whatsoever is great and glorious among Men and to hold as I may say the thread of all the Affairs of the World And as when you look upon an Vniversal Map you may presently go off from your own native Country and from the place which bounds you and run thro' all the habitable Earth with all its Seas and Countries which may give a great entertainment to your thoughts so by looking upon such a Chronological Abridgment you may go away from the narrow confinements of your own time and extend your self into all Ages But as to help ones memory in the knowledge of places we must keep in our minds certain chief Towns and Cities round which we are to place all the rest according to their several distances so in the order of Ages we must remember certain Times Memorable for some great event and action to which we are to bring all the other This we call an Epocha from a Greek word that signifies to pause upon because we stay our selves there to consider as at a place of rest whatsoever hath happened both before and since and by that means do avoid the Anachronisms that is to say that sort of Error which makes the confusion of time We must first fix but upon a small number of Epocha's such as in the times of antient History are Adam or the Creation Noah or the Deluge the calling of Abraham or the beginning of God's Alliance with Man Moses or the written Laws the taking of Troy Solomon or the building of the Temple Romulus or the founding of Rome Cyrus or the People of God delivered from the Captivity Babylon Scipio or Carthage overcome the nativity of our blessed Saviour Constantine or the peace of the Church Charlemaine or the Establishment of the new Empire
of the Ancient People all the Particularities of Time and every thing else concurring as much as possibly can be expected in so remote and distant an Antiquity II. Epocha Noah or the Deluge 2. Age of the World After the Flood is observable the shortning of Man's Life and a change and alteration of the way of Living and a New Nourishment substituted in stead of the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 2348 Fruits of the Earth some Precepts given Years of the World 1656 Years be ∣ fore J. C. 2347 to Noah only viva voce the Confusion of Years of the World 1657 Years be ∣ fore J. C. 2247 Tongues at the Tower of Babel the first Years of the World 1757 Monument and Mens Weakness the Division of Noah's three Sons and the first Distribution of Lands The Memory of the three first Authors of Nations and People is preserved among Men. Japhet who Peopled the greatest part of the West continues there in great veneration under the Name of Japhet Cham and his Son Canaan have been no less known among the Aegyptians and Phoenicians and the Remembrance of Shem has been always held Sacred among the Hebrews who came from him A little after this first Division of Mankind Nimrod a Wild Man became by his violent Humour the first of Conquerors and this was the Origine of all Conquests He established his Kingdom in Babylon Gen. x. 9 10 18. in the same Place where the Tower was begun and had been carried up to a strange height but yet it seems not up to that stature the Vanity of Man intended or desired it Round about it much-what at the same time Niniveh was built and some other ancient Kingdoms setled They were but small in those first and early Times and there was even in Aegypt it self Four Dynasties or Principalities that of Thebes that of Tine that of Memphis and that of Tanis which was the Chief of Lower Aegypt To much about this time may be referred the beginning of the Laws and Policies of the Aegyptians that of their Pyramids which remain to this day and that of the Astronomical Observations of as well those People Years be ∣ fore J. C. 2233 as of the Chaldeans We may likewise Years of the World 1771 bring up to about this time and no higher the Observations which the Chaldeans for they were without dispute the first Observers of the Stars gave in Babylon to Callisthenes for Aristotle Porphyr ap Simp. l. ii de Caelo Every thing begins There is no antient History wherein there appears not only in these first times but a long time after some manifest Vestigia of the newness of the World We see Laws were to be made and established Manners to be amended and Empires to be formed Mankind coming out by degrees from Ignorance Experience instructs them and Arts are either invented or perfected Accordingly as Men multiplyed the Land was populated and Inhabitants came to live nearer to one another Mountains and Precipices were passed over Rivers crost and at last the Seas and Men established new Habitations The Earth which in the Beginning was but a wild Forest now took another Form the grub'd-up Trees gave way to Fields Pasturages Hamlets Burroughs and at length to Cities They began then to have the Art and Cunning of taking some kind of Beasts of tarning others and bringing them up to Labour and Service At first they were used to ingage and fight with wild Beasts The first Heroes made themselves signal in these sort of Exercises Gen. x. 9. This gave occasion to the inventing of Arms which afterwards Men turned one against another Nimrod the first Warrior and first Conqueror is called in Scripture a mighty Hunter But Man's Skill lay not only in Beasts he knew also how to bring up Plants and ripen Fruits He likewise reduced Metals to his use and by degrees made them serviceable to all Mankind And as it was but natural that time should invent and find out a great many things so likewise time made several other things be forgot at least to most Men. Those first Arts which Noah had preserved and which are always kept up in some Countries where â—ver there is a first Establishment of Mankind that is to say in new Plantations are lost proportionably as they are distant from that Country For either they must be learned over again with time or else those who had preserved them must carry them over to those others Wherefore we see all things to come from Lands that have been always inhabited where the Grounds and Foundations of Arts remain in their Perfection and there also is to be learned every day things very considerable The Knowledge of God and the Remembrance of the Creation was preserved there but it did daily degenerate and grew weaker and weaker The Ancient Traditions were either quite forgot or at least obscure and dim The Fables and Stories that have succeeded them retain'd only the gross Ideas of them False Deities multiplied and became more numerous and that gave occasion to the calling of Abraham III. Epocha The Call of Abraham 3. Age of the World Four hundred twenty six Years after the Deluge as every Body walked after their own ways and never were mindful of that God that made them this great Creator to hinder the Progress of so abominable a Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1921 Wickedness in the midst of their Sins began Years of the World 2083 to set apart to himself a chosen People Abraham was elected to be the Father of the Faithful God called him in the Land of Canaan where he resolved to establish his Worship and to settle the Children of that blessed Patriarch whom he said he would multiply as the Stars of Heaven and as the Sand on the Sea-shore To the promise that he made of giving this Land to his posterity he joyn'd another far more great and illustrious and that was that mighty blessing which was to extend to all the people of the World in Jesus Christ coming forth from his off-spring Heb. vii 1. 2 3 c. This was that Jesus Christ whom Abraham honoured in the Person of the great High-Priest Melchisedeck unto whom he gave the tent of the Spoils which he had got returning from the slaughter of Kings and by whom he was blest In the midst of these vast Riches and of a Power commensurate to that of Kings Abraham still kept to his old ways and customs he ever led a plain simple and pastoral Life which yet had its due Magnificence and the Patriarch made it principally appear in his generous Hospitality to all People Heaven Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1856 at last was pleased to send him Guests Years of the World 2148 the Angels revealed to him the Counsels of God he believed them and appeared in all things full of Faith and Piety In his time Inachus the most antient of all Kings known by the Grecians founded
the Kingdom of Argos After Abraham there was Isaac his Son and Jacob Grandson the Imitators and followers of his Faith and Simplicity in the same pastoral Life God did also to them reiterate the same Promises he had made to Abraham their Father Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1759 and as he had done him he conducted them Years of the World 2245 in all things Isaac blessed Jacob to the prejudice as well as grief of Esau his elder Brother and deceived in appearance in effect and reality he executes the Counsels and Determinations of God Jacob whom God protected was in all things to be preferred to Esau An Angel with whom he mysteriously fought gave unto him the Name of Israel from whence his Posterity were called Israelites From his Loins came the Twelve Patriarchs Fathers to the Twelve Tribes of the Hebrew People among others Levi from whence issued the Ministers of Sacred things Judah from whom came CHRIST the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and Joseph whom Jacob loved above all the rest of his Children In him were made manifest some new Secrets of Providence But above all things was seen the Innocence and Wisdom of young Joseph who was always an utter Enemy to Wickedness and Vice and careful to repress and hinder it in his Brethren his Mysterious and Prophetick Dreams his Brethren jealous and Jealousie twice the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1728 Cause of a Parricide the selling of this Years of the World 2276 their Great Brother his Fidelity to his Master and his most admirable Chastity the dangerous Calamities it brought upon him Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1717 his Prison and his Constancy his Predictions Years of the World 2287 his miraculous Deliverance that Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1715 Famous Interpretation of Pharaoh's Dreams Years of the World 2289 the Desert of so Great a Man required his Genius elevated and fitted for his Place and God's Protection which made him to Rule Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1706 where-ever he was his Foresight his wise Years of the World 2298 Counsels and his absolute Power in the Kingdome of the Lower Aegypt By this means here was the Safety of his Father Jacob and his Family This Family cherished by God was thus setled and established in that part of Aegypt whereof Tanis was the Capital and of which the Kings took Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1689 the Name of Pharaoh Jacob dies and a Years of the World 2315 little before his Death he delivers this most celebrated Prophecy where discovering to his Sons the Patriarchs the State of their Posterity he particularly points out to Judah the time of the Messiah's coming into the World who was to proceed from his Race This Patriarch's Houshold became a very great People in a little time and this prodigious increase and multiplying raised the Aegyptians Jealousie The Hebrews are unjustly hated and without any pity persecuted God raises up Moses their Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1571 Deliverer whom he preserved from the Years of the World 2433 River Nilus and made him fall into the Hands of Pharaoh's Daughter She brought him up as her own Child and instructed him in all the Wisdom of the Aegyptians At that time the People of Aegypt setled themselves in several Places of Greece The Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1556 Colony that Cecrops brought out of Aegypt Years of the World 2448 founded twelve Cities or rather Towns of which he made the Kingdom of Athens and where he established with the Laws of his Country the Gods that were to be worshipped there Marm. Arund seu Aera Att. A little after hapned the Deucalion-Flood in Thessaly confounded by the Greeks with the Universal Deluge Hellen the Son of Deucalion reigned in Phtie a Country in Thessaly and gave his Name to Greece The People which before were called Greeks ever since have born the Name of Helleneses tho' the Latins have called them by their old Name Moreover about this time Cadmus the Son of Agenor transported into Greece a Colony of Phoenicians and founded the City of Thebes in Boeotia The Syrian and Phoenician Gods came along with him into Greece In the mean while Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1531 Moses grew up in years and about the Fortieth Years of the World 2473 of his Age he despised the Riches of the Court of Aegypt and touched with the Wickedness of his Brethren the Israelites to appease and moderate them he ventured his own Life But these Men were so far from receiving any Benefit by his Zeal and Courage that they exposed him to the Fury of Pharaoh who was resolved on his Ruine Moses flies out of Aegypt into Arabia to the Land of Midian where his Virtue which was always ready to relieve the Oppressed made him find a safe Retreat Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1491 This Great Man without any hopes of delivering Years of the World 2513 his People or expectation of better Times had spent Forty years in keeping the Flock of Jethro his Father-in-Law when he saw in the Desart a Burning Bush and heard the Voice of the God of his Fathers who sent him back into Aegypt to bring forth his Brethren the Children of Israel out of Captivity There appeared the Humility Courage and Miracles of that Divine Legislator the Hardness of Pharaoh's Heart and the terrible Plagues which God sent upon him the Passover and the next day the Passing over the Red Sea Pharaoh and the Aegyptians drowned in those Waters and the absolute Deliverance of the Israelites IV. Epocha Moses or the Written Law The Time of the Written Law now begins It was given to Moses Four hundred and thirty years after the Calling of Abraham Eight hundred fifty six years after the Flood and the same year that the Hebrew Years be ∣ fore J. C. 1491 People came out of Aegypt This Date is Years of the World 2513 very observable because it is very useful for designating the whole time that has elapsed ever since Moses unto Jesus Christ All this Time is called the Time of the Written Law to distinguish it from the precedent Time which is called the Time of the Law of Nature wherein Men had only for their Guide and Rule of Governance Natural Reason and the Traditions of their Ancestors God then having freed his People from the Tyranny of the Aegyptians and brought them into the Land where he designed to be served and worshipped before ever he established it there he proposed to him the Law according to which he was to live He wrote with his own Hand upon two Tables of Stone which he delivered to Moses upon the top of Mount Sinai the Foundation of this Law that is to say the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments which contain the First Principles how God is to be worshipped and Humane Society preserved He dictated to the same Moses the other Precepts by which he established the Tabernacle Heh ix 9 23. the
being come to an Agreement with Manahem he established him in the Throne that he went to Usurp by Violence and received by way of acknowledgment the Tribute of a thousand Talents Under his Son Sardanapalus and after Alcmaeon the last perpetual Archon of the Athenians that People whom his humour led insensibly to affect a popular Estate lessened the Power of their Magistrates and in ten years wholly overthrew the Archontick Administration The first of this way was Charops Romulus and Remus sprung from the antient Kings of Alba by their Mother Ilia re-established in the Kingdom of Alba their Grandfather Numitor of which his Brother Amilius had dispossest him and presently after they founded Rome whilst Jotham Reigned in Judah VII Epocha Romulus or Rome founded That City which was to be the Mistress of the World and in futurity the chief Seat of the Romish Religion was founded toward the end of the third year of the sixth Years be ∣ fore J. C. 754 Olympiad 430 years after the taking Years of the World 3250 of Troy from whence the Romans believed their Ancestors to be sprung and 753 years before Jesus Christ Romulus being bred up hardly with Shepherds and always Years of Rome 1 engaged in Warlike Exercises consecrated this City to the God of War who he Years be ∣ fore J. C. 748 said was his Father About the time of Years of Rome 6 Rome's Birth through the effeminate Luxury of Sardanapalus happened the Fall of the first Empire of the Assyrians The Medes a warlike People animated by the Discourses of Arbaces their Governour set an Example to all his Subjects of contemning and scorning him All were up in a general revolt against him and at length he perished in his chief City where he saw himself constrained to fling himself into the Fire with his Concubines his Eunuchs and his Riches Out of the Ruins of this Empire were seen to come three great Kingdoms Arbaces or Orbaces whom some call Pharnaces freed the Medes who after a very long Anarchy had three most puissant Kings Moreover presently after Sardanapalus there appeared a second Kingdom of the Assyrians Years be ∣ fore J. C. 747 of which Nineveh was the chief City Years of Rome 7 and a Kingdom of Babylon These two last Kingdoms are not unknown to prophane Authors and are much celebrated in the sacred History The second Kingdom of Nineveh is founded by Tilgath of Tiglath the Son of Phalaser called for this reason Tiglathphalesar to whom was also given the name of Ninus the younger Baladan whom the Greeks called Belasis established the Kingdom of Babylon which is known by the name of Nabonassar From thence the Aera of Nabonassar famous with Ptolomy and the antient Astronomers who reckoned their years by the Reign of that Prince It is fit to explain here the signification of this word Aera which is a number of Years began at a certain point of Time which some extraordinary Accident makes remarkable Wicked Years be ∣ fore J. C. 740 and Sinful Ahaz King of Judah oppressed Years of Rome 14 by Rezin King of Syria and by Pekah the Son of Remaliah King of Israel instead of having recourse to God who stirred him up those Enemies to punish him called Tiglathphalesar the first King of Assyria or Nineveh who brought the Kingdom of Israel to its last extremity and utterly destroyed that of Syria and at the same time he ravaged that of Judah which had desired his Assistance Thus the Kings of Assyria took Years be ∣ fore J. C. 721 the way to the Holy Land and resolved Years of Rome 33 upon the Conquest of it They began with the Kingdom of Israel which Salmanasser the Son and Successor of Tilgath Pilneser utterly destroyed Osee King of Israel relied upon the succour of Sabacon otherwise called Sua or Soü◠King of Aethiopia who had invaded Aegypt But that mighty Conqueror could not get it out of the hands of Salmanassar The ten Tribes with whom the Worship of God was quite worn off were transported to Nineveh and being dispersed among the Gentiles they so lost themselves there that no farther tracing of them can be discovered There remained some of them who were mixed among the Jews and made a small part of the Kingdom Years be ∣ fore J. C. 715 of Judah At this time happened the Years of Rome 39 Death of Romulus He was always fighting and always victorious but in the midst of his Wars he notwithstanding laid the Foundation of Religion and Laws A Years be ∣ fore J. C. 714 long Peace gave Numa his Successor a good opportunity to finish that Work He formed Years of Rome 40 Religion and qualified the wild and extravagant Manners of the Romans In his time the Colonies that came from Corinth and several other Towns of Greece founded Syracuse in Sicily Crotona Tarentum and perhaps some other Towns in that part of Italy to which the most antient Greek Colonies which were spread over all the Country had already given the name of Great Greece In the mean time Hezekiah the most Pious and the justest of all the Kings Years be ∣ fore J. C. 710 ever since David reigned in Judah Sennacherib the Son and Successor of Salmanassar Years of Rome 44 besieged him in Jerusalem with a vast and prodigious Army which was in one night destroyed by the Hand of an Angel which went out and smote in the Camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five Thousand Hezekiah being delivered in so wonderful a manner served God with all his People more faithfully than ever But Years be ∣ fore J. C. 698 after that Prince his Death under his Son Years of Rome 56 Manasseh the ungrateful forgat their God and so disorders and calamities were multiplied Years be ∣ fore J. C. 687 upon them A popular State or commonwealth Years of Rome 67 was then formed among the Athenians and they began to elect annual Archontes or Governours the first of whom was Creon Whilst wickedness increased in the Kingdom of Judah the Power of the Kings of Assyria which were to be their avengers grew daily stronger under Esarhaddon Years be ∣ fore J. C. 681 the Son of Sennacherib He re-united the Years of Rome 73 Kingdom of Babylon to that of Nineveh and equalled in Great Asia the Power of the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 677 first Assyrians 2 Kings xvii 24. 1 Esd iv 2. In his Reign the Cuthians Years of Rome 77 People of Assyria since called Samaritans were placed in the City of Samaria instead of the Children of Israel These joined to that of Idolatry the Worship of God and obtained of Esarhaddon an Israelitish Priest who taught them the manner of the God of the Land that is to observe the Law of Moses God resolving not to have his Name utterly abolished in a Land that he had given to his People he left there his Law as an earnest and testimony 2 Kings xvii 27
respective Language Those so antient Histories whereof there is left now but a very few good Memorials are by this means become in all Probability so very dark and imperfect The confusion of names hath no doubt contributed very much both to the things as well as persons of them and from hence proceeds our Trouble rightly to situate in the Greek History those Kings who have had the Name of Ahasuerus as much unheard of to the Greeks as it was well known to the Eastern Countries VVho would indeed believe that Cyagorus was the same name as Ahasuerus made up of the word Ky that is to say Sir or Lord and from the word Axare which manifestly returns to Axuerus or Assuerus and so Ahasuerus Three or Four Princes have gone under this Name though they had others besides If we do not know that Nebuchodonozor Nebucodrosor and Nebocolassar were only one and the same Name or the Name of but one Person it would be difficult for us to believe it and yet the thing is most certain Sargon is Sennacherib Ozias is Azarias Sedechias is Mathanias Joachas is also called Sellum Asarhaddon which is indifferently pronounced Esarhaddon 2 Esdr iv 2 10. or Asarhaddon is called Asenephar by those of Cutha and by an odd bizar kind of unaccountableness of which we can find no ground or Origine Sardanapalus is by the Greeks called Tonos Concoleros We could present you with a long List of Eastern Persons to whom in Histories several different Names have been given but it is sufficient in general to understand this custom It is not unknown to the Latins among whom Titles and Adoptions have multiplyed Names in so many kinds Thus the Title of Augustus and that of Africanus became the Sir-Names of Caesar Octavianus and the Scipio's and in like manner the Neros have been Caesars The thing is not to be doubted and a longer discussion of a matter so apparently manifest would be needless to you I will not now offer to trouble your Highness any further with the knotty difficulties of Chronology which are as little necessary as useful for you This was of too great importance not to be cleared up in this place and after we have said what we think is sufficient for our purpose we will return to the train of our Epochas It was then 218 years after the foundation of Rome 536 years before Jesus Christ VIII Epocha Cyrus or the Jews re-establish'd 6. Age of the World after the 70 years of Babylons Captivity and the same year that Cyrus founded the Persian Empire That this Prince elected by God to be the deliverer of his People and the restorer of his Temple set about this great work Forthwith after the publication of his Decree Zerubabel accompanied with Jesus Years be ∣ fore J. C. 536 the Son of Joseâ—ec the High-Priest brought Years of Rome 218 back the Captives who rebuilt the Altar and laid the foundations of the second Temple Years be ∣ fore J. C. 535 The Samaritans being jealous of their Years of Rome 219 glory were resolved to go shares with them in this great Work and under the pretence of worshipping the God of Israel 1 Esdr iv 2.3 tho' they joined with it their Idolatries to their own false Gods yet they besought Zerubabel to give them leave to assist him in the Building of that Temple But the Children of Judah who detested their corrupted Worship rejected their Proposition The provoked Samaritans therefore crossed and perplexed their Design by all the ways of Artifice and Violence imaginable About the same time Servius Tullius after he had agrandized the City of Rome was contriving in his Head how to reduce it to a Commonwealth But Years be ∣ fore J. C. 533 he perished in the midst of those his Designs Years of Rome 221 by the Counsels of his Daughter and by the Command of the proud Tarquin his Son-in-Law This Tyrant invaded the Kingdom and for a long series of time exercised all manner of Cruelties and Outrages In the mean while the Persian Empire was growing up Besides those vast Provinces of the greater Asia all the greater Continent of the Lesser Asia became obedient to Years be ∣ fore J. C. 525 it The Syrians and Arabians were subjected Years of Rome 229 and Egypt which was so jealous of its own Laws yet received theirs This Years be ∣ fore J. C. 522 Conquest was got by Cambyses the Son of Years of Rome 232 Cyrus But that fierce Man did not long survive his Brother Smerdis whom an ambiguous Dream caused privately to be put to Death The Mage or chief Smerdis ruled for some time under the name of Years be ∣ fore J. C. 521 Smerdis the Brother of Cambyses but this Years of Rome 233 cheat was soon discovered The seven principal Lords conspired against him and one of them was set upon the Throne This was Darius the Son of Hystaspes Herod l. 4. c. 159. who in his Inscriptions stiled himself the Best and the handsomest of all Men. There are many remarkable things that make us know him to be the Ahasuerus spoken of in the Book of Hester tho' some there are of another Opinion At the beginning of his Reign 1 Esdr v. vi the Temple was finished after several interruptions occasioned by the Samaritans There was an irreconcileable hatred between two People so that nothing was more opposite than Jerusalem and Samaria It was in the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 513 time of Darius when the Liberty of Rome Years of Rome 241 and Athens and the great Glory of Greece began Hermodius and Aristogiton Athenians rescued their Country from Hipparchus the Son of Pisistratus and are killed by his Guards Hippias the Brother of Hipparchus endeavours but in vain to support himself for he is repulsed The Tyranny of the Pisistratus's is absolutely extinguished The rescued Athenians erect Statues to their Saviours and re-establish the popular State Hippias throws himself into the Arms of Darius whom he already found disposed to attempt the Conquest of Greece so that all his hope was in his Protection At the same time when he was repulsed Rome also was delivered of her Tyrants Tarquin the Proud by his violent Outrages had made Years be ∣ fore J. C. 509 Royalty odious The incontinency of Sextus Years of Rome 245 his Son was the complement of its destruction Lucretia ravished made her to become her own Murdress her Blood together with the harangues of Brutus animated and inspirited the Romans The Kings were banished and the Consulary Empire was established according to the model and projection of Servius Tullius but it was soon weakned by the Jealousies of the People For in the very first Consulate P. Valerius the Consul memorable for his Victories became suspected by his Citizens so that to please and satisfy them he was obliged to establish the Law of Appeals to the People from the Senate and Consuls in all causes wherein the
punishing of a Citizen was concerned The expelled Tarquins found Defenders for the Neighbouring Kings looked upon their Banishment as an injury done to all Crowned Heads in general Years be ∣ fore J. C. 507 and Porsenna King of the Clusians Years of Rome 247 a People of Etruria took up Arms against Rome And being now reduced to its last extremity and almost conquered and taken it received its Salvation from Horatius Cocles The Romans did prodigious things to secure their dear beloved Liberty and Scevola a young Citizen burnt off that Hand which had not reached Porsenna Clelia a young Lady made that Prince astonished at her Courage and Bravery and Porsenna left Rome in Peace and the Tarquins remained now without any hopes of Years be ∣ fore J. C. 500 Succour But Hippias for whom Dariâ—s declared Years of Rome 254 had better hopes All Persia was up in his Favour and Athens had a great threatning Years be ∣ fore J. C. 493 Cloud of War hanging over it Whilst Years of Rome 261 that Darius was making his Preparations for it Rome which was so well fortified against Strangers had e'en like to have been destroyed within it self Jealousy began to re-inforce and take head again among the Patricians and the People and the Consulary Power altho' it had been already moderated by the Law of P. Valerius did yet seem somewhat too great to that People who were now grown very fearful of their Liberty so that he retreated to Mount Aventinâ— and the Counsels which were violent were likewise unsuccessful The People could not be reduced but by the peaceable Remonstrances of Menenius Agrippa and they were forced to find out a sweetning kind of temperament and to give to the People Tribunes that might be able to defend them against the Consuls The Law which established this new sort of Magistracy was called the sacred Law and hence was the rise and origine of the Tribunes of the People Darius had at last declared against Greece His Son-in-Law Mardonius after he had gone through Asia thought to overthrow the Grecians with the number of Years be ∣ fore J. C. 490 his Soldiers but Miltiades defeated that Years of Rome 264 vast Army in the Plain of Marathon with ten thousand Athenians Rome grew victorious over all her Enemies round about and seem'd to be apprehensive of none but those within her own Bowels Coriolanus a zealous Patrician and the greatest of his Captains notwithstanding all his Services being banished by the popular Faction conspired the destruction of his Country Years be ∣ fore J. C. 489 brought the Volsci against her reduced her Years of Rome 265 Years be ∣ fore J. C. 488 to the greatest Extremity and could not be Years of Rome 266 moderated but by the Influence of his Mother Greece did not long enjoy the repose which the Battle of Marathon had given it Years be ∣ fore J. C. 480 for to revenge the affront of Persia and Years of Rome 274 Darius Xerxes his Son and Successor and the Grandson of Cyrus by his Mother Atossa assaulted the Grecians with eleven hundred thousand Fighting Men some stick not to say seventeen hundred Thousand not to reckon his Forces at Sea of twelve Hundred great Ships But Leonidas King of Sparta who had no more than three hundred Men slew of them twenty thousand at the Straights of Thermopylae and fell with his own By the Counsels of Themistocles the Athenian the Sea-forces of Xerxes were the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 479 same Year defeated and beaten near Salamina Years of Rome 275 That Prince repassed the Hellespont in fear and a year after his Land-Army which was commanded by Mardonius was utterly hew'd to pieces near Platea by Pausanias King of Lacedemonia and by Aristides the Athenian surnamed the Just The Battle began in the Morning and by the Evening of that memorable Day the Grecians of Ionia who had shook off the Persian Yoke killed of them Thirty thousand in the Battle of Mycala under the Conduct and Command of Leotychides That General to put courage into his Souldiers told them That Mardonius was now overcome in Greece The News proved true either by a prodigious effect of Fame or rather by a happy accident and all the Greeks of the Lesser Asia were restored to their Liberty This Nation every where got very considerable advantages and a little before the Carthaginians then mighty powerful and great were beaten in Sicily where they were going to extend their Dominions at the instance and importunity of the Persians However notwithstanding all this bad success they would not leave off their new designs upon an Island which was so commodious to secure them the Empire of the Sea which their Commonwealth greatly desired Greece had it then but she only regarded the East and the Persians But Pausanias came to set free the Isle of Cyprus from their Yoak Years be ∣ fore J. C. 477 as soon as he had framed the project of enthralling Years of Rome 277 Years be ∣ fore J. C. 476 his Country Yet all his Designs Years of Rome 278 were fruitless tho' Xerxes promised him all things the Traytor was betrayed by him whom most he loved and his infamous Years be ∣ fore J. C. 474 Love cost him his Life The same Year Years of Rome 280 Xerxes was killed by Artabanus his Captain of the Guards Arist Polit v. 10. whether that perfidious wretch designed to possess the Throne of his Master or that he seared the severities of a Prince whose cruel Orders he had not so punctually executed Artaxerxes who had formerly been his Son began his Kingdom and Government and not long Years be ∣ fore J. C. 473 after receiv'd from Themistocles a Letter Years of Rome 281 who being proscribed by his own Citizens made him an offer of his Services against Greece He very well understood what esteem he ought to have for so great and renowned a Captain and therefore made a Years be ∣ fore J. C. 467 firm establishment of Friendship with him Years of Rome 287 maugre all the Jealousies of his Nobles 1 Esdr vii viii It was this brave and magnanimous Prince that was the Protector of the Jewish People and in his twentieth year which is memorable by his glorious Deeds he permitted Years be ∣ fore J. C. 454 Nehemiah to re-establish Jerusalem with her Years of Rome 300 Walls But this Decree of Artaxerxes did differ from that of Cyrus for Cyrus's only was in respect to the Temple 2 Esdr ii 1. This of Artaxerxes was made for the whole City From this Decree foreseen by Daniel and set down in his Prophecy the Four hundred and ninety Years of his Weeks begin This important date hath very solid foundations The Banishment of Themistocles is placed in Eusebius his Chronology as in the last year of the Seventy six The Olympiad which comes back to the Two hundred and eighty of Rome The other Chronologists put it a little
lower but the difference is very little and the Circumstances of time do much assure the Date of Eusebius They are likewise pretty agreeing with Thucydides a most exact Historian Thucyd. l. 1. and that grave Author almost a Contemporary as well as a fellow Citizen of Themistocles makes him to write his Letter about the beginning of Artaxerxes his Reign Cornel. Nep. in Themisto Cornelius Nepos an Ancient and Judicious as well as an Elegant Author will not have us question this Date after the Authority of Thucydides and it is so much a stronger Argument because another more Antient Author than Thucydides was agrees with him 'T is Charon of Lampsacus cited by Plutarch Plut. in Them and Plutarch adds himself That the Annals this is to say those of Persia concur with those two Authors But however he does not follow them tho' he gives us no reason for it and those Historians who begin the Reign of Artaxerxes eight or nine years later agree neither in time nor are they of so great an Authority Therefore beyond all dispute we ought to reckon the beginning of it toward the end of the seventy six Olympiad and near the 280 year of Rome and so the twentieth year of this Prince will come to be about the end of the eighty first Olympiad and near the 300 year of Rome Whereas those who to conciliate Authors reject this and make the beginning of Artaxerxes his Reign to fall out lower are forced to conjecture that his Father had at least associated him to the Kingdom when Themistocles wrote his Letter but which way soever it be our account is secure This Foundation being settled and granted the rest of the Account is easie to be made and the Consequence will render it plain and evident After Artaxerxes had made his Decree The Jews laboured mightily to rebuild their City and the Walls thereof as Daniel had prophesied Dan. ix 25 Nehem. ii 17 18 19. Nehemiah managed and ordered the work with a great deal of Prudence and Courage in defiance to all the oppositions of the Samaritans Arabians and the Ammonites The People sat about the Work and Eliashib the High-Priest incouraged them by his Example In the mean while the new Magistrates which were set over the People of Rome increased the Divisions of that City and Rome brought under a Monarchy did want those Laws which were necessary for the good Constitution of a Common-weal The Reputation of Greece which had made her self more famous by her Government than Years be ∣ fore J. C. 452 by her Victories excited the Romans to Years of Rome 302 follow her Example so that they sent Deputies to search into the Laws of Greece and especially into those of Athens which were more agreeable to the State of their Years be ∣ fore J. C. 451 Republick According to this Model ten Years of Rome 303 absolute Magistrates which they created the next Year after under the Name of the Decemviri digested and set down the Laws of the Twelve Tables which are the Years be ∣ fore J. C. 450 Ground and Foundation of the Roman Law Years of Rome 304 The People overjoy'd at the Equity wherewith they were made suffered them to usurp the supreme power which they used Years be ∣ fore J. C. 449 with Tyranny enough So that there were very Years of Rome 305 great Convulsions by the Intemperance of Appius Clodius one of the Decemviri and by the Murther of Virginia whom her Father had rather have slain with his own Hand than have abandoned her to be a Sacrifice to the Passion and Lust of Appius The Blood of this Second Lucretia awakened the Romans so that the Decemviri were quite thrust out But whilst the Laws were framing under these ten Magistrates Esdras a Doctor of the Law and Nehemiah the Governour of the Jewish People newly re-established in Judah were reforming the Abuses and bringing in the Law of Moses so that they began to be observed in the first place One of the main points of their Reformation was to oblige all the People 2 Esdr xiii Deut. xxiii 3. and particularly the Priests to leave their strange Wives whom they had married contrary to the express Letter of the Law Esdras put the Holy Books in order and made a very exact review of them and collected the Antient Memoires of the Jews to compile out of them the two Books of Paralipomena or Chronicles to which he added the History of his own Time which Nehemiah finished By those Books is that long and tedious History which Moses had begun ended and which the following Authors continued without interruption till the re-building of Jerusalem The rest of the Sacred History is not writ in the same train Whilst Esdras and Nehemiah were making the last part of this great Work Herodotus whom the Prophane Authors call the Father of History it self began to write So that the last Authors of the Holy History met with the first Author of the Greek History and when this began That of the Jews only to take it from Abraham already had made up five Ages Herodotus never thought to speak of the Jews in that History he hath left us and the Greeks would not inform themselves of any but such People whom War Commerce or a great Fame had made notorious and considerable Judah that with great difficulty began to raise it self from the Ashes of its Ruine never in the least attracted their regards And it was in this miserable and calamitous time that the Hebrew Language ceased to be common During the Captivity and afterwards by the commerce that happened between them and the Chaldeans the Jews learned the Chaldee Tongue which very much bordered upon their own and had almost the same Idiom and Genius This reason induced them to change the ancient Figure of Hebrew Letters and so they writ Hebrew in the Chaldee Characters which were most in use among them and easier to be made This alteration was almost insensible between the two Neighbouring Languages whose Letters were of the same value and efficacy only differing somewhat in their formation From that time the Holy Scripture was only to be found among the Jews in the Chaldee Letters But the Samaritans still kept their old way of Writing Their Posterity have persevered in the same Custom even down to our days and by that means have preserved the Pentateuch which they call the Samaritan in ancient Hebrew Characters such as they found them in Medals and in all the Monuments of past Ages The Jews lived very peaceably and quietly under the Authority of Artaxerxes That Prince being forced by Cymon the Son of Miltiades General of the Athenians to make a shameful peace utterly despaired of overcoming the Greeks by force and so only thought of making his advantage by their feuds and divisions There happened very great Convulsions between the Athenians and Lacedemonians Those two people being jealous each of other shared all
principal matters that are dependent thereon You may now without any great difficulty dispose of according to the order of Time the great accidents of the Antient History and range them as I may so speak each under its proper Standard I have not in this Abstract forgot that celebrated distinction which the Chronologists make of the continuance of the World in 7. Ages The beginning of every one of them serves us for an Epocha If I have mixt any others with them it is that so things may be more distinct and that the order of time may be opened to You with less confusion When I speak to You of the order of Time I do not pretend My Lord that You should scrupulously charge Your memory with all the dates much less that You should concern Your self with all the nice disputes of the Chronologists where most an end they differ but in a very few years There is no question but that this contentious Chronology which scrupulously is taken up about those small matters hath its use but that is not Your object and is of very little service to enlighten the mind of a great Prince I would not be too refined upon this discussion of Time but in the calculations I have already made I have still followed that which has appeared to me the most probable without troubling my self to be Guarranty for it In the supputation of years which is made since the time of the Creation down to Abraham we had best join with the LXX which makes the World older whereas the Hebrew makes it younger by many Ages Although the Authority of the Original Hebrew seems as if it ought to carry it yet it is a thing so indifferent in it self that the Church which hath with St. Jerom followed the supputation of the Hebrew in our Vulgar Translation hath left that of the LXX in its Martyrology In effect what matter is it for History either to diminish or to multiply void Age where also there is nothing to give an account of Is it not enough that the times where the dates are important have their fixed Characters and the distribution of them be supported on certain foundations And tho' even in those times there should be a dispute about some years it should scarce ever make us perplexed and uneasie As for instance if we should put it some years sooner or later when Rome was founded or our blessed Saviour born You must own that such a diversity makes nothing to the course of Histories nor to the accomplishing of the Councils of God You must be careful to shun the Anachronisms which ruffle and embroyl the order of Affairs and leave the others to the disputes of the Learned I will not further oppress Your memory with the account of the Olympiads tho' the Grecians who make use of that render them very necessary for the fixing of Times It is fit You should know it that You may when there is occasion have recourse to it But it will be sufficient to keep to the dates which I propose to You as being the mosâ— simple and the most followed which are those of the World to Rome those from Rome to Jesus Christ and those from Jesus Christ to all succeeding Generations But the true design of this Abridgment is not to explain to You the order of Time tho' it be absolutely necessary in the reading of all Histories and in shewing how they relate to one another I have told You My Lord That my principal Object is to make you consider in the order of time the course of the people of God and that of great Empires These two things roul together in this great Movement of Ages where they have as I may say one and the same course But it is needful to understand them truly to detach them sometimes one from the other and to consider whatsoever hath relation to each of them THE SECOND PART OF THIS DISCOURSE ABove all Religion and the course of the people of God considered in this manner is the greatest and most useful of all the objects that can be proposed to men It is pretty to have before our Eyes the different States of God's People under the Law of Nature and under the Patriarchs The Course of Religion I. The Creation and the first Times under Moses and the Written Law under David and the Prophets since the Return of the Captivity until Jesus Christ and in summ under Jesus Christ himself that is to say under the Law of Grace and under the Gospel in the Ages which waited for the Advent of the Messias and in thosâ— in which he appeared in those where the Worship of God was confined to one Angle People and in those were conformable to the antient Prophecies it was spread abroad over all the face of the Earth in those at last wherein Mankind still clogged with Infirmities and gross Ideas has had need to be supported by Temporal Rewards and Punishments and in those wherein the Faithful that are the most instructed ought now only to live by Faith setting to minds upon Celestial good things which will yield them Eternal pleasure and satisfaction and suffering through the hopes at last of coming to enjoy them all the evils and miseries of this World which can exercise their Patience Certainly my Lord nothing can come into the heart of man to conceive more worthy of God than that he should first of all choose to himself a people which should be a most manifest Example of his Eternal Providence a people whose good or evil depends on Piety and whose condition bears evidence to the Wisdom and Justice of him who governs them Here it was where God began and this he fully discovered in the people of the Jews But after he had by so many sensible manifestations established this immutable foundation whereby he alone after the pleasure of his own Will did manage all the events of the present life it was time to exalt men to higher thoughts and to send Jesus Christ to whom it was reserved to discover to a new people collected out of all the people of the World the Secrets and Mysteries of a life to come You may easily follow the History of these two sorts of people and observe as Jesus Christ doth the Union of them both since that whether looked for or given it was ever the Consolation and the Hope of the Sons of God Thus then Religion was always uniform or rather always the same from the beginning of the World they always acknowledged the same One God as the Author and the same Jesus Christ as the Saviour of Mankind Thus You will see there was nothing more antient among men than the Religion which You profess and it is not without reason that your Ancestors have accounted it their greatest glory to be the Protectors of it What Testimony is this of its truth to see that in the times wherein the prophane Histories have nothing in them but
those two great Men had given to the World so lively and fair an Image of the voluntary Oblation of Jesus Christ and in their Souls had tasted if the bitternesses of his Cross they were esteemed truly worthy of being his Ancestors Gen. 22.28 Abraham's faithfulness made God confirm to him all his promises and blessed anew not only his Family but also in his Family all the Nations of the World In effect he continued his protection to Isaac his Son and to Jacob his Grand-child They were his imitators and adhered as he did to the Antient Faith to the Antient manner of living which was the Pastoral to the Antient Government of Mankind where every Father of a Family was a Prince in his own House Thus in the Changes and Revolutions continually made among Men the Holy Antiquity revived in the Religion and in the conduct of Abraham and of his Children God did also repeat to Isaac and to Jacob the same Promises which he had made to Abraham Gen. 25.11.26.4.28.14 and as he called himself the God Abraham so he took upon him the name of the God of Isaac and of the God of Jacob. Under his protection those three great Men began to dwell in the Land of Caanan but as strangers and without possessing there a foot of ground until the Famine brought Jacob into Aegypt where his Children being multiplied became soon after a great People Acts 7.5 as God had promised him But tho' this People whom God made to be born in his Covenant were to be enlarged by Generation and that the Blessing was to follow the Blood yet this great God failed not mark out to them the Election of his Grace For after he had chosen Abraham from among the Nations out of the Children of Abraham he chose Isaac and from the two Twins of Isaac he chose Jacob to whom afterwards he gave the name of Israel Jacob had twelve Sons who were the twelve Patriarchs heads of the twelve Tribes All were entred into the Covenant but Judah was chosen from amidst all his Brethren to be the Father of the Kings of Israel and the Father of the Messiah so much promised to his Ancestors The time was come that the ten Tribes being cut off from the People of God for their Infidelity the Posterity of Abrahâ—m lost its Antient Blessing that is to say the Religion the Land of Canaan and the hopes of the Messiah but only in the Tribe of Judah which was to give the name to the rest of the Israelites who were called Jews and to all the Country which was called Judea Thus the Divine Election appeared still even in that carnal people which was to be preserved by ordinary propagation Gen. 49.10 Jacob in his Spirit saw the Mystery of this Election just before he dyed when his Sons stood round about his Bed to receive the blessing of so good a Father God discovered to him the Estate of the twelve Tribes when they should be come to the promised Land he reveals it to them in a few words and those few words include innumerable Meysteries Though all that he spoke of Judah's Brethren be expressed with an extraordinary magnificence and shews the man transported out of himself by the Spirit of God when he comes to Judah he is carried out yet higher Judah saith he thou art He whom thy Brethren shall praise Gen. 49.8 9 10. thine hand shall be on the neck of thine Enemies thy Fathers Children shall bow down before Thee Judah is a Lyons Whelp From the prey my Son thou art gone up He stooped down he couched as a Lyon and as an old Lyon who shall rouse him up The Scepter that is to say the Authority shall not depart from Judah nor a Lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be The rest of the Prophecy is about the Countrey which the Tribe of Judah shall posses in the Holy Land But the last words as we have seen them howsoever we take them signifies nothing but him who was to be the Ambassador of God the Minister and Interpreter of his Will the Accomplishment of his Promises and the King of the new People that is to say the Messiah or the Anointed of the Lord. Jacob speaks expresly to none but to Judah from whom that Messiah was to come In the destiny of Judah alone he comprehends the destiny of all the Nation which after its dispersion was to see the rest of the other Tribes re-united under the Standards of Judah All the Terms of the Prophecy are clear there is only the word Scepter which the common use of out Tongue might make us take for the only Royalty whereas in the Sacred Language it signifies in general Power Authourity and Magistracy That use of the word Scepter runs through all the pages of the Scripture It plainly appears also in the Prophecy of Jacob and the Patriarch means that in the days of the Messiah all Authority shall be put to an end in the House of Judah which imports the total ruine of a State Thus the times of the Messiah are noted out to us here by a double change By the former the Kingdom of Judah and of the Jews is threatned with its last ruine By the latter there was a new Kingdom to be set up not of one single People but of all People over whom the Messiah was to be the head and hope In the Style of Holy Writ the Jews are called in the singular number and by way of eminence Isa 65. c. Rom. 10.21 Isa 2.2 3.49.6.18.51.4 5. The People or the people of God And when we find it used the plural those who are versed in the Scriptures understand the other people who we see also are promised to the Messiah in the Prophecy of Jacob. This great Prophecy comprehends in a few words all the History of the Jewish People and of Christ our Saviour who was promised to them It points out to us all the course of the people of God and it effectually continues to this day Therefore I pretend not to make a Commentary of it to You there is no need for You to have one since by barely observing their course You will easily see the sence of the Oracle unvailed of it self and that the very events themselves will be their own Interpreters After Jacob's death III. Moses the written Law and the bringing of the People into the promised Land the People of God abode in Aegypt unto the time of the Mission of Moses that is to say about two hundred years So that it was four hundred and thirty years before God gave his people the Land which he had promised them He was resolved to accustom his Elect to rely upon his Promise being assured that it should be fulfilled either sooner or later and always at the exact time appointed by his Eternal Providence The Iniquities of the Amorites both
whose Land and Spoils he was resolved to bestow on them were not yet full as he declared to Abraham Gen. 15.16 so as he knew they would be when he should deliver them to that hard and unpitiable vengeance which he would bring upon than by the hands of his chosen People There was time to be given for this People to multiply that so they might be able to fill the Land which was designed them and to possess it by force Ibid. in rooting out those Inhabitants who were accursed by God He was willing to have them undergo in Aegypt a hard and insupportable Captivity that so being delivered by unheard of Prodigies they might be in love with their Rescuer and eternally celebrate his Mercies This was the order of the Councils of God so as himself has revealed them to us to teach us to fear him to adore him to love him and to wait with Faith and Patience The time being come he hearkens to the cries of his People who were cruelly afflicted by the Aegyptians and he sends Moses to deliver his Children from thdr Tyranny He makes himself known to that great Man more than ever yet he had done to any Man living He appears to him in a manner equally magnificent and comforting he declares to him that He is that He is All that is before him is but a shadow I am Exod. 3.14 saith he that I am Being and Perfection belongs to me alone He takes up a new Name which designates Being and Life in him as in their Source and it is that great name of God Terrible Mysterious and Incommunicable by which he will for the time to come be served I will not in retail give you an account of the Plagues of Aegypt nor of the hardness of Pharaoh's heart nor of the passing over the red Sea not of the Smoke nor Lightnings the Trumpet sounding and the dreadful Thundering and Noise that the People heard on Mount Sinai God there engraved with his own hand upon two Tables of Stone the fundamental Precepts of Religion and Society He dictated the rest to Moses with a loud Voice To preserve this Law in its strength and vigour he was ordered to convene a venerable Assembly of seventy Elders Exod. 24.1 Numb 11.16 who were to be called the Senate of the People of God and the perpetual Council of the Nation God made his publick appearance and caused his Law to published in his presence with an astonishing demonstration of his Majesty and Power Till then God had given nothing by writing which might serve as a Rule for Mankind The Children of Abraham only had Circumcision and the Ceremonies that accompanied it for a Token of the Covenant which God hath contracted with that Elect Race They were separated by that sign from the other People who worshipped false Gods Now they kept themselves in the Covenant of God by the remembrance they had of the Promises made to their Fathers and they were known as a People who served the God of Abraham of Isaac and of Jacob. God was so strangely forgotten that it was necessary to make him discernable by the name of those who had been his worshippers and of whom he was also the declared Protector This great God was resolved no longer to leave to the hare memory of Mankind the Mystery of Religion and of his Covenant It was time to give stronger bars to Idolatry which overwhelmed the World and was even like to extinguish the remains of natural Light in Men. Ignorance and blindness was most prodigiously increased since Abraham's time In his time and a little after the knowledge of God extended it self into Palestine and Egypt Gen. 14.18 19. Melchisedeck King of Salem was the Priest of the most High God possessor of Heaven and Earth Abimelech King of Gerar and his Successor of the same name feared God swore in his Name and admired his Power The Threatnings of that great God were dreadful to Pharaoh King of Egypt Gen. 21.22 23.26.28 29. Gen. 12.17 18. Exod. 5.1.23.9.1 c Exod. 8.26 But in the time of Moses those Nations were perverted The true God was no longer known in Egypt as the God of all the People of the World but as The God of the Hebrews They then worshipped Beasts and even creeping things of the Earth Every thing was God excepting God himself and the World which God had made for the manifestation of his Power seemed now to be become a Temple of Idols Mankind stragled so far as to adore its very Vices and its Passions and there is nothing to be wondered at in all this There was no Power more Inevitable and Tyrannical than their own Man accustomed to believe every thing divine that was powerful as he felt himself dragged on to a vice by a force that was invincible he easily thought that that same force was somewhat out of himself and so presently made a God of it 'T was thence that unchast Love had so many Altars erected to it and some impurities which are horrible even to name Levit. 20.23 began to be mixed with their Sacrifices Cruelty got into them too at the same time Guilty Man who was troubled at the sense of his own wickedness and looked on God as his Enemy supposed he could no ways better appease and reconcile him than by extraordinary Sacrifices He must shed Man's Blood an mix it with that of Beasts a blind fear pushed on Fathers to immolate their own Children and to burn them to their Gods instead of Incense Those Sacrifices were common in the times of Moses and were but one part of those horrid Iniquities of the Amorites whose vengeance God doth commit to the Children of Israel But they were not only peculiar to those people 'T is known Herod l. 2. Caes de bel Gall. 6. Diod. l. 1.5 Plin. l. 30. Athen l. 13. Proph. de abst l. 2. Jorn de â—eb Get. c. that among all the people of the world not excepting one Men have sacrificed their own resemblances and there had been no place on the Earth where those sad and frightful Divinities were not worshipped whose implacable hatred to Mankind did not require of them such Sacrifices Amidst so great an Ignorance Man came to fall down and worship even the work of his own hands He believed himself able to shut up the Divine Spirit in his Statues and so miserably had he forgot 't was God that made him that he thought in his turn he was able to make a God Who could believe it if Experience did not shew us that so stupid and brutish an Error was not only the most universal but also the most riveted and incorrigible among men Thus it must be confessed to the confusion of Mankind that the first of Truths that which the world preaches that whose Impression is the most powerful was the most remote from men's â—ight The Tradition which preserved it in their minds tho' it
Authentique Precedents which being carefully reviewed and kept by the Priests and Levites were esteemed as Originals and Records The Kings for Moses had wisely foreseen that these People would at last have Kings as well as other Nations The Kings I say were obliged by an express law in Deuteronomy to receive from the hands of the Priests and Levites one of these Precedents which were so religiously corrected Deut. 17.18 that they might transcribe and read it all their lives The Precedents thus reviewed by publick Authority were held by all People in singular Veneration they looked on them as being immediately derived from the hands of Moses as pure and entire as God had dictated them to him An ancient Volume of this severe and religious Correction having been found in the House of the Lord 2 Kings 22.8 c. 2 Chron. 34.14 c. in the Reign of Josiah and peradventure was that very Original which Moses had caused to be put in the side of the Ark of the Covenant stirred up the Piety of that holy King and thereby was the occasion of bringing that People to Repentance The great effects which all along the publick reading of that Law wrought are innumerable In a word it was a perfect Book which being joyned by Moses to the History of the People of God it taught them their Origine their Religion Polity Manners Philosophy and whatsoever conduced to the regulation of Life whatsoever united and formed Society the good and the bad Examples The Reward of the one and the rigorous Punishments which had attended the other By that admirable Discipline a People brought out of Slavery and Bondage and kept forty years in the Wilderness came all fitted to the Land which they were to possess Moses brings them to the Entrance and being informed of his approaching end he commits the remains of what was yet to be done to Joshua Deut. 31.14 c. But before he dyed he composed that long and most excellent Song which begins with these words Give ear O ye Heavens Deut. 32.1 and I will speak and hear O Earth the words of my mouth In that Silence of all nature he speaks first to the People with a sorce that was inimitable and foreseeing their Infidelities he discovers to them the dreadfulness of it All of a sudden he goes out of himself as if he found all Humane Discourse below so great a Subject he reporteth what God saith and it makes him speak with so much elevation and so much sweetness that we know not which inspired him most whether Fear and Confusion or Love and Confidence All the People learnt by heart that Divine Song by the order of God Deut. 31.19 22. and of Moses That great Man after that died content as a Man that had forgot nothing which might preserve in the Memory of his People the Benefits and Precepts of God He leaves his Children in the midst of their Citizens without any distinction and without any extraordinary establishment He hath been admired not only by his People but by all the People of the World and never had any Legislator so great a name as He among all Mankind 'T is believed that he writ the Book of Job The Sublimity of the Thoughts and the Majesty of the Style make that History worthy of Moses For fear lest the Hebrews should be puffed up by attributing the Grace of God to themselves alone it was necessary to make them to understand that that great God had his chosen ones even in the Race of Esau And what Doctrine was more important and what more profitable Consolation could Moses give to the People afflicted in the Wilderness than that of the Patience of Job who being delivered into the hands of Satan to be exercised by all manner of Miseries saw himself deprived of his Wealth his Children and all the Comforts of this World presently after struck with a horrible Disease and moved within by the Temptation of Blasphemy and Despair yet he remaining firm and resolute in his Integrity made it evident that a faithful devout Soul supported by the Divine Relief in the midst of the fiercest and most frightful Trials and in spight of all the blackest thoughts which the Evil Spirit could suggest to it knew not only how to maintain an invincible Trust and Confidence Job 13.15.14.14.15.16.21.19.25 c. but also to raise up it self by his own greatest Afflictions to the highest Contemplation and to acknowledge in the Sufferings it endures with the Vanity and Nothingness of Man the Supreme Empire of God and his Infinite Wisdom This is what the Book of Job instructs us in To keep up the Character of Time here is seen the Faith of the holy Man crowned by Temporal Prosperities but yet the People of God are hereby taught to know what is the virtue of Sufferings and to have a fore-taste of the Grace which was one day to be fastened to the Cross Moses had tasted it when he preferred the Sufferings and Ignominy which he was to undergo with the People of God to the Delicacies and Abundance in the House of the King of Egypt From that time God made him to taste of the Reproaches of Jesus Christ He tasted them also again in his precipitated Flight and in his Exile of forty years Heb. 11.24 25 26. But he drunk even to the bottom of Christ his Cup when being chosen to save that People Numb 14.10 c. he was forced to undergo their continual Revoltings wherein he ran the hazard of his life He learnt what it would cost him to save the People of God and shewed at a distance what a higher deliverance 't was one day to cost the Saviour of the World That great Man had not so much as the consolation of entering into the promised Land he only saw it from the top of a Mountain Numb 20.12 13.27.14 Deut. 32.50 51. and was not ashamed to confess that he was excluded from it by a sin which tho' it seemed but little yet deserved to be punished so severely in a man whose Grace was so particularly eminent Moses served for an example to the severe Jealousie of God and to the Judgments which he executed with so terrible an exactness on those whom his Bounty and Kindness obliged to a more perfect Fidelity But still a higher Mystery is shewn us in this Exclusion of Moses That wise Legislator who by so many Miracles did only lead the Children of God in the Neighbourhood of their Land serves himself to us for an Evidence Heb. 7.19 that his Law made nothing perfect and that without being able to give us the accomplishment of the Promises it makes us only as it were to salute them at a distance or leads us at most but to the gate of our Inheritance It was a Joshua a Jesus for it was the true name of Joshua who by that name and by his office represented the Saviour of
the World it was that Man so much below Moses in all things and superiour only to him by his name it was He I say who was to bring the People of God into the holy Land By the Victories of that great Man before whom Jordan was driven back the Walls of Jericho fell down of themselves and the Sun stood still in the midst of Heaven God established his Children in the Land of Canaan out of which by the same means he drove the abominable People By the hatred which his faithful ones had against them he inspired them with an extreme indignation of their wickedness and impiety and the punishment which was inflicted by their Ministry filled them themselves with fear of the Divine Justice of which they executed the Decrees One part of those People whom Joshua drove out ot their Land Procop. lib. 2. de bel Vand. went and planted themselves in Africa where was found a long time after in an ancient Inscription the Monument of their Flight and the Victories of Joshua After those miraculous Victories had put the Israelites in the possession of the greatest part of the Land which was promised to their Fathers Joshua and Eleazar the High Priest Jos 13 14. seq Numb 26.53.34.17 Jos 14 15. with the Heads of the twelve Tribes divided it among them according to the Law of Moses and assigned to the Tribe Judah time the first and the greatest Lot From the time of Moses it was set above the others in Number in Courage and in Dignity Joshua dyed and the People continued the Conquest of the Holy Land God would have the Tribe of Judah to march at the Head Numb 2.3.9.7.12.10.14 1 Chron. 5.2 Judg 1.1 2.4.8 and declared that he had delivered the Countrey into their hands In fine it overcame die Canaanites and took Jerusalem which was to be the holy City and the capital City of the People of God it was the ancient Salem where Melchisedek had reigned in Abraham's time Melchisedek that King of Righteousness Heb. 7.2 for that is the meaning of his Name and at the same time too King of Peace for that is King of Salem whom Abraham had owned for the greatest High-Priest in the World as if Jerusalem had then been destined for a holy City and the head of Religion That City was at first given to the Children of Benjamin who being weak and few in number could not drive out the Jebusites the ancient Inhabitants of Jerusalem but they dwelt among them Judg. 1.21 Under the Judges the People of God were variously treated according as they did well or ill After the death of the old men who had seen Miracles from the hand of God the remembrance of those mighty Works decayed and the universal inclination and bent of Mankind warp'd the People to Idolatry As often as they fell into it they were punish'd and as often as they repented they were delivered The Faith of Providence and the Truth of the Promise and the Threatnings of Moses was confirmed more and more in the hearts of the true Believers But God prepared also greater Examples of them The People demanded a King and God gave them Saul quickly reproved for his sins he at last resolved to establish a Royal Family from which e Messiah should come and he chose it in Judah David 1 Sam. 16.11.12 c. a young Shepherd sprung out of that Tribe the youngest of the Sons of Jesse whose merit neither his Father nor his Family knew but yet whom God found to be after his own heart was anointed by Samuel in Bethlehem which was his own Country Here the People of God IV. David the Kings and the Prophets to take up a Form more August and Magnificent the Kingdom was setled in the House of David That House began by two Kings of different Characters but both were admirable David a warlike and conquering Prince subdued the Enemies of the People of God whose Arms were dreaded over all the East and Solomon famous for his Wisdom both at home and abroad made that People happy by a profound Peace But the Progress of Religion does here require some particular Remarks upon the Lives of those two great Kingâ— David reigned at first over Judah mighty and victorious and afterwards he was owned over all Israel 2 Sam. 5.6 7 8 9. 1 Chron. 11.6 7 8. 1 Chron 2.16 He took from the Jebâ—sites the strong Hold of Zion which was the Citadel of Jerusalem Being Master of that Fortress he established there by the order of God the Sea of the Kingdom and that of Religâ—on and there he lived He built round about it and called it The City of David Joab his Sister 's built the rest of the City and Jerusalem took up a new form Those of Judah possessed all the Country and Benjamin being few in number dwelt together with them The Ark of the Covenant built by Moses where God dwelleth between the Cherubims and where the two Tables of the Decalogue were kept had then no fixed place David brought it in Triumph 2 Sam. 6.2 16 17. c. with shouting and with the sound of the Trumpet into Zion which he had conquered by the Almighty help of God that so God might reign in Zion and that he might be acknowledged there as the Protectors of David 1 Chro. 16.39.21.29 of Jerusalem and of all the Kingdom But the Tabernacle wherein the People had worshipped God in the Wilderness was yet at Gibeon and there it was where they offered their Sacrifices upon the Altar which Moses had built It was but in expectation that there would be a Temple where the Altar should be re-united with the Ark and where should be performed all the Service When David had conquered all his Enemies and had extended his Victories even to Euphrates being at quiet and a mighty Conquerour he at all his thought upon the establishing of the Divine Worship and on the same Mountain where Abraham went to Sacrifice his only Son 2 Sam. 8.11 1 Chron. 18. 2 Sam. 24.25 1 Chron. 21.22 seq Jos an t 7.10 and was stopped by the hand of an Angel he designed by the appointment of God the place of the Temple He said down all his Designs he amassed mighty noâ— and precious Materials for it he dedicated all the Spoils of his conquered Kings and People to it But that Temple which was so designed by the Conquerour was not to be built but by his Son and Successor the peaceable Solomon He built it after the Model of the Tabernacle The Altar of the Holocausts 1 Kings 6,7 8. 2 Chron. 3 4 5 6 7. the Altar of Incense the golden Candlestick the Tables of Shew Bread and all the other consecrated Moveables of the Temple were taken from the like Pieces which Moses had caused to be made in the Wilderness Solomon only added magnificence and grandeur to them The Ark which the Man of God
stirring up the least Sedition among Men it will excite all the Earth He is neither violent nor impetuous and he who was hardly known when in Judea shall not be only the Foundation of the Peoples Covenant but also the Light of all the Gentiles Ibid. 6. Under his admirable Reign the Assyrians and the Egyptians shall be no longer but one and the same People of God with the Israelites Blessed be Egypt my People and Assyria the work of my Hands Esai 10.25 and Israel mine Inheritance All shall become Israel Ibid. 60.1 2.3 4 11.61.1 2.3 11.62.1 2.65.1 2 15 16.66.19 20 21. Malach. 3.10 Psal 110.2 all shall become holy Jerusalem is no more particular private City It is the Image of a new Society where all the People are gathered together Europe Africa and Asia received Preachers in whom God had put his Sign that they might discover his Glory to the Gentiles The Elect till then called by the Name of Israel shall be called by a new Name which shall signify the fulfilling of the Promises and an happy Amen The Priests and the Levites who till then came from Aaron shall for the time to come come from the midst of the Heathens that is the Gentiles A new Sacrifice more pure and agreeable than the old shall be substituted in its place and then shall be known the reason why David had consecrated a High-Priest of a new Order The Just shall descend from Heaven as the Dew the Earth shall bring forth her But and it shall be the Saviour with whom Righteousness shall be seen to arise Heaven and Earth shall joyn to bring forth as by a common Delivery him that shall be both Heavenly and Earthly together New Ideas of Virtues shall appear in the World in his Examples and in his Doctrine and the Grace which he will shed abroad will imprint them in their Hearts Every thing will be changed by his coming and God hath sworn by himself and the word is gone out of his Mouth in Righteousness and shall not return Isai 45.23 that unto him every knee shall how and every tongue shall swear and acknowledg his soveraign Power This is one part of the marvellous things which God hath shewn to the Prophets under the Kings the Sons of David and to David before all others All have written beforehand the History of the Son of God who was also to be made the Son of Abraham and of David And thus every thing hath fell out in the Order of the divine Counsels This Messiah shewn afar off as the Son of Abraham is yet shewn more near as the Son of David An eternal Empire is promised to him The Knowledg of God is spread abroad throughout the World is set to us as the certain sign and as the fruit of his coming The Conversion of the Gentiles and the Blessing of all the People of the World so long since promised to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob is anew confirmed and all the People of God lived in that expectation In the mean time God governed them after a most admirable manner He made a new Covenant with David and obliged himself to protect him and the Kings his Successors if they would walk in the Commandments which he had given them by Moses 2 Sam. 7 8 9 10 c. 1 King 9.4 5. 2 Chron. 7.17 c. 2 Sam. 11 12 c. if not he pronounced against them very severe Punishments David who had forgot himself for a little while was the first who felt them but having somewhat recovered himself by his unfeigned Repentance he has a confluence of Wealth poured upon him and is proposed as the model of an accomplished King The Throne is established in his House 1. Kings 11. Whilst Solomon walked in the Steps of his Father's Piety he was happy but in his old Age he was drawn aside and God who spared him for the Love of his Servant David declared he would punish him in the person of his Son Thus he lets Parents to know that according to the secret Decree of his Judgments he makes their Punishments to continuâ— after their Death and he keeps them in submission to his Laws by that Interest which is the dearest that is the Interest of their Family In the Execution of his Decrees the foolishly wilfull Rehoboam is given up to an extravagant Council his Kingdom is lessened and ten of the tribes revolt from him 1 Kings 12.16 17 c. Whilst those ten Rebellious and Schismaticall Tribes were departed from their God and their King the Children of Judah who were faithful to God and to David whom he had chosen continued in the Covenant and in the Faith of Abraham The Levites and the Tribe of Benjamin joined with them the Kingdom of the People of God subsisted by their union under the name of the Kingdom of Judah and the Law of Moses was strictly observed In spight of the lamentable Idolatries and Corruption of the ten separated Tribes God remembred his Covenant with Abraham with Isaac and with Jacob his Law was not quite extinct amidst those rebellious People he was continually calling them back to Repentance by innumerable Miracles and by the constant warnings he sent them by his Prophets Hardned in their Wickedness at such a rate he could no longer bear with them 2 Kings 17.7 8 9 10 11 12 c. but he drove them out of the Land of Promise without hopes of ever suffering them to settle there again The History also of Tobit happened at the same time and during the beginnings of the Captivity of the Israelites it discovers to us the Conduct of the Elect of God who still remained in the separated Tribes That Holy Man Tob. 1.5 6 7. c. dwelling among them before the Captivity knew not only how to keep himself Pure from the Idolatries of his Brethren but also how to put the Law in Practice and to worship God publickly in the Temple of Jerusalem without ever being drawn aside by their ill examples or perswaded to a Compliance through servile fear Id. 19 20 21. When he was a Captive and persecuted at Nineveh he and his Family still retained their Piety and that admirable manner with which both he and his Son Tobias had their Faith rewarded even here upon Earth shews that notwithstanding Captivity and Persecution God had secret ways of making his Servants sensible of the Blessings of the Law in raising them evermore by the afflictions they were to suffer to higher and more exalted thoughts By the Examples of Tobit and his Holy Admonitions those of Israel were stirred up to acknowledge at least under the Rod the hand of God which chastised them but yet they almost all continued in obstinacy those of Judah so far were they from taking warning by Israel's Chastisements that they followed their ill examples God did not cease admonishing them by his Prophets whom he sent one after
another rising up betimes and sending them as he saith himself 2 Chron. 36.15 16. Jer. 25.15.29.19.35.15 to show his Paternal care and tenderness But being wearied with their Ingratitude he was moved against them and threatned to deal with them as he had done with their rebellious Brethren There is nothing more observable in the History of the People of God than this Ministry of the Prophets They beheld men separated from the rest of the People by a retired Life and by a particular Habit they had Habitations where they were seen to live in a kind of Community 1 Sam. 28.14 1 Kings 19.19 Isai 20.2 Zach. 13.5 under a Superiour whom God had given them Their poor and penitent life was the very figure of Mortification which was to be pronounced under the Gospel God communicated himself to them in a particular manner and made that wonderful Communication appear to all the People 1 Sam. 10.10.19.19 26. 1 Kings 18. 2 Kings 11.3 15 18 19.25 2 Kings 4.10.38.6.1 2. but it never was so conspicuous as in the times of that disorder wherein Idolatry had gone very near to abolish the Law of God During those unhappy times the Prophets proclaimed on all sides loudly both by Preaching and writings the threatnings of Almighty God and the Testimony they bore to his Truth The writings they composed were in the Hands of all the People and carefully kept in perpetual remembrance to future Ages Those People who continued faithful to God joined with them and we see also part in Israel where Idolatry so much prevailed Exod. 17.14 Isa 30.8.34.16 Jer. 22.30.26.2.12.36.15 2 Chron. 36.22 23. 1 Esd 1.1 Dan. 9.3 2 Kings 4.23.21.16 yet those that were faithful did with the Prophets celebrate the Sabbaths and the Feasts established by the Law of Moses 'T was those that encouraged the good People to continue firm in the Covenant Many of them suffered Death and we have seen that after their example in the worst of times that is to say in the very Reign of Manasseh a world of Believers to lay down their Lives for the Truth so that it hath never been one moment without a Testimony Thus the Society of the People of God subsisted always the Prophets continued in it a great number of the Faithful persisted boldly in the Law of God with them and with the Priests the Levites Ezekiel 54.15 the Sons of Zadoc who as Ezekiel says kept the Charge of God's Sanctuary when the Children of Israel went astray from him And yet notwithstanding the Prophets nor the faithful Priests nor the People joined with them in the observance of the Law that Idolatry which had destroyed Israel did oft-times lead away even in Judah it self both the Princes and the People Tho' the Kings had forgotten the God of their Fathers yet he a long time bore with their Iniquities for the sake of his Servant David who was always present to his Eyes When the Kings the Children of David followed the good Examples of their Father God wrought wondrous Miracles for them but when they degenerated they felt the invincible Strength of his Arm which was very heavy upon them The Kings of Egypt the Kings of Syria and especially the Kings of Assyria and Babylon served as the Instruments of his Vengeance Impiety grew more and more and God raised up in the East a King more proud and to be fear'd than all that ever had been heard of before 't was Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon the most terrible of all Conquerors Jerem. 25 c. Ezek. 26.7 8. c. 2 Kings 24.1,2 2 Chron. 36.6.7 He was shewn long before both to the People and to their Kings as the Avenger that was designed to punish them He approaches and fear and dread do march before him At once takes Jerusalem and transports part of its Inhabitants unto Babylon But neither those who remained in the City nor thâ—se who were carried away Captive tho' the one were forewarned by Jeremiah and the other by Ezekiel shewed any marks of Repentance They preferred to those Holy Prophets Jer. 14.14 the Prophets that prophâ—sied Lyes whom God never sent nor never commanded nor spakâ— to but they prophesied unto them a false vision and divination and a thing of nought and the Deceit of their Heart and flattered them in their Wickednesses The Revenger returned into Judea and the voke of Jerusalem was laid more heavy upon them but yet the People were not utterly destroyed At last their Iniquities being arriv'd to the full height 2 Kings 25.6.7 c. pride increased with their weakness and Nebuchadnezzar with the Captain of his Guard burns the Temple of the Lord and the King's Palace and turns all the City into Ashes God spared not his Sanctuary that beautiful Temple the Ornament of the World which would have been eternal if the Children of Israel had persevered in their Piety was consumed and lay with the common Rubbish of the rest of the City by the Fire of the Assyrians 'T was in vain the lying words which the Jews made use of Jer. 7.4.5 The Temple of the Lord The Temple of the Lord The Temple of the Lord is in the midst of us as if that Sacred Temple would of it self protect them God had resolved to let them see that he was not fixed to a building of Stone but he would have his habitation in the Hearts of Believers So he destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem and delivered the Treasure of it to the Spoil so that abundance of costly rich Vessels consecrated to holy Uses by the Piety of former Kings was now abandoned and given up to One that was Impious But the fall of God's People was to be for the Instruction of all the World We see in the person of that wicked King tho' he was victorious what we ought to expect from Conquerours and what they are For the most part they are but Instruments of the Divine Vengeance God executes his Judgments by them and afterwards he executes his Justice upon them Nebuchadnezzar iâ—vested with a Divine Power and by that Ministry become invincible punishes all the Enemies of the People of God He ravages the Idumeans the Ammonites and the Moabites he overthrows the Kings of Syria Egypt under whose Power Judea had oftentimes groaned was the Prey of that proud King and became Tributary to him his Power was no less fatal to Judea it self which would not turn unto the Lord tho' he gave them so long a space of Repentance Every thing fell every thing was destroyed by the Divine Justice and Nebuchadnezzar was made the Minister of it but we shall see him fall in his turn and God who made use of the hand of that Prince to chastise his Children and to vanquish his Enemies reserves him to fall by his own Almighty Arm. He hath not left his Children ignorant of the destiny of that King who punished them and of that Empire of the
into his former Exercise with all the other Priests who proved their Descents by the publick Registers The others were rejected Esdras a Priest himself and Doctor of the Law and Nehemiah the Governor reformed all the Abuses which the Captivity had brought in 1 Esdr 2. and caused the Law to be observed in its Purity The People bewailed with them the Transgressions which had brought down upon them those severe and dreadful Punishments and confess that Moses had foretold them of them 2 Esdr 1.8.9 They do all together read in the Sacred Oracles the Threatnings of the Man of God they likewise saw the fullfilling of them upon themselves The Oracle of Jeremiah and the so much promised Return after the Seventy Years of Captivity both astonish them and comfort them they adore the Judgments of God and being reconciled to him they live in Peace and Quiet God who brings all things to pass in his own due time had chosen this to cause his extraordinary ways to cease that is to say the Prophecies in his People sufficiently instructed for the future He rested about five hundred Years even to the days of the Messiah God gave to the Majesty of his Son his Prophets to be silent for all that time to keep his People in expectation of him who was to be the fulfilling of all their Oracles But toward the end of those times in which God had resolved to put an end to Prophecies he seemed to be willing to shed abroad all his Illuminations and to reveal all the Councels of his Providence so clearly did he express the Secrets of the Times to come During the Captivity and especially towards the time of its expiring Daniel reverenced for his Piety even by Infidel Kings and employed for his Prudence in the greatest and most important Affairs of their Estate Dan. 2.3 5 8. saw in order at divers times and under different Figures and Resemblances four Monarchies under which the Israelites were to live He takes notice of them by their proper Characters Ibid. 2.7 8 10 11. The Empire of a Grecian King is seen to pass away like a Torrent It was that of Alexander By its fall he beheld another Empire set up less than the former and much weakened by its Divisions This was that of his Successors among whom there were four pointed out in the Prophecy Antipater Seleucus Ptolomy and Antigonus are visibly designed 'T is affirmed by the History that they were more powerful than the others Ibid. 7.6 8 21 22. and only their Power should go to their Children He foresaw their Wars Ibid. 11.6 their Jealousies and their broken Agreements the continuance and the Ambition of the Kings of Syria Dan. 2.44 45 7.13 14 27. the Pride and the other Signs which evidently pointed out the illustrious Antiochus the implacable Enemy of the People of God The shortness of his Reign and the sudden Punishment of his Excesses He beheld at last toward the end and as it were in the Bosom of those Monarchies the Kingdom of the Son of Man At this name you presently do acknowledg Jesus Christ but this Kingdom of the Son of Man is also called the Kingdom of the Saints of the most High All the People paid Submission to that great and peaceable Kingdom Eternity is promised to it and he was to be the only one whose Power should not go over to another Empire And there was given him Dominion and Glory and a Kingdom that all People Nations in Languages should serve him his Dominions is an everlasting Dominion which shall not pass away and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed When that Son of Man should come that Christ who was so much desired and how he should accomplish the Work committed to him that is to say the Redemption of Mankind God manifestly discovers it to Daniel whilst he was taken up about the Captivity of his People in Babylon and about the Seventy Years which God was resolved to determine upon the People Dan. 9.23 c. and upon the Holy City to finish the Transgression c. In the midst of his Supplications which he made for the Deliverance of his Brethren he is on a sudden raised up to more transcendent Mysteries He sees another Number of Years and another Deliverance of much greater Importance Instead of the Seventy Years foretold by Jeremiah he sees Seventy Weeks to commence from the time of the Decree given by Artaxerxes of old in the twentieth year of his Reign Ibid. 24. for the Re-building the City of Jerusalem There is pointed out in particular Words at the end of those Weeks that they were to make an end of Sins and to make reconciliation for Iniquity and to bring in everlasting Righteousness and to seal up the Vision and Prophecy and to anoint thâ— most Holy The Christ was to make his Charge and to appear as the Conductor of the People after sixty nine Weeks Ib. 25 26 27. After sixty nine Weeks for the Prophet repeats it again The Christ is to be put to death he is to suffer a violent Death he shall be cut off but not for himself he shall be sacrificed to fulfil the Mysteries One Week is pointed out amongst the rest and it is the last and the seventieth wherein Christ is to be Sacrificed whereiâ— he shall confirm the Covenant with many for one Week and in the midst of the Week he shall cause the Sacrifice and the Oblation to cease without doubt by the death of Christ for it is after the death of Christ that this Change is pointed out to us There was nothing more to be seen but Horror and Confusion the Ruine of the Holy City and the Sanctuary a People and a Captain who comes to destroy all the Abomination in the Temple the last and irremediable Desolation of an ungrateful People toward their Saviour We have seen that these Weeks being reduced into Weeks of Years according as the manner of the Scripture is make four hundred and ninety Years and bring us exactly from the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to the last week a week full of Mysteries where the sacrificed and ever-blessed Jesus puts an end by his Death to the Sacrifices of the Law and accomplishes the Figures and Representations of them The Learned differ in their Computations to make that time exactly agree That which I have proposed to you is without any Trouble 'T is so far from making the Historical Course of the Kings of Persia obscure that it clears it up tho' there should be nothing in it more surprising admit some Uncertainty should be found in the Dates of those Princes eight or nine years at most which might be disputed in an account of four hundred and ninety Years will never make any extraordinary Question But what need we discourse further of it God hath removed the Difficulty if there was any by a Decision that cannot be reply'd to A manifest
that Temple is dedicated Behold Mal. 3.1 I will send my Messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple evâ—n the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in behold he shall come saith the Lord of Hosts A Messenger is an Envoy But behold here is an Envoy of a very wonderful Dignity an Envoy who hath a Temple an Envoy who is no less than God and who enters into the Temple as into his own House an Envoy in whom all the People delight who cometh to make a new Covenant and who for that reason is called the Messenger of the Covenant 'T was therefore in the second Temple that God sent from God was to appear Mal. 3.1.4.5 6. But another Messenger comes before him to prepare his way for him There we see the Messiah preceded by his Fore-runner The Character of that Fore-runner is also discovered to the Prophet That was to be a new Elijah remarkable for his Holiness for the Austerity of his Life for his Authority and for his Zeal Thus the last Prophet of the antient People shews the first Prophet who was to come after him that is to say that Elijah the Fore-runner of the Lord who was to appear Until that time the People of God were to expect no more Prophets The Law of Moses was to be sufficient for them and therefore does Malachi shut up all with these words Remember ye the Law of Moses my Servant which I commanded unto him in Horeb. for all Israel Mal. 4.4 6 6. with the Statutes and Judgments Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet and he shall turn the Heart of the Fathers to the Children who will shew to them what they are to expect To this Law of Moses God had joyned the Prophets who had spoken in conformity and the History of the People of God made by the same Prophets in which were confirmed by visible experiences the Promises and Threatnings of the Law Every thing was very carefully and distinctly writ every thing digested by the order of particular times and this was what God left for the Instruction of his People when he caused the Prophecies to cease Those Instructions wrought a wonderous change in the Manners of the Israelites V. The Times of the second Temple They had no more need of either Apparitions or manifest Predictions nor of those unheard of Prodigies which God wrought so often for their Deliverance and Salvation The Testimonies they had already received satisfied them and their Incredulity not only convinced by the event of things but also so frequently punished had at last rendered them tractable and orderly Wherefore from that time they were no more seen to return to Idolatry to which they were so strangely inclined before They were mightily ashamed that they had rejected the God of their Fathers They were ever mindful of Nebuchadnezzar and their own Ruine so often foretold in all its circumstances and which had always fallen upon 'em sooner than they believed it would They no less stood in admiration of their re-establishment wrought contrary to all appearance at the time and by him who had been pointed out to them They never beheld the second Temple but they remembred what was the reason for which the first was destroyed and how this had been rebuilt thus they confirmed themselves in the Faith of their Scriptures to which every circumstance of their Condition bore witness There was no more seen amongst them any false Prophets They were absolutely driven off from the inclination they formerly had to believe them and from that affection too they did bear then to Idolatry Zachâ—riah had prophesied by one and the same Oracle that those two things should happen to them His Prophecy had a most plain and manifest accomplishment Zâ—â—â— 13.2 3 4 5. And it shall come to pass saith the Lord of Hosts that I will cut off the names of the Idols out of the Land and also I will cause the Prophets and the unclean Spirit to pass out of the Land And it shall come to pass that when any shall yet prophesy then his Father and his Mother that begat him shall say unto him Thou shalt not live for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord and his Father and his Mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth And it shall come to pass in that day that the Prophets shall be ashamed every one of his Vision when he hath prophesied neither shall they wear a rough Garment to deceive The false Prophets shall cease under the second Temple the People disabused of their former Error shall no longer hearken to them Isâ—i 41.11 12 13 4â— 18 19.49 â—8 19 2â— 21.52.1 2 7.54 55 c. 6â— 15.16 c. Ezâ—k â—6 38.11 12 13 14. Jer. 46.27 The true Prophets of God were read and read again without ceasing there was no need of any Comment for the things which happened every day in the execution of their Prophecies were but the too faithful Interpreters of them All their Prophets had effectually promised them a most profound Peace They read also with joy the curious Descriptions which both Isaiah and Ezekiel made of those happy Times which should follow the Captivity of Babylon All the Ruins are repaired the Cities and the Villages are magnificently rebuilt the People are innumerable the Enemies are defeated Plenty and Abundance are in their Cities and in their Fields There is seen Joy Rest and Quietness and at last all the Fruits of a sweet and lasting Peace God promises to keep his People in a durable and perfect Tranquillity They enjoyed it under the Kings of Persia As long as that Empire lasted the favourable Decrees of Cyrus who was the founder thereof secured the repose of the Jews Though they had been threatned with their final Ruine under Ahasuerus howsoever it was God being moved by their tears on a sudden changed the heart of that King and drew on a most remarkable Vengeance on Haman their mortal Enemy Esth 4 5 7 8 9. Excepting that very Conjuncture which was quickly over they were always without fear Instructed by their Prophets to be obedient to Kings to whom God had submitted them their Fidelity was inviolable Jer. 27.12 17.40.9 So likewise were they evermore kindly treated By the favour of a very small Tax which they paid to their Soveraigns who were their Protectors rather than their Masters they lived after their own Laws The Sacerdotal Power was absolutely preserved The Chief Priests conducted the People The publick Council established first by Moses had all its Authority and they exercised among themselves the power of Life and Death and no Body medled with them about it The Kings did so ordain it The mine of the Persian Empire brought no change to their Affairs Alexander respected their Temple admired their Prophecies and increased their Priviledges Joseph an
t 11.8.2 Cont. Ap. They suffered a little under their first Successors Ptolomy the Son of Lagus surprized Jerusalem and brought from thence into Egypt a hundred thousand Captives But he soon left off his hatred to them He himself made them Citizens of Alexandria the Capital City of his Kingdom or rather he confirmed to them the right which Alexander had already invested them with and not finding any in all his Empire more faithful than the Jews he filled his Armies with them and conferred upon them the most important Places and Offices of Trust If the Lagides regarded them Id. ant 12.3.2 Cont. Ap. yet they were better treated by the Seleucides under whose Empire they lived Seleucus Nicanor chief of that Family established them in Antioch And Antiochus the God his Grandson having caused them to be received in all the Cities of the Lesser Asia we have seen them spread themselves over all Greece living there according to their Law and enjoying there the same Rights as the other Citizens as they did in Alexandria and Antioch In the mean while their Law was turned into Greek by the care of Ptolomeus Philadelphus King of Egypt Joseph Praef. ant lib. 12. 2. 2. Cont. Ap. The Jewish Religion was known among the Gentiles the Temple of Jerusalem was enriched by the Gifts of both Kings and People the Jews lived in Peace and in Liberty under the power of the Kings of Syria and they never had been sensible of such a Tranquillity under their own Kings It seemed as if it would have been eternal but that they themselves did break it by their own Dissentions For no less than three hundred years did they enjoy that Peace so much foretold by their Prophets when Ambition and the Jealousies which were spread amongst them were going to destroy them Some of the most powerful of them betrayed their People for a Complement and piece of Flattery to the Kings they would fain make themselves famous after the manner of the Grecians 1 Maccab. 1.12 13 c. 2 Maccab. 3 4.1 c. 14 15 16. c. and preferred that vain Pomp to the solid Glory which the observance of the Laws of their Ancestors would have given them among their Citizens They celebrated Places as the Gentiles did That Novelty dazled the Eyes of the People and Idolatry cloathed with that splendour and magnificence appeared very lovely to a great many Jews To these Changes were supeâ—added the Disputes for the Soveraign Priesthood which was the principal Dignity of the Nation Those that were ambitious stuck to the Interests of the Kings of Syria hoping by that means to obtain it and so that Sacred Dignity was the reward of the Flattery of those Court Minions Private Piques and Jealousies too did precipitately bring on as is very usual great Calamities upon all People Antiochus the illustrious King of Syria Dan. 7.8 11 24 25.8.9 10 11 12 13 14 23 24 25. Polyb. l. 26. 31. in excerp ap Ath. l. 10. was projecting how to cut off that distracted People and so to make himself Master of their Wealth That Prince appeared then with all the Characters which Daniel had described him in Ambitious Covetous full of intrigue cruel insolent wicked furious puffed up with his Victories and afterwards enraged at his losses He enters into Jerusalem in a posture of attempting all things the Factions of the Jews and not his own Forces harden him to it and Daniel had so foreseen it He exercises unheard of Cruelties his Pride transports him to the last and most violent Excesses and he vomits forth Blasphemies against the most High as the same Prophet had foretold In the executing of those Prophecies and because of the sins of the People power is given unto him against the perpetual Sacrifice He prophaned the Temple of God which had been reverenced by the Kings his Ancestors he pillaged it and by the Riches he found there 1 Macc. 1.43.46 57. c. 2 Macc. 6.1 2. he repaired his own decayed sunk Exchequer Under the pretext of bringing into conformity the Manners of his Subjects and effectually to satiate his Avarice in pillaging all Judea he commanded the Jews to worship the same Gods with the Greeks above all he would have them to pay adoration to Jupiter Olympius whose Idol he had set up in the very Temple and being far more wicked than Nebuchadnezzar he labours to destroy the Holy Feasts the Law of Moses the Sacrifices the Religion and indeed all the People But that Prince his Successes had their just Limits set out by the Prophecies Mattathias opposed his Violences and re-united the holy People Judas Maccabeus his Son with a handful of persons perform'd brave and unheard of Exploits and purified the Temple of God three years and a half after its Prophanation as Daniel had foretold Dan. 7.25.12.7 11. Joseph prol lib. de bell Jud. lib. 1.1.6.11 Isai 63. 1 Macc. 4.15.5.3.26 28 36 54. Dan. 8.14.26 1 Macc. 6.2.9 He pursued the Idumeans and all the other Gentiles who had joyned themselves to Antiochus and having taken their best Places from them he returned victorious and humble just as Isaiah had seen him singing forth the Praises of God who had delivered into his hands the Enemies of his People and his Garments were still red with their blood He continued his Victories notwithstanding the prodigious great Armies of the Captains of Antiochus Daniel had given that wicked King but six years to torment the People of God and behold just at the prefixed stated term he acquainted Ecbatane with the Heroick Deeds of Judas He fell into a profound Melancholy and dyed as the holy Prophet had foretold miserable but not by the hand of Man after he had acknowledged tho' it was too late the Power of the God of Israel I need not tell you in what manner his Successors pursued the War against Judea nor say any thing of the death of Judas its Deliverer nor of the Victories of his two Brethren Jonathan and Simon successively High-Priests whose Valour re-established the antient Glory of the People of God Those three great Men saw the Kings of Syria and all the neighbouring People conspired against them and what was most deplorable of all was that they saw at several times those of Judah it self armed against their own Country and against Jerusalem An unheard of thing till then but expresly taken notice of by the Prophets In the midst of so many Calamities the Confidence they had in God made them undaunted and invincible The People were always happy under their Conduct Zach. 14.4 1 Macc. 1.12.9.11.20 21 22.16 2 Macc. 4.22 23 c. and at last in Simon 's time being freed from the Yoke of the Gentiles they submitted themselves unto him and his Children by and with the Consent of the Kings of Syria But the Act by which the People of God transferred all the publick Power to Simon and granted
likewise their Conduct was meek and gentle tho' very regular and they lived among themselves in an extream Union The Rewards and Punishments of a future Life which they zealously asserted brought them very great honour At last Ambition got in amongst them They had a mind to govern Id. lib. 2. de Bell. Jud. 7. and indeed they ascribed to themselves an absolute Power over the People they made themselves the Arbiters of Learning and Religion which they insensibly turned to superstitious Practices advantagious for their Interest and the Dominion they would fain have set up over mens Consciences and the true life and spirit of the Law was almost lost To these Evils anâ—ther was added much greater to wit Pride and Presumption but such a Presumption as indeavoured to attribute to themselves the Gift of God The Jews accustomed to his Benefits and having been so many Ages since illuminated with his knowledge forgat that his bounty alone had separated them from all other People and so looked on his Grace as a Debt A chosen Race and always blessed for two thousand years they judged themselves only to be worthy to know God and believed themselves to be of a different Species from other Men whom they saw deprived of his knowledge Upon this ground they looked on the Gentiles with a disdain that was insupportable To be come from Abraham according to the Flesh seemed to them such a Distinction as raised them naturally above all others and being puffed up with so fine an Original they reckoned themselves Saints by Nature and not by Grace An Errour which continues still among them These were the Pharisees who seeking to glorifie themselves by their own Light and by the exact observance of the Ceremonies of the Law brought in this Opinion towards the latter end of the times As they only thought of distinguishing themselves from other men they multiplyed outward Ceremonies and Practices without any measure and they gave out all their fanciful Notions how contrary soever they were to the Law of God as Authentick Traditions Although those Sentiments had not by any Publick Decree passed into the Dogma's of the Synagogue yet they insensibly instilled them into the People which made them unquiet turbulent and seditions At last the Divisions which were to be according to their Prophets the beginning of their ruine and downfal broke out upon occasion of the Disorders that happened in the House of the Asmoneans There were scarce sixty years unto Jesus Christ Zach. 11.6 7 8. c. when Hyrcan and Aristoâ—ulus the Sons of Alexander Janneus fell out about the Priesthood to which the Royalty was annexed Here was the fatal Moment which the History takes notice of as the first cause of the Destruction of the Jews Joseph an t 14.8.20.8.1 Bell. Jud. 4.5 Appian bell Syr. Mithrid Liv. lib. 5. Zach. 11.8 Pompey whom the two Brothers called to regulate them subjected them both at the same time when he dispossessed Antiochus Sirnamed the Asiatick the last King of Syria Those three Princes degraded together and as it were at one effort were the Signal of the Destruction so exactly described by the Prophet Zachariah 'T is certain by the History that that change of the Affairs of Syria and Judea was made at the same time by Pompey when after he had ended the War with Mithridates ready to return to Rome he adjusted the Affairs of the East The Prophet only observed what made towards the Ruine of the Jews who of the two Brothers whom they had seen Kings saw the one a Prisoner serving at Pompey's Triumph and the other the weak Hyrcan from whom the same Pompey took together with the Diadem a great part of his Dominion keeping only a vain Title of Authority which likewise he lost quickly after 'T was then that the Jews were made the Tributaries of the Romans and the Ruine of Syria brought on theirs because that great Kingdom reduced into a Province in their Neighbourhood augmented so much the Roman Power there that there was Safety but only in obeying them The Governours of Syria made continual Attempts on Judea The Romans made themselves absolute Masters of them and weakened their Government in several things By them at last the Kingdom of Juda. passed out of the Hands of the Asmoneans to whom it had been subject into those of Herod a stranger and an Idumean The cruel and ambitious Politie of that King who only in shew professed the Jewish Religion changed soon the Maxims of the antient Government The Jews were no longer Masters of their Fate under the vast Empire of the Persians and the first Seleucides where they lived only in an undisturbed Peace Herod who holds them in almost an absolute Slavery to his Power embroils all things confounds aâ—ter his own Humor the Succession of the High-Priests weakens the Pontificate whiâ—h he makes Arbitrary enervates the Authority of the Council of the Nation whiâ—h can no longer do any thing All the publick Power goes through the Hands of Herod and of the Romans whose Slave he is and he shakes the Foundations of the Jewish Commonwealth The Pharisees and the People who only hearkened to their Opinions bore this Condition very impatiently The more they thought themselves oppressed with the Yoke of the Gentiles the greater Hatred and Disdain they had for them They would no longer have a Messiah who should not be a Warrior and dreadful to the Powers that captivated them Thus forgetting so many Prophecies which so plainly and expresly spoke of their being humbled they had no long Eyes nor Ears but for those which proclaimed Triumphs to them though very different from such as they wished In the declension of the Religion VI. Jesus Christ and his Doctrine and the Affairs of the Jews at the end of King Herod's Reign and then when the Pharisees were bringing in so many Abuses Jesus Christ was sent upon the Earth to re-establish the Kingdom in the House of David after a more exalted manner than ever the carnal Jews understood it and to preach that Doctrine and good Tydings of Salvation which God was resolved all the World should be acquainted with This wonderful Son whom Isaiah calls the mighty God Isai 9.6 the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace was born of a Virgin at Bethlehem and there he came to own the first Original of his Race Conceived by the Holy Ghost holy by his Birth being alone worthy to repair the wickedness of ours he was called Jesus Matth. 1.21 because he was to save us from our Sins Immediately after his Birth a new Star a Type of that Light he was to bring to the Gentiles was seen in the East and brought to our Saviour thus an Infant the First-fruits of the converted Gentiles A little after that Lord so much desired came to his holy Temple where Simeon sees him not only the Glory of the Poeple Israel Luke 2.32 but also as
Ghost to fortifie his Apostles and eternally to inspire and invigorate the Body of the Church This power of the Holy Ghost to declare it self the more was to appear in weakness Behold I send saith Jesus Christ to his Apostles Luke 24.49 the promise of my Father upon you that is to say the Holy Ghost in the mean time tarry ye in the City of Jerusalem be quiet do not concern your self about any thing until ye be indued with power from on high And to shew their submission and conformity to that Order they continued shut up for forty days at the prefixed time the Holy Ghost descended Acts 2.3 cloven Tongues like as of fire falling upon the Disciples of our blessed Saviour do shew the efficacy of their preaching and so being filled with the Holy Ghost Id. 4. they began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance the Apostles bore witness of Jesus Christ they were all ready to suffer for the Testimony that they had seen him rise from the dead Miracles followed upon their preaching At two of St. Peter's Sermons eight thousand Jews were converted and bewailing their Errour and Blindness they were wâ—shed in the Blood which they had spilt Thus was the Church founded in Jerusalem and amongst the Jews and notwithstanding the perverse incredulity of the Gross of the Nation yet the Disciples of Jesus Christ made known unto the World a Charity a Power but tempered with so much sweetness and condescension as never had been seen in any Society before Persecution arose the Faith increased the Children of God began more and more to aspire towards Heaven the Jews by their obstinate and inveterate Malice drew upon themselves the just Vengeance of God and hastened on them the sad Calamities and Desolation wherewith they had been threatned their Estates and their Affairs grew worse and worse Whilst God was setting apart a great number of them whom he placed among his Elect St. Peter was sent to baptize Cornelius a Roman Centurion He learned first of all by a Heavenly Vision and afterwards by Experience that the Gentiles were called to the Knowledge of God Jesus Christ who was willing to have them converted speaks from on high to St. Paul who was to be their Doctor and by a Miracle till then unheard of from a Persecutor he is made not only a Defender but a zealous Preacher of the Faith The profound Secret of the Calling of the Gentiles by the Reprobation of the ungratefull Jews who were still made more and more unworthy of the Gospel was discovered to him St. Paul reached forth his hands to the Geniiles and treated upon those important Questions with a wonderful force and power that Christ should suffer Acts 26.23 and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead and should shew unto the People and to the Gentiles He proved the Affirmative by Moses and the Prophets and called Idolaters to the Knowledge of God in the Name of Jesus Christ that was risen They were converted by Multitudes St. Paul shewed that their Calling was an effect of Grace which made no distinction betwixt either Jew or Gentile Fury and Jealousie transported the Jews so as they laid terrible Plots against St. Paul being chiefly incensed that he preached up the Gentiles and brought them to the true God At last he was delivered to the Romans as they had before delivered up Jesus Christ to them All the Empire was in commotion against the rising Church and Nero the Persecutor of all Mankind was the first Persecutor of the Faithful That Tyrant put both St. Peter and St. Paul to death Rome was consecrated by their Blood and the Martyrdom of St. Peter chief of the Apostles established in the Capital City of the Empire the Principal See of Religion In the mean time the time drew on when the Divine Vengeance was to fall upon the Impenitent Jews Disorders grew up amongst them a false Zeal blinded them and made them odious to all men their false Prophets infatuated them by the Promâ—ses of an imaginary Kingdom Thus being seduced by their deceitful tricks and artifices they could no longer endure any legitimate Empire and so they were unlimited in their attempts God gave them up to a reprobate Sence They revolted against the Romans who overthrew them Titus himself that destroyed them confessed he only lent his hand to that God that was provoked against them Adrian made a full end of them Philost vit Apoll Tyan lib. 6. Joseph de bell Jud. lib. 7.16 They were cut off with all the marks of the Divine Vengeance driven out of their own Land and made Slaves to all the World they no longer had either Temple or Altar or Sacrifice or Country and there was seen in Judah not so much as a form of People But God had notwithstanding provided for the Eternity of his Government The Eyes of the Gentiles were opened and they were united in Spirit to the converted Jews By that means they were joined to the Race and Stock of Abraham and became his Children by Faith and so inherited the promises which had been made to him A new People were formed and the new Sacrifice so much celebrated by the Prophets began to be offered throughout all the World Thus was that antient Oracle or Jacob fulfilled to a tittle Judah from the beginning was multiplied more than all his Brethren and having always kept a certain Preheminence he at last received the Kingdom as Hereditary to him Afterwards the People of God were reduced to his single Race and shut up in his Tribe they were called by his Name In Judah were continued that great People who were promised to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob in him the other promises were perpetuated the worship of God the Temple the Sacrifices the possession of the promised Land which was only called Judah Notwithstanding all their several States the Jews continued always in a body of a regulated People and Kingdom making use of their Laws There were always seen to arise either Kings or Magistrates and Judges even till the Advent of the Messiah he came and the Kingdom of Judah quickly fell to ruin It was utterly destroyed and the Jewish People were driven without hope from the Land of their Fathers The Messiah was the expectation of the Nations and he reigned over a new People But to keep the Succession and the Perpetuity it was necessary to have this new people engrafted as I may so say upon the former and as St. Paul speaks if thou being a wild Olive tree were grafted in amongst then Rom. 11.17 and with them partakest of the root and fatnâ—â—s of the Olive-tree So it happened that the Church which was first established among the Jews at length received the Gentiles to make up one and the same Tree with them one and the same Body one and the same People and to make them partakers of her Graces and Promises What
signifies an Idol and who does not know that the Roman Armies bore in their Ensigns the Images of their Gods and of their Caesars who were had in greater Reverence than all their Gods Those Ensigns were to the Souldiers an Object of worship and because Idols according to God's Decrees were never to appear in the holy Land the Roman Ensigns were banished from thence Also we see in Histories that whilst among the Romans there remained any tho' never so little Consideration for the Jews the Roman Ensigns were never seen in Judea Therefore it was that Vitellius when he went into that Province to carry the War into Arabia caused his Troops to march without any Colours for the Jewish Religion was at that time had in Reverence Joseph l. 18. c. 7. and they would not force that People to indure things that were so contrary to their Law But in the time of the last Jewish War it is very much to be believed that the Romans did not any whit spare a People whom they were resolved utterly to destroy So that when Jerusalem was besieged it was surrounded with as many Idols as there were Roman Ensigns in the Army and the Abomination did never appear so great standing where it ought not that is to say in the holy Land and round about the Temple Was this then may some say that great Sign that Jesus Christ was to give Was it then high time to fly when Titus besieged Jerusalem and when he so closely blâ—cked up the Avenues that there was no place left for them to make their escape at This was the Marvel of the Prophecy Jeruâ—alem was besieged twice in those times The first by Cestius the Governor of Syria in the sixty eighth Year of our Saviour the second by Titus four Years after that is to say in the Year seventy two Joseph 2. de beâ— Jud. c. 23 24. Ibid. l. 6 7. In the last Siege there was no possible Means of saving themselves Titus made that War with so much heat and violence he surprized all the Nation being then in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles and not one made their escape and that formidable Circumvallation which he made round the City put its Inhabitants out of all manner of Hopes But there was no such thing in the Siege of Cestius who was incamped fifty Furlongs that is to say six Miles from Jerusalem His Army was dispersed all round it but without making any Intrenchments Joseph lib. 2. c. 23 24. and he managed the War so negligently that he slipt the Opportunity of taking the City tho' their Terror Seditions and even their Intelligences open'd the Gates to him At that time so far was their Retreat from being impossible Joseph Ibid. that the History expresly takes notice that many of the Jews did retire into the Towers and other Places of Safety and Defence Then it was that they ought to have made their Flight That was the Signal which the Son of God gave to his own People So likewise did he most exactly distinguish the two Sieges The one was When their Enemies should cast a Tren h about them and compass them round Luke 19.23.21.20 21. and keep them in on every side then nothing but Death was to be expected by those who should be shut up in the City The other was when it should be only compassed with Armies and rather Invested than really Besieged then was it that they were to flee and retire unto the Mountains The Christians obeyed the Command of theâ—r Messias Tho' there were many Thousands of them both in Jerusalem and in Judea we do not read either in Josephus Euseb 3. Hist Ecâ—les c. 5. Epiph. Haer. 7. Nazar lib. de ponâ— mensur or in the other Histories that one of them was found in the City when it was taken On the contrary it is positively affirmed in the Eâ—clesiastical Histories and in all the Monuments of our Ancestors that they did withdraw into a little City call'd Pella in a mountainous Country near to the Desart towards the Confines of Judea and Arabia We may be by that satisfied how exactly they were forewarned of it and there is nothing more remarkable than that separation of the incredulous Jews from those Jews who were converted to Christianity the one remaining in Jerusalem to undergo the Punishment of their Infidelity and the others being retired as Lot was from Sodom to a small City where with trembling they considered of the Effects of the divine Vengeance from which Almighty God had been pleased to rescue and preserve them Besides the Predictions of Jesus Christ there were likewise several others from many of his Disciples and among the rest those of St. Peter and St. Paul As they were dâ—agging to their Deaths those two faithful Witnesses of Jesus Christ's being risen they declared openly to the Jews who should deliver them to the Gentiles their approaching Ruine telling them That Jerusalem was utterly to be destroyed Lact. divin Instit l. 4. c. 21. that they should dye with Famine and Despaire that they should be for ever banished from the Land of their Fathers and sent into Captivity thro' all the World that the time was nigh at Hand and all those Miseries should come upon them for having with so many cruel Reproaches insulted over the well-beloved Son of God who had declared himself to them by so many Miracles Pious Antiquity has preserved to us this Prediction of the Apostles which was to be attended with so close and sudden an Accomplishment St. Peter had given them several others either from a particular Inspiration Phleg. l. 13 14. Chron. apud Orig l. 2. cont Cels or from his explaining the Words of his Master And Phlegon a Heathen Author whose Testimony Origen produces hath written that all this Apostle had foretold was to a tittle accomplished uppon them So that nothing befel the Jews but what was before hand prophesied of them The Cause of their Ruine is clearly painted out to us in the Contempt they cast upon Jesus Christ and his Disciples The time of Grace was past and their Destruction was ineviâ—able Your Highness may see therefore that it was in vain for Titus to attempt to save Jerusalem and the Temple The Decree was gone out from on high there was not to be one Stone left upon another And if one Roman Emperor vainly attempted to hinder the Ruine of the Temple another Roman Emperor did yet more vainly attempt to rebuild it Julian the Apostate after he had declared War against Jesus Christ thought himself powerful enough to frustrate his Predictions In the design he had of raising up on all sides Enemies to the Christians he stooped so low as to seek to the Jews who were the Refuse and Off-scowring of the World He excited them to build their Temple he gave them vast sums of Mony and assisted them with all the Power of the Empire But hearken to
the coming of the Messiah were past Juda was no longer a Kingdom nor indeed a people Other People acknowledged the Messiah which was to be sent Jesus Christ was shewn to the Gentiles At that sign they had recourse to the God of Abraham and the Blessing of that Patriarch was of equal extent with the Earth The Man of Sorrows was preached and the Remission of Sins was declared by his Death All the Weeks were run out the Desolation of the People and of the Sanctuary a just Punishment of Christ's Death had its last Accomplishment in fine Christ appeared with all the Characters which was then acknowledged by the Tradition of the Jews and therefore there was no excuse for their Incredulity Also we see since that time indisputable Marks of their Reprobation After Christ's Ascension they only more and more plunged themselves in Ignorance and Misery from whence the verv Extremity of their Afflictions and Calamities and the Shame of having been so often begulled into Error will deliver them or rather the Goodness of God when the time settled by his Providence for the Correction of their Ingratitude and the tameing of their Pride shall be fulfilled In the mean while they remain the Scorn and Derision of the People as well as the Object of their Aversion and so long a Captivity as they have been under has not given them a Sence of coming to themselves tho' it ought to be sufficient to convince them Hier. Ep. ad Dar. Tom. 3. Epist. For truly as St. Jerome saith to them What look you for O incredulous Jew You have been guilty of many Crimes during the times of the Judges Your Idolatry hath enslaved you to all the Neighbor Nations but God hath had great Compassion for you and hath not failed sending of Saviours to you You have multiplied your Idolatries under the Kings and yet the Abominations into which you fell under Ahaz and Manasseh have not been punished but by Seventy Years of Captivity Cyrus came and restored you your Country your Temple and your Sacrifices At the last you were o'rewhelmed by Vespasian and Titus fifty Years after Adrian compleated your Destruction and it is now four hundred Years that you have lain under Oppression Thus spake St. Jerome the Argument has been strengthened since for twelve hundred Years have been added to the Desolation of the Jewish People We will therefore tell them instead of four hundred Years that sixteen Ages have seen their Captivity to continue without ever having their Yoke any whit lighter What have you done O ungrateful People Slaves in all Countries and to all Princes you do not serve strange Gods How hath God who chose you now forgot you and what are become of his antient Mercies What Crime what Attempt even greater than Idolatry makes you feel a Punishment which never yet before did all your grievous Idolatries bring down upon you Are you silent Cannot you understand what makes God inexorable to you Matt. 27.25 26. John 19.15 21. Remember those Words of your Forefathers his Blood be on us and on our Children And so likewise that we have no King but Caesar The Messiah will not be your King keep therefore to what you have chosen continue Slaves to Caesar and to Kings until the Fulness of the Gentiles be accomplished and at last all Israel be saved XI Particular Reflections on the Conversion of the Gentiles The profound Councils of God which resolved to convert them by the Cross of Jesus Christ The Arguing of St. Paul upon this manner of their Conversion THIS Conversion of the Gentiles was the second thing which was to come to pass at the time of the Messiah and the most assured sign of his coming We have seen how the Prophets had clearly foretold it and their Promise was verified in the times of our Lord. 'T is certain that then only and neither sooner nor later what the Philosophers never durst attempt what the Prophets nor the Jewish People when they were the most protected and the most Faithfull could not do that twelve Preachers sent by Jesus Christ and the Witnesses of his Resurrection accomplish'd So that the Conversion of the World was to be neither the Work of Philosophers nor of Prophets but it was reserved alone to Christ and was the Fruit of his Cross Indeed it was necessary that this Christ and his Apostles should come out of the Jews and that the preaching of the Gospel should begin at Jerusalem Isaiah 2.2 It shall come to pass in the lâ—st Days that the Mountain of the Lords House shall be established in the top of the Mountains and shall be exalted above the Hills and all Nations shall flow unto it as Isaiah elegantly expresses it That was the Christian Church Ibid. 2. And many People shall go and say come ye and let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord to the House of the God of Jacob and he will teach us of his Ways and we will walk in his Paths Ibid. 17 18. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day and the Idols he shall utterly abolish But Isaiah who saw those things saw also at the same time that that Law which to judge among the Nations Ibid. 3 4. and to rebuke many People was to come out of Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem Which made our Saviour say John 4.22 that Salvation is of the Jews And it was very convenient that the new Light which was one day to enlighten the People plunged in Idolatry should spread it self over all the World from that place where it had always been It was in Jesus Christ the Son of David and of Abraham that all the Nations were to be blessed and Sanctified We have often observed it but have not yet observed the Cause for which that suffering Jesus that crucified and despised Jesus was to be the only Author of the Conversion of the Gentiles and the alone vanquisher of Idolatry St. Paul hath unfolded to us that great Mystery in the first Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians and it is worth our while to consider that admirable Place with the following words Christ saith he sent me to preach the Gospel 1 Cor. 1.17 18 19 20. Isaiah 29.14 33.18 not with wisdom of Words lest the Cross should be made of none effect for the preaching of the Cross is to them that Perish foolishness but unto us who are Saved it is the Power of God For it is written I will destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and will bring to nothing the Vnderstanding of the Prudent Where is the Wise where is the Scribe where is the disputer of this World hath not God made foolish the Wisdom of this World Doubtless since it was not able to deliver Men from their Ignorance But see what reason St. Paul gives of it 'T is after that in the Wisdom of God the World by Wisdom knew not
Sentiments must necessarily have been invented by others than by the Apostles and for all their proof they alledged the very Opinions which were in Controversie Opinions otherwise so extravagant and so manifestly mad that it is not to be imagined how they could ever enter into the mind of man to conceive But certainly to accuse the Sincerity of the Church one must have in ones hands Originals quite different from those of hers or some demonstrative proof But they and their Disciples being called upon to produce some they are struck dumb and have left by their Silence an undoubted proof that in the second Age of Christianity in which they wrote there was not only an Index and manifest signification of Falsity in them Iren. Tertul. Aug. loc cit but there was not the least Conjecture that could be opposed to the Tradition of the Church What shall I say of the Consent and Harmony that is to be found in the Books of the Scripture and of that admirable Testimony which all the Times of the People of God gave one to the other The Times of the Second Temple presuppose those of the First and carry us back to Solomon Peace was only established by Combats and Fightings and the Conquests of God's People return us to the Times of the Judges to Joshuah and to the Children of Israel's coming out of Egypt In reflecting upon an entire People's coming out of a Kingdom where they were Strangers we shall remember how they got in thither The twelve Patriarchs appeared immediately and a People that were never look'd upon but as one single Family leads us naturally up to Abraham who was the Main-stock of it Were those People more wise and less addicted to Idolatry after their return out of Babylon It was the natural effect of a severe Chastisement which their own past Offences had drawn upon them If that People boasted that they had several Ages seen Miracles which never other People had seen they might also boast that they had had the knowledge of God which no other People had What would any have Circumcision the Feast of Tabernacles the Passover and the other celebrated Feasts in the Nation Time out of mind to signifie if not the things we find taken notice of in the Books of Moses that a People distinguished from all others by a Religion and by a Carriage so very peculiar who had kept from its Original upon the Foundation of Creation and upon the Faith of Providence a Doctrine so followed and elevated a so lively Remembrance of a long Succession of Facts so necessarily chained together Ceremonies so regulated and Customs so universal should be without a History to recount their Origine and without a Law to prescribe Customs to them for a thousand years whilst it continued in that Estate and that Esdras should all on the sudden begin to give them under the Name of Moses with a History of their Antiquities the Law that should form their Manners when that People who were then made Captives beheld their antient Monarchie utterly thrown down what more incredible Romance could any one ever invent And is it possible for any one to give Credit to it with joyning at the same time Ignorance to Blasphemy To lose such a Law after one has received it either a People ought to be quite exterminated or else through divers Changes be brought to such a pass that they have nothing but a confused Idea of their Original Religion and Customs If that Misery happened to the Jews and that the Law so well known under Zedekiah should be totally lost sixty Years after notwithstanding all the industrious Care of Ezekiel Jeremiah Baruch and Daniel without reckoning up the rest and in the time too when this Law had its Martyrs as the Persecution of Danâ—el and the three Children do plainly demonstrate If I say that holy Law was lost in so short a time and was so profoundly forgot till Esdras was permitted to re-establish it according to his own Fancy that was not the only Book which ought to be made them For he ought at the same time to compose all the Prophets both old and new that is to say those who had written both before and during the Captivity those that the People had seen write as well as those which they very well remembred not only the Prophets but also the Books of Solomon and the Psalms of Davâ—d and all the Books of History since in that whole History there can scarce be found one single considerable matter of Fact and in all those other Books so much as one Chapter which being taken out of the Books of Moses such as we have 'em can subsist one Moment Everything there speaks of Moses every thing there is sounded upon Moses and indeed every thing ought to be so for that Moses and his Law and the History which he wrote was effectually in the Jews all the Foundation both of their publick and private Conduct Indeed it was a very marvellous Enterprise in Esdras and very novel in the World to make at the same time so many Men to speak with Moses of a different Character and Stile and yet every one in a manner uniform and always like to it self And on a sudden to make so great and entire a People as they were to believe that those were the antient Books which they had always had in Reverence and the new which they had seen made as if they had never heard any thing spoke of and that the Knowledg of the present time as well as that of the time past was utterly defaced Such are the Prodigies we must believe if we will disbelieve the Miracles of the Almighty and refuse to receive the Testimony by which it was evident that they had told so great a People they had seen them with their Eyes But if that People were returned from Babylon unto the Land of their Fathers so new and so ignorant that they could scarce remember they had ever been so that without the least Examination they had received all that Esdras was pleased to give them How then is it that we see in the Book which Esdras wrote 1 Esdr 3.7.9 2 Esdr 5.8.9.12 13. and in that of Nehemiah his Contemporary whatsoever was there said of the divine Books With what Front durst Esdras and Nehemiah speak of the Law of Moses in so many places and that publickly as of a thing known to all the World and which all the World had in their Hands How were all the People seen to act naturally in Obedience to that Law as having had it always present with them But how was it said at the same time and at the Peoples Return that all that People admired the Accomplishment of the Oracle of Jeremiah concerning the seventy Weeks Captivity That Jeremiah which Esdras had been forging with all the other Prophets how had he on a sudden found Credit By what new Artifice were they able to
end of Polity which is to render Life commodious and the People happy The temperature of the Country being always uniform made their Judgments more solid and constant As Vertue is the Foundation of all Society so they carefully cultivated and improved it Their chief Vertue was Gratitude The Honour that was given to them for being the most generous and grateful Diod. lib. 1. Sect. 2. shews they were likewise the most sociable Kindnesses are the Bond both of publick and private Concord He that acknowledges Favours loves to Bestow them and in banishing Ingratitude the pleasure of doing Good remains so pure that there is no way for one to be insensible of it Their Laws were Simple full of Equity and proper to unite Citizens to one another He who being able to rescue a man assaulted did not do it was punished with as severe a Death as the Assassin himself Ibid. If we could not help the unfortunate at least we ought to impeach the Author of the Violence and there were punishments established on purpose for those that were failing in this duty Thus were the Citizens a Guard each to other and all the Body of the State was joyned against the wicked doer It was not permitted for any one to be unprofitable to the State The Law assigned to every one their Business which was perpetuated from Father to Son Ibid. They were not to have two nor could they change their Profession but then all Professions were honoured But it was necessary there should be some both Employments and Persons more considerable than others as it is but fit that Eyes should be in the Body Their Luster will not make the Feet and lower Parts to be ever the less despised So among the Egyptians the Priests and the Soldiers had their particular Marks of Honour but all the Traders even to the least were had in esteem and it was believed a Criminal Matter to despise and scorn the Citizens whose Labours whatsoever they were contributed to the weal Publick By this means all Arts came to their Perfection the Honour which cherished them was in every thing concerned they made greater Improvements in what they had always seen done and to what in particular they had been brought up from their very Infancy But there was one Occupation which all men were to be concerned in and that was the study of Laws and Wisdom Ignorance of the Religion and Polity of ones Country was no where excusable in any Government Now every Profession had its Canton to which it was particularly assigned There fell out no Inconvenience by it in a Country whose Extent was not very great and in so curious and exact an order Those that had a mind to be Idle knew not where to hide themselves Amidst these many good Laws that which was the best of 'em was that all People were brought up to observe them Hierod l. 2. Diod. l. 1. §. 2. Plat. delegib 2. A new Custom was a Prodigy in Egypt Every one did there always the same and the punctual Care they had to observe small things maintained the great So that never was there any People that had longer preserved their Customs and Laws The order of the Judgments contributed to the upholding of that Genius Thirty judges were chosen out of the principal Cities to make up that Commission to Judge the whole Kingdom They were accustomed to see in those high places only the most grave men of their Country and such as were of the clearest Integrity The Prince gave them certain Salaries that so they being freed from Domestick Entanglements might bestow the gross of their time in making the Laws to be the better observed They received no Advantage by Suits of Law for as yet they had never thought of making a Trade of Justice To avoid surprizes the matters were debated in those Assembly by Arguments in writing They were afraid there of false Eloquence which might dazle the Understanding and stir up the Passions Truth could not be told there in too plain a manner The President of the Senate wore a Collar of Gold and precious Stones from whence hung a Figure without any Eyes which they called Truth When he took it that was the Signal to begin the Court. He bowed it to the Party that was to gain his Cause and that was the form of pronouncing the Sentences One of the bravest Artifices of the Egyptians to make their ancient Maxims be preserved was to invest them with certain Ceremonies that imprinted them in their Minds These Ceremonies were observed with reflection and the serious Humour of the Egyptians did not suffer that they should be turned into simple Formula's Those who had no Affairs but their Lives were Innocent might avoid the Examen of that severe Tribunal But they had in Egypt one kind of Judgment which was very extraordinary which none escaped It was a Consolation at the time of Death of leaving their Names in esteem among all men and of all humane goods it is the only one that Death cannot ravish from us But it was not suffered in Egypt to commend all the Dead indifferently That was an Honour to be had by a Publick Judgment As soon as a man was dead they brought him unto Judgment The publick Accuser was heard If he proved that the Conduct of the Deceased had been bad then the Memory of him was condemned and he was deprived of Sepulture The People admired the power of their Laws which reached them even after death and every one being touched by the Example was afraid to dishonour his Memory and his Family But if the Defunct was not convicted of any Crime then he had an honourable Interment they made his Panegyrick but they medled not at all with his Birth All Egypt was noble and beside they received no further Commendations than what they had got by their own Merit Every one knows how curious the Egyptians were in preserving dead Bodies Their Mummies are to be seen at this day Thus their Gratitude to their Kindred was Immortal Children by seeing the Bodies of their Ancestors called to mind their Vertues which the Publick had paid such Acknowledgments to and they were incited to love those Laws which had so recommended them to them To prevent Borrowing which was the Parent of Idleness Frauds and Branglings the Decree of King Asychis did not suffer any to borrow Herod lib. 2. Diod. 1. Sect. but upon condition that he pledged the Body of his Father to him of whom he borrowed And it was both an Impiety and an Infamy together not to redeem as soon as ever one could so precious a Pledge and he that dyed before he had acquitted himself of that duty was denied Burial The Kingdom was Hereditary but the Kings were obliged more than all others to live according to these Laws Ibid. Some there were more particular that a King had digested and which made one part of the Sacred Books
Mother to whom they belonged even more than to their Parents The word Civility did not only signify among the Greeks Humanity Kindness and mutual deference which made Men Sociable a Civil Man was nothing else but a good Citizen who always considered himself as a Member of the State which submitted to be governed by Laws and with them Conspired to the publick good without making invasions upon any Man 's right and property The antient Kings whom the Greeks had had in divers Countries as Minos Cecrops Plat. de leg 3. Theseus Codrus Temenes Cresphontus Eurysthenes Patroclus and such as these had infused this Principle into all the Nation They were all popular not at all in flattering the People but in procuring their well-fare and in making the Laws to be observed What shall I say of the gravity of their Judgments What graver Tribunal was there ever than that of the Areopagus so much had in reverence throughout all Greece as that it was said the Gods appeared there It has been famous from the earliest of time and Cecrops probably founded it after the model of the Tribunals in Egypt Not any Society has so long kept up the reputation of its ancient Gravity for all manner of deceitful Rhetorick was ever banished from it The Greeks thus polished by little and little thought they were able to govern themselves and most of the Cities formed themselves into Common-Wealths But the wise Legislators who were set up in every Country Thales Pythagoras Pittacus Lycurgus Solon Philolas and as many others as Histories inform us of took care that Liberty should not degenerate into Licentiousness Laws simply writ and few in number kept the People in their Duty and made them all concur to the publick Weal of the Country The Idea of Liberty which such a Conduct inspired was admirable For the Liberty which the Greeks figured to themselves was a Liberty subject to the Law that is to say to Reason it self acknowledged by all the People They would not have Men to have Power among them The Magistrates who were feared during the time of their Ministry became private Men who had only so much Authority as their Experience gave them The Law was look'd on as the Mistress It was that which set up Magistrates regulated their Power and in a word which punished their Male-administration It is not here necessary to examine whether those Ideas were as solid as they were specious In short Greece was charmed with them and preferred the Inconveniencies of Liberty to those of lawful Subjection tho' in reality much less But as every form of Government has its Advantages that which Greece got from her own was that the Citizens were so much the more in Love with their own Country as the all contributed to its Administration and Government and as every private Man might come up to the highest Honours How far Philosophy helped to preserve the State of Greece is incredible The more those People were free the more necessary was it to establish among them Rules of good Manners and of Society Pythagoras Thales Anaxagoras Socrates Archytas Plato Xenophon Aristotle and a world of others filled Greece with those excellent Precepâ— There were some extravagant Men that assumed the Name of Philosophers but those who were followed were such as taught them to sacrifice their private Interest and even their own Lives for the general Interest and Safety of the State And it was the most common Maxim of the Philosophers that Men ought either to withdraw from publick Affairs or else only have respect to the publick Weal But why do we speak of the Philosophers The very Poets themselves who were in the Hands of all the People instruct them much more than they divert them The most famous of Conquerors look on Homer as a Master that taught to reign well That great Poet no less instructed how to obey well and to be a good Citizen He and a many others whose Works are equally grave as they are pleasant celebrate only those Arts that are useful to human Life recommend only the publick Weal their Country Society and that admirable Civility which we have here displayed When Greece was thus refined she look'd on the Asiaticks with their Delicacy their starched Dressâ—s and Beauty like that of their Women and had them in greatest Contempt But their form of Government which was only regulated by the Will and Command of their Prince which was the Mistress of all even their most sacred Laws wrought an absolute Abhorrence in them And the most odious Object that all Greece had were the Barbarians The Grecians conceived this hatred from the very beginning and it was become as their second Nature Isoc Paneg. One thing that made Homer's Poetry be beloved was because he sang the Victories and Advantages of Greece over Asia On the part of Asia was Venus that is to say Pleasures foolish Loves and Softnesses and on that of Greece was Jum and that is as much as Gravity joyned with Conjugal Affection Mercury with Eloquence Jupiter and Politick Wisdom On the side of Asia was Mars impetuous and brutish that is to say War made with Fury on the Gâ—ecian side was Pallas that is to say the Military Art and Valour led on by the Conduct of the Mind Greece had always from that time believed that Understanding and true Courage was her natural Lot and Portion She could by no means suffer Asia to think of subduing her for in undergoing that Yoke she knew she must subject Vertue to Pleasure the Mind to the Body and true Courage to a mad extravagant Force which consists only in the Multitude Greece was full of those Sentiments when she was attacked by Darius the Son of Hystaspes and by Xerxes with Armies whose greatness seems fabulous because it was so excessive Immediately each are prepared to defend their Liberty Although all the Cities of Greece were as so many Common-wealths yet their common Interest reunited them and there were no Disputes among them but to shew who should do most for the Publick Weal It cost the Athenians nothing to leave their City to be pillaged and burnt and after they had saved their old Men and their Wives with their Children they put into Ships all that were capable of bearing Arms. To put a stop for some days to the Persian Army at a strait and difficult Passage and to make it sensible what Greece was a handful of Lacedemonians ran with their King to an assured Death being contented that in so dying they had sacrificed to their Country an infinite number of those Barbarians and had left to their Compatriots the brave Example of an unheard of Boldness and Gallantry Against such Armies and such a Conduct Persia found her self weak and oftentimes found to her loss what Discipline could do against Multitude and Confusion and what Valour was able to effect that was conducted with Art against a blind Impetuosity Persia that was so
out of the Ruins of Alexander's Empire that is to say that of Syria that of Macedonia and that of Egypt The common cause of their Ruine was that they were forced to submit to a greater Power which was the Roman If however we will consider the last Estate of those Monarchies we shall easily find the immediate Causes of their Fall and see among other things that the most puissant of all that is to say that of Syria after it had been shaken by the soft Effeminacy and Luxury of the Nation at last received the mortal Stab by the Division of her Princes WE are at last brought to the great Empire which hath swallowed up all the Empires of the World The Roman Empire from whence hath sprung the greatest Kingdoms of the Earth where we dwell whole Laws we still respect and which consequently we ought to undestand better than all other Empires Your Highness very well knows I speak of the Roman Empire You have seen the long and memorable History of it in all its Course But to make you perfectly acquainted with the causes of Rome's Advancement and those of the great Changes that have happened in that Common-Wealth You are seriously with the Manners and Customs of the Romans to consider also the times on which all the Motions of that vast Empire do depend Of all People in the World the most fierce and hardy but likewise the most regular in their Councils the most constant in their Maxims the most laborious and withal the most patient have been the People of Rome From all that was formed the best Militia and the most discerning Polity the strongest and most followed that ever was The Principle of a Roman was the Love of his Liberty and of his Country One of those things made him to love the other For because he loved his Liberty he loved also his Country as a Mother that fed him with Sentiments equally generous and free Under that Name of Liberty the Romans framed to themselves a Government like the Greeks where none should be subject but only to the Law and where the Law should be more powerful than Man But though Rome was born under a Royal Government yet had she also under her Kings a Liberty which was not very much consistent with a regulated Monarchy For besides that Kings were Elective and that such Elections were made by all the People it was also in the People assembled together to confirm the Laws and to resolve on Peace and War There were also some particular Cases wherein the Kings admitted the People to have the soveraign Judgment Witness Tullus Hostilius who not daring either to condemn or acquit Horace loaded at once both with Honour for having overcome the Curatii and with Shame and Infamy for having killed his Sister made it be determined by the People Therefore Kings had properly but the Command of the Armies and the Authority of calling lawful Assemblies propounding Businesses to them maintaining the Laws and executing the publick Decrees When Servius Tullius framed that Design you have seen of bringing Rome into a Common-Wealth he increased in the People already so free still a greater Desire of Liberty and from that you may judg how mighty jealous the Romans were of it when they had experimented it entirely under their Consuls One would even tremble to read in Histories the dreadful Constancy and Resolution of the Consul Brutus when he caused his two Children to be slain before his Eyes who had suffered themselves to be drawn over to the dull Practices which the Tarquins used in Rome to re-establish their Domination there How much were that People confirmed in the love of Liberty when they could see that severe Consul sacrifice his own Family to Liberty We need no longer wonder if the Efforts of the neighbouring People were despised in Rome who undertook to re-establish the banished Tarquins In vain did King Porsenna take them into his Protection The Romans almost starved made him however to know Dion Halic Lib. 5. Tit. Liv. 2.13 15. by their undaunted Resolution that they would at last die free The People were more resolute than the Senate and all Rome caused it to be told to that puissant King that came to reduce her to Extremity that he might desist interceding for the Tarquins since being resolved to hazard all for her Liberty she would rather receive her Enemies than her Tyrants Porsenna being astonished at the undauntedness of that People and at the more than human daringness of some private Persons resolved to let the Romans quietly enjoy a Liberty which they knew so well how to defend Liberty therefore was to them a Treasure which they preferred before all the Riches of the Universe You have seen also how in their Beginning and likewise forwarder on in ther Progress they looked not on their Poverty as an Evil But contrariwise they looked on it as a means to preserve their Liberty more entire there being nothing more free and independent than a Man that knows how to live on a little and who Without Expectance of any thing from the Protection or Liberality of another grounds his Subsistence only on his own Industry and Labour This did the Romans To feed hardly to labour in the Earth to deprive themselves of all they could to live with great Frugality and painful Travel This was their kind of Life by this way they kept their Families and brought them up to such like Labours Titus Livius was in the right in saying there never was any People among whom Frugality or Thriftiness or Poverty were had so long in Honour The most illustrious Senators take them as to their outward appearance differed very little from Peasants and carried no Shew or Majesty but in Publick and in the Senate At other times they were seen busie at their Tillage and the other Cares of a Country Life when they were sought for to command their Armies These Examples are frequent in the Roman History Curius and Fabricius those great Captains that conquered Pyrrhus so rich a King had only an earthen Vessel and the former to whom the Samnites offered one of Gold and Silver answered that he took no Delight in having them but in commanding those who enjoyed them After their Triumphs were over and they had inriched the Republick with the Spoils of her Enemies they had not wherewithal to inter themselves That Moderation also continued during the Punick Wars Tit. Liv. Eâ— lib. 18. In the first we find Regulus the General of the Roman Armies begging Leave of the Senate to go and cultivate his Farm which had lain wast during his Absence After the Ruine of Carthage there are also to be seen great Examples of the first Simplicity Aemilius Paulus who increased the publick Treasure by the rich Treasure of the Kings of Macedonia lived up to the Rules of the antient Frugality and died poor Mummius in ruining of Corinth got only for the publick use
the Riches of that opulent and voluptuous City So much were Riches then despised Cic. Offic. l. 2. The Moderation and the Innocence of the Roman Generals filled the conquer'd People with Admiration And yet notwithstanding that great Love of Poverty the Romans never spared for any thing that could contribute to the Grandeur and Beauty of their City From the very beginning their publick Works were such that Rome hath not yet blushed to see them tho' at the same time she beheld her self Mistress of the World Tit. Liv. 1.53 55 56. C. 5. Dion Hal. 3.4 Tac. Hist 3.72 Plin. 36.15 The Capitol built by Tarquin the proud and the Temple he erected to Jupiter in that Fortress were worthy then of the Majesty of the greatest of the Gods and of the future Glory of the Roman People Every thing else was answerable to that Greatness The principal Temples the Markets the Baths the publick Places the great Ways the Aqueducts the very common Shores and the Kennells of the City had a Magnificence that seems almost incredible but that all Historians do testify it and the Remains we now see of it do so plainly confirm it What shall I say of the Pomp of their Triumphs Dion Hal. 7. of the Ceremonies of Religion of Plays and Spectacles which they gave to the People In a Word whatsoever could be of any Service to the Publick and whatsoever could give the People a great Idea of their common Country was done with Profuseness as much as the time would permit it Thrift and good Husbandry was only to be seen in private Houses He who increased his Revenues and made his Lands most Fertile by his Industry and great Labour who was the best Governor and took the greatest Share on himself was accounted the most Free the most Powerful and the most Happy There was nothing at a greater distance from this kind of Living than Effeminacy Every thing rather tended to excess on the other hand I mean to Hardship Also the Manners of the Romans had naturally something in 'em which was not only harsh and rigid but savage and cruel But they forgot nothing that might bring them under the Power of good Laws and they were a People the most jealous of their Liberty the World ever saw and yet at the same time they were the most submissive to their Magistrates and lawful Powers The Militia of such a People could not but be very admirable seeing there was so ready and so exact an Obedience joyned to resolute Courages and as vigorous Bodies The Laws of that Militia were hard but necessary The Victory was dangerous and oft-times mortal to those who gained it contrary to their Orders It was a capital Crime not only flying throwing down their Arms and going from their Ranks but also stirring as I may say and moveing tho' never so little without the Command of their General He that laid down his Arms before the Enemy that chose rather to be taken than to die gloriously for his Country was adjudged unworthy of all manner of Assistance Generally Prisoners were not reckoned any thing by the Citizens but they were left to the Enemy as Members cut off from the Common-Wealth You have seen in Florus and in Cicero the History of Regulus Cic. de Offic. 3. Flor. 2. 2. who persuaded the Senate at the expence of his own Life to leave the Prisoners to the Carthaginians Polyb. 6. 56. Tit. Liv. 22. 57 58. In Hannibal's War and after the loss of the Battle at Cannae that is to say at a time when Rome was drained by her so many Losses and wanted Souldiers most the Senate chose rather against their Custom to arm eight thousand Slaves than to redeem eight thousand Romans which would not have cost them more than what the new Militia stood them in which was to be raised But in that necessity of Affairs they asserted more than ever Cic. Off. 3. as a Law inviolable that a Roman Souldier either ought to conquer or to die By which Maxim the Roman Armies tho' deseated and broken fought and rallied even to the last Extremity And as Sallust observes there were found among the Romans more Persons punished for having fought without first receiving Orders Sallust de Bell. Catil 9. than for having lost Ground and quit their Post So that their Courage stood more in need of being suppressed than their fear of being excited To their Valour they joyned Address and Invention and besides their being of themselves Subtle and Ingenious they admirably well understood how to take Advantage of every thing they saw in other People that was useful any ways either for Encampments for the ordering of their Battles for the sorting of their Arms in a Word for facilitating as well the Attack as the Defence You have seen in Sallust and in other Authors what the Romans have learnt of their Neighbours and of their very Enemies Who knows not that they have learnt from the Carthaginians the Invention of Gallies by which they have beat them and in short that they have taken from all Nations they have known those things by which they have subdued them In fine 't is certain by their own Acknowledgment that the Gauls exceeded them in strength of Body and yielded not to them neither in Courage Polib 2. c. Polybius shews us that in one decisive Rencounter the Gauls besides their being stronger in number shewed more Stoutness than the Romans how resolute soever they were and yet we see in that very Rencounter those Romans inferior in all other things to get the better of the Gauls because they knew how to choose better Arms to rank themselves in better order and to make a better use of their time in the Fight This you may be able one day to see more exactly in Polybius and you have oft-times observed your self in Caesar's Commentaries that the Romans commanded by that great Man have subdued the Gauls but more yet by their Addresses and Stratagems in the Military Art than by their Valour The Macedonians who were so jealous of keeping up the antient Order of their Militia formed by Philip and Alexander thought their Phalanx invincible and they could not be persuaded that human Wit was capable of finding any thing out that was more firm and strong And yet the same Polybius Polyb. 17. in excerp c. 24 seq Tit. Liv. 9. 19. 31. 39 c. and Titus Livius alter him have demonstrated that only by considering the nature of the Roman Armies and those of the Macedonians the latter could not fail of being beaten at the last because the Macedonian Phalanx which was but a great four square Battalion very thick every where could not move but all of a piece whereas the Roman Army divided into several little Bodies was more ready active and disposed for all sorts of Motions The Romans therefore found or else quickly learnt the Art of dividing their Armies
every where round even into Spain and Syria to observe all that passed there to advance regularly and nearer and nearer to strengthen themselves before they enlarged themselves not to be clog'd with too many Affairs to dissemble for some time and at a convenient opportunity to declare themselves to wait till Hannibal was conquered to disarm Philip King of Macedon who had favour'd him after they had begun a business never to be weary nor contented till every thing was ended not to leave the Macedonians a Moment And when they had overcome 'em by a publick Decree to restore to Greece which had been so long Captivated that Liberty which they never dream'd of by that means to scatter on one hand Terrour and on the other a Veneration for their Name All these are enough for any one to conclude That the Romans never got the Conquest of the World by hazard but by conduct This is what Polybius saw in the time of Rome's progresses Dion Halic Ant. Rom. 1.2 Dion Halicarnasseus who wrote after the establishment of the Empire and in the time of Augustus hath concluded the same thing in resuming from the first Origine the antient Institutions of the Roman Common-wealth so fit in their very nature to form a People Invincible and only to Command You have seen enough of this to enter into the sentiments of those wise Historians Plut. lib. de fort Alex. de fort Rom. and to condemn Plutarch who being always too great a lover of the Greeks attributed alone to Fortune the Roman greatness and alone to Vertue that of Alexander But the more of design those Historians discover in the Conquests of Rome the more Injustice do they shew in them That is a vice inseparable from the desire of Dominion which also for that reason is justly condemned by the Rules of the Gospel But Philosophy alone is sufficient to make us understand that force is given us to keep our own Goods but not to usurp those of other Men. Cic. de Off. 3. Cicero hath confessed it and the rules which he hath given for making War are a manifest condemnation of the Roman's conduct 'T is true they appeared pretty equitable at the beginning of their Republick It seemed as if they themselves were willing to moderate their warring humour by circumscribing it within the bounds which Equity assigned What is there more Noble and more Holy than the Colledge of the Feciales Dion Halicar 2. Ant. Rom. Tit. Liv. 1.32 whether Numa was the Founder of it as Dion Halicarnasseus affirms or Ancus Martius as Titus Livius will have it That Council was set up to judge whether a War was just or no Before the Senate proposed it or the People resolved on it that Examen of Equity always preceded When the Justice of the War was known the Senate consulted about the measures how they were to have it undertaken But first of all they sent to the Usurper in all Formalities to redemand of him the things he had unjustly ravished and they never went to extremities till after they had tryed all the ways of Gentleness and Candour A holy Institution this if ever there was one and which may shame Christians in whom God-man that came into the World to pacifie all things hath not been able to inspire Charity and Peace But what do signifie the best Institutions when at last they degenerate into pure Ceremonies The charms of Conquering and of absolute Commanding did soon corrupt in the Romans that right which natural Equity had given them The deliberations of the Faeciales were only a useless Formality among them and though they used towards their greatest Enemies acts of extraordinary moderation and clemency yet ambition did not suffer Justice to prevail in their Councils But their Injustices were so much the more dangerous as they knew better how to cover them under the specious pretext of Equity and as they insensibly brought Kings and Nations under their Yoke under colour of protecting and defending them Let us add also that they were cruel to those who resisted them Another quality prety natural to Conquerors who knows that fear makes more than half to Conquests But is Dominion to be had at that rate and to Command is that so pleasing to make Men purchase it by such inhumane actions The Romans to make every place afraid of them affected to leave in their conquered Towns terrible Spectacles of Cruelty and to appear unmerciful to those who would be forced without so much as sparing Kings Polyb. 10.15 whom they inhumanely caused to be put to death after they had carried them in Triumph loaden with Irons and dragged by Chariots as Slaves But if they were cruel and unjust for conquering yet they governed the subdued Natiâ—ns with moderation They endeavoured to make the subjected People sensible of their Government and they believed that that was their best means to secure them their Conquests The Senate kept short the Governours and did Justice to the People That Company was looked on as the Asylum of the oppressed also the concussions and violences were not known among the Romans but in the last times of the Republick and the retention of their Magistrates was the admiration of the World It was not therefore of those brutal and avaritious Conquerors who were only greedy of Pillage or who established their Domination upon the ruine of vanquish'd Countries The Romans made all those whom they took better by causing Justice to flourish in them Agriculture Commerce and even Arts and Sciences too after they had once been made sensible of them 'T was that which gave them the most flourishing and the best established as well as the most extensive Empire that ever was From Euphrates and Tanaus even to Hercules his Pillars and the Atlantick Sea all Lands and Seas obeyed them From the middle and as it were the Center of the Mediterranean Sea they had all the extent of that Sea penetrating into both the length and breadth of all the Kingdoms round thereabouts and keeping it between two to make the Communication of their Empire It is enough still to astonish one when he considers that the Nations which at this day make such great and redoubted Kingdoms all the Gauls all Spain Great Britain almost entirely Illyricum even to the Danube Germany to the Elbe Africk to its frightful and impenetrable Desarts Greece Thracia Syria Egypt all the Kingdoms of Lesser Asia and those which are shut up between the Euxine and the Caspian Sea and the rest which possibly I may forget or am not willing to mention have been for many Ages but Roman Provinces All the People of our World even to the most Barbarous have respected their Power and the Romans established in them almost every where with their Empire their Laws and their Politie 'T is a kind of a Prodigv that in so vast an Empire which reached over so many Nations and Kingdoms the People should be so
obedient and that Revolts should be so seldom The Roman Polity had taken care of it by divers ways which it will not be amiss briefly to explain to your Highness The Roman Colonies established on all sides in the Empire wrought two admirable effects the One was to discharge the City of a great number of Citizens and the most part of them poor the other to keep the principal Posts and by degrees to accustome strange People to the Roman Manners Those Colonies which carried with them their Priviledges remained always attached to the Body of the Republick and populated all the Roman Empire But besides Colonies a great many Cities obtained for their Citizens the priviledge of Roman Citizens and being by their Interest united to the commanding People they kept the neighbouring Cities in their duty It happened at last that all the Subjects of the Empires believ'd themselves Romans The Honours of the Victorious People by little and little were communicated to the conquered People the Senate was open to them and they could aspire even to the Empire Thus by the Roman Clemency all the Nations were but as one single Nation and Rome was looked on as the common Country What Facility did not that marvellous union of all the People of the World under one and the same Empire bring to Navigation and Commerce The Roman Society embraced all and excepting some Frontiers now and then disturbed by their Neighbours all the rest of the Universe enjoyed a most profound Peace Neither Greece nor lesser Asia nor Syria nor Egypt nor to conclude scarce were any of the other Provinces ever without War but under the Roman Empire and it is easy to conceive that so pleasant a Commerce of the Nations held to keep throughout the whole Body of the Empire Concord and Obedience The Legions divided for the Guard of the Frontiers by defending those without strengthned those that were within 'T was not the Custom of the Romans to have Citadells in their Holds nor to fortify their frontiers and I scarce find when that Care began but in Valentinian the first 's time Before then the Strength and Security of the Empire was solely placed in the Troops which they disposed in that manner that they mutually assisted each other Now as it was ordered that they should be always encamped the Cities were not incommoded by it and the Discipline did not suffer any of the Soldiers to disperse themselves into the open Fields By that means the Roman Armies neither troubled commerce nor tillage Their Camps were to them in the nature of Cities which differed little from others but because they were there in continual Exercises their Discipline more severe and their Command more resolute They were always ready for the least Motion and it was sufficient to keep the People in their Duty to shew them only in the Vicinage that invincible Militia But nothing so much maintained the Peace of the Empire as the order of Justice The ancient Republick had established it the Emperors and the Sages had explained it upon the same Foundations all the People even the most Barbarous looked on them with admiration and by that principally the Romans were judged worthy to be the Masters of the World Now if the Roman Laws have appeared so sacred that their Majesty continues still notwithstanding the ruin of the Empire it was because their good Sence which is the Mistress of humane Life was seen every where in them and there was no where seen a more delicate and fairer application of the Principles of natural Equity But notwithstanding all that greatness of the Roman Name notwithstanding her profound Polity and all the fine Instititutions of that famous Republick she yet carried in her own Breast the cause of her ruine in the perpetual Jealousie of the People against the Senate or rather of the Plebeians against the Patricii Romulus had set up that distinction It was necessary for Kings to have persons distinguished whom they should engage to their Person by particular Bonds and by whom they should govern the rest of the People Dion Hal. 2. Therefore did Romulus choose the Fathers of whom he formed the Body of the Senate They called them so by reason of their Dignity and their Age. And from them afterwards sprung the Patrician Families Now whatsoever Authority Romulus had reserved to the People he had put the Plebeians in divers respects in a dependance on the Patricii and that subordination necessary to Royalty had been preserved not only under Kings but also in the Republick It was always from the Patricii that the Senators were made To the Patricii belonged the Employments Commands Dignities and even that of the Priesthood and the Fathers who had been the Authors of Liberty did not quit their Prerogatives But Jealousy was quickly put between those two orders For I need not here speak of the Roman Knights a third order as being in common between the Patricii and the simple People who espoused sometimes one side and sometimes another It was therefore between those two orders that Jealousy aâ—ose It was provoked upon divers occasions but the chief cause of all which kept it up was their love of Liberty The fundamental Maxim of the Republick was to look upon Liberty as a thing inseparable from the Roman Name A People bred up in that Mind nay more a People who thought themselves born for commanding other People and whom Virgil for that reason so nobly calls a Kinglike People would receive no Laws but from their own selves The Authority of the Senate was judged necessary for the moderating of publick Councils which without that temperature would have been too tumultuous But at the bottom it was the Peoples Province to give commands to make Laws to decide Peace and War A People that enjoyed the most essential Rights of Royalty in some manner were of the Temper of Kings They were willing to receive grave advices but they would not be forced by the Senate Whatsoever seemed too imperious every thing that was too highly advanced in a word whatsoever wounded or was likely to wound that Equality which a free State required gave suspicion to so nice and delicate a People The love of Liberty that of Glory and Conquests made such Spirits very difficult to be managed and that daring audacity which made them attempt all things abroad could not fail to cause divisions at home among themselves Thus Rome that was so Jealous of her Liberty through that Love of Liberty which was the Foundation of her Government saw divisions spread through all the orders of which she was Composed From thence arose those furious Jealousies between the Senate and People between the Patricii and the Plebeians the one alledging always that excess of Liberty would at last destroy it self and the others fearing just the contrary that Authority which in its own nature was always for encreasing would at last degenerate into Tyranny Between those two
Extremities a People otherwise so grave and wise could find â—o Medium The private Interests which made both Parties proceed a great deal farther than they ought in whatever they began for the publick good suffered neither of them to be conducted by moderate Counsells The Ambitions and turbulent Spirits were still stirring up Jealousies to make their own advantages by them and those Jealousies sometimes more concealed and otherwhile more declared according to the times but always strong and violent at the Root was at last the cause of that great Change that happened in the time of Caesar and the others that succeded IT will be very easy to shew to your Highness all the causes of it VII The Successive Changes of Rome explained if after you have throughly understood the humour of the Romans and the Constitution of their Republick you take care to observe some certain principal accidents which although they happened at several distant times yet have a manifest chain of Connexion in them I will give you a collected Series of them for your greater Ease Romulus bred up in War and reputed the Son of Mars built Rome which he populated with an amassed Company of Shepherds Slaves Robbers who came to seek for freedom and impunity in the Isle he had laid open for all Comers and some also came that were better qualified and more Civilized He bred up that People wild in their Nature to undertake all things by force and by that means they got themselves Wives whom they Married By Degrees he established order Dion Hal. 2. and restrained luxurious Minds by most sacred Laws he began by Religion which he looked on as the Foundation of all States He made it as serious as grave and as modest as the Darknesses of Idolatry could then permit him Strange Religions and Sacrifices which were not established by the Roman Customs were forbidden Afterwards that Law was dispensed but the intention of Romulus was that it should be kept and something of it was always retained He chose out of all that number of People the better sort to form the publick Council which he called the Senate He made it to consist of two hundred Senators whose number was likewise afterwards augmented and from them came the noble Families that were called the Patricii The Senate was to examine and propose all matters some of them it regulated Soveraignly with the King but the most general were referred to the People who decided them Româ—lus in an assembly which he had called of all the People upon the Plain at the Marsh Capreae where upon a sudden there arose a great Tempest was cut to pieces by the Senators who judged him too imperious and the desire of Independance began then to appear in that Order To appease the People who loved their Prince and to give a great Idea of the Founder of that City the Senators proclaimed that the Gods had snatched him up to Heaven and caused Altars to be erected to him Numa Pompilius the second King in a long and profound Peace compleated the formation of their Manners and the regulating of Religion upon the same foundations which Romulus had laid Tullus Hostilius by severe Rules Established the Military Discipline and the orders of War which his Successor Anâ—us Martius accompanied with sacred Ceremonies thereby to render the Militia Holy and Religious After him Tarquin the Antient to make Creatures to himself encreased the number of the Senators to three Hundred where they stuck fixed for some Ages and began the great Works which were to conduce to the Publick weal. Servius Tullius projected the setting up a Republick under the command of two annual Magistrates which should be chosen by the People In hatred to Tarquin the proud the Royalty was abolished with horrible Execrations against all those who should go about to re-establish it and Brutus made the People to swear to keep themselves eternally in their Liberty The Memoires of Servius Tullius were followed in that Change The Consuls chosen by the People among the Patricii were equalled to Kings excepting that they were two who had between them a regular turn of Commanding and they changed every Year Collatinus being named Consul which Brutus as having been with him the Author of their Liberty tho' he was the Husband of Lucretia whose Death had been the cause of the Change and he being interessed more than all others to revenge the outrage which she received because he was of the Royal Family became suspected and was expelled Valerius substituted in his place at his return from an Expedition where he had delivered his Country from the Veientes and the Etrurians was suspected by the People to affect Tyranny by reason of a House he had caused to be built on an Eminence He not onâ—y ceased from Building but he became wholly popular altho' a Patrician and made the Law which permitted Appeals to the People and attributed in some Cases to them Judgment of the last Ressort By that new Law the Consular Power was weakened in its Origine and the People enlarged their Rights By reason of the Violences executed for Debt by the Rich upon the Poor the People that rise up against the Power of the Consuls and Senate made that famous Retreat at the Mount Aventinus There was nothing but Liberty spoke of in those Assemblies and the People of Rome did not believe themselves to be free Dion Hal. 2. if they had not lawful Ways of resisting the Senate They were forced to allow them particular Magistrates called the Tribunes of the People which might assemble them and help them against the Authority of the Consuls either by Opposition or Appeal Those Magistrates to keep up their own Authority were continually buzzing of Jealousies and creating Divisions between those two Orders and always were flattering the People by proposing that the Lands of the Conquered Countries or the Price that would be the product of their Sale should be divided among the Citizens The Senate with great Zeal and Earnestness perpetually opposed those Laws that would be so ruinous to the State and would have the Price of those Lands adjudged to be put into the publick Treasury The People suffered themselves to be conducted by their seditious Magistrates and yet had notwithstanding so much Reason and Equity as to admire the Vertue of the great Men that resisted them Against those domestick Dissensions the Senate found no better Remedy than to be continually raising Occasions for foreign Wars They prevented those Divisions from being pushed on to Extremity and reunited those Orders in the Defence of their Country Whilest Wars succeeded and Conquests increased Jealousies were still kept awake The two Parties wearied by the many Divisions which threatned the Ruine of the State agreed to the making of such Laws as might be for the quiet of them both and to establish the Equality which ought to be in a free City Each of the Orders pretended that the establishment
of those Laws belonged to them Jealousie increased by those Pretensions made them to resolve by common Consent to send an Embassy into Greece to search therefor the Institutions of the Cities of that Country and especially for the Laws of Solon which were the most popular The Laws of the twelve Tables were established and the Decemviri who digested them were deprived of the Power which they abused Whilest every thing appeared placid and tranquil and that such equitable Laws seem'd eternally to establish the publick Repose Dissentions started up again by new Pretensions of the People who aspired to Honours and to the Consulate which till then were reserved only to the first Order The Law to admit them to them was propounded Rather than to have the Consulate pulled down the Fathers consented to the Creation of three new Magistrates who should have the Authority of Consuls under the Name of Military Tribunes and the People were admitted to that Honour Being contented to have their Right established they used moderately their Victory and continued sometimes in giving the Command to the Patricii only After long and various Disputes they returned to the Consulate and by degrees the Honours became common between the two Orders tho' the Patricii were always the most considered in the Elections The Wars continued and the Romans subjected after five hundred Years the Gaules Cisalpines App. praef Ep. their principal Enemies and all Italy There began to Punick Wars and things went on so forward that each of those two jealous People believed they could not subsist but by the Ruine of the other Rome ready to fall was chiefly kept up during her Misfortunes by the Constancy and Wisdom of the Senate At last the Roman Patience got the better Hannibal was overcome and Carthage subjugated by Scipio Africanus Victorious Rome enlarged her self prodigiously for two hundred Years both by Sea and by Land and reduced all the World under her Power In those times and since the Ruine of Carthage the Offices whose Dignity as well as Profit increased with the Empire were underhand furiously laboured for The Ambitious Pretenders took care only to flatter the People and the concord of the Orders held up by the Business of the Punick Wars was troubled more than ever The Gracchi put all things into Confusion and their seditious Propositions were the begâ—nning of all the Civil Wars Then began they to bear Arms and by open Force to act in the Assemblies of the Roman People where before every one desired only to carry it by lawful Ways and with Liberty of Opinions The wise Conduct of the Senate and the great Wars happening moderated their Disorders Marius the Plebeian a great Man of War with his military Eloquence and his seditious Harangues wherewith he was continually attacking the Pride of the Nobles awakened the Peoples Jealousies and by that means raised himself to the greatest Honours Sylla a Patrician put himself at the Head of the contrary Party and became the Object of Marius his Jealousie Factions and Corruptions could do all things in Rome The Love of their Country and deference to their Laws were quite extinguished there And to compleat their Miseries the Wars of Asia taught the Romans Luxury and increased their Avaâ—ice Then the Generals began to joyn themselves to their Souldiers who till that time saw nothing but the Character of publick Authority in them Sylla in the War against Mithridates let his Souldiers enrich themselves the better to gain them Marius on his side proposed to his Associates the Shares of both Money and Lands By that means being Masters of their Troops the one under pretence of supporting the Senate and the other under the name of the People they made a most furious War even in tne Heart of the City The Party of Marius and of the People were utterly beaten and Sylla made himself a Soveraign under the Name of Dictator He made most dreadful Slaughters and treated the People with Severity both in Deeds and Words even in their lawful Assemblies Being more Puissant and better established than ever he retreated to a private Life but it was after he had shewn that the Romans could indure a Master Pompey whom Sylla had raised succeded to a great part of his Power He flattered sometimes the People and sometimes the Senate to get himself established But his Inclination and Interest at length fixed him to the latter Being a Conqueror of the Pyrates of Spain and all the East he became very puissant in the Republick and in the Senate Caesar who was resolved at least to be his Equal turned to the People's side and imitating in his Consulate the most seditious Tribunes he proposed with the Divisions of the Land the most popular Laws he could invent The Conquest of the Gaules brought the Glory and Power of Caesar to the highest Pitch Pompey and he were united thro' Interest and afterwards broke again thro' Jealousie The Civil War began to kindle Pompey thought that his Name alone would carry all and so neglected himself Caesar active and discerning obtained the Victory and got the Mastery of him He made several Attempts to see whether the Romans could be brought to use the name of King But they only served to make him odious To increase the publick Hatred the Senate decreed him Honours until then unheard of in â—oâ—e so that he was slain in the full Senate as a Tyrant Anthony his Creature who was Coâ—sul at the time of his Death stirred up the People against those who had killed him and indeavoured to take his Advantage of those Commotions to usurp the soveraign Authority Lepidus who had also a great Command under Caesar indeavoured to keep it At last young Caesar â—bout nineteen Years of age undertook to revenge the Death of his Father and so sought an Occasion to succeed to his Power He knew how for his own Interest to make use of the Enemies of his House and even of his Competitors His Father's Troops went over to him being touched with the name of Caesar and the prodigious Rewards which he promised them The Senate signified nothing any longer All things were done by Force and Souldiers who were at their Service that would give 'em most In that fatal Conjuncture the Triumvirate destroyed all those whom Rome had bred up that were of greatest Courage and most opposite to Tyranny Caesar and Anthony defeated Brutus and Cassius Liberty expired with them The Conquerors after they had got rid of feeble Lepidus made divers Accords and divers Partages where Caesar as being the more Cunning found always the way how to get the better part and so put Rome into his Interests and overtopped him Anthony in vain undertook to relieve himself and the Battle of Actium brought the whole Empire under the Power of Augustus Caesar Rome being weary and exhausted by so many civil Wars to get some Repose was forced to renounce her Liberty The House of the Caesars fixed
wise goes staggering reeling and as it were besotted because the Lord hath shed the Spirit of Dizziness and Confusion in all her Councils She no longer knows what she does she is lost to her self But that Men may not herein be deceived God repaireth when he seeth good the stragling Senses and he that insulted over the Blindness of others falls himself into more Egyptian Darkness and often times without any thing else to confound his Sence and Understanding than his too long Prosperities Thus it is that God Reigneth over all People Let us no longer talk of Chance or Fortune or speak of it only as a Name wherewith we conceal our Ignorance That which is Chance in respect of our uncertain Councils is a concerted Design in a higher Council that is to say in that eternal Council which circumscribes all Causes and all Effects in one and the same Order Thus all concurs to the same end and it is for want of understanding the all that we find of Chance or of Irregularity in particular Accidents and Emergencies By that is verified the Saying of the Apostle 1 Tim. 6.15 that God is the blessed and only Potentate the King of Kings and Lord of Lords Blessed whose Repose is unalterable who seeth every thing to change without changing himself and who makes all Changes by an Immutable Council who gives and who takes away Power who transfers it from one Man to another from one House to another from one People to another to shew that they have it only by way of Loan and that it is he alone in whom it naturally resides Wherefore all Governors find themselves the Subjects of a greater Power They aâ—t more or less than they think for and their Councils have ever more had unforeseen Effects They neither are Masters of the Dispositions which Ages past have made in their Affairs nor can they foresee what Coâ—rse the times to come will take so far are they from being able to force it He alone holds all things in his Hands who knows the Name of that which is and that which is not yet who presides at all times and anticipates all Councils Alexander little thought he laboured for his Captains nor that he ruined his House when he gained his Conquest When Brutus animated the Romans with such an excessive Love of Liberty he as little thought he was casting into their Minds the Principle of that unbridled and masterless Licence by which the Tyranny he designed to destroy was one day to be re-established with greater Severity than under the Tarquins When the Caesars flattered the Souldiers they had no designs of giving Masters to their Successors and to the Empire In a word there is no humane Power but what do what it can serves for other Designs than it aims at at present God alone knows how to bring about all things according to his own Will Wherefore every thing is surprising if we only look to particular Causes and yet nevertheless every thing goes on in an orderly manner This Discourse makes you see it clearly and not to speak of other Empires you see by how many unforeseen Councils but yet always connected in themselves the Fortune of Rome hath been carried on from Romulus down to Charlemain Your Highness might perhaps have thought I should have told you somewhat more of your own Country and of Charlemain who was the Founder of the new Empire But besides that his History makes a part of that of France which you your self have wrote and which you have already so far proceeded in I reserve to make you another Discourse of that wherein I shall be necessarily obliged to speak to you of France and of that great Conqueror who being equal in Valour to those which Antiquity hath the most boasted of doth yet exceed them in Piety in Wisdom and Justice That some Discourse shall discover to you the Causes of the prodigious Successes of Mahomet and this Successors That Empire which began two hundred Years before Charlemain may find its place in that Discourse but I though it would be much better to shew you in one continued Series its beginning and its declension So that I have no more to tell you in this first Part of my Universal History You will discover all the Secrets of it and you will have nothing to do but to observe in it all the Progress of Religion and that of the great Empires down to Charlemain Whilest you will see almost all fall of themselves and Religion only support it self by its own Strength you will easily then discern what is solid Grandeur and where a wise and considerate Man is to place all his Hopes A TABLE TO THE FIRST PART OF THIS DISCOURSE I. EPocha Adam or the Creation First Age of the World Pag. 1. II. Epocha Noah or the Deluge Second Age of the World Pag. 4. III. Epocha The Call of Abraham Third Age of the World Pag. 7. IV. Epocha Moses or the written Law Pag. 11. V. Epocha The taking of Troy Fourth Age of the World Pag. 15. VI. Epocha Solomon or the Temple finished Fifth Age of the World Pag. 17. VII Epocha Romulus or Rome founded Pag. 25. VIII Epocha Cyrus or the Jews re-established Sixth Age of the World Pag. 43. IX Epocha Scipio or Carthage Conquered Pag. 71. X. Epocha The Birth of Jesus Christ Seventh and last Age of the World Pag. 89. XI Epocha Constantine or the Peace of the Church Pag. 110. XII Epocha Charlemain or the re-establishment of the new Empire Pag. 149. A Table to the Second Part. THE Course of Religion Pag. 155. I. The Creation and the first Times ibid. II. Abraham and the Patriarchs Pag. 178. III. Moses the Law written and the bringing of the People into the promisid Land Pag. 189. IV. David the Kings and the Prophets Pag. 209. V. The times of the second Temple Pag. 247. VI. Jesus Christ and his Doctrine Pag. 267. VII The Descent of the Holy Ghost the Establishment of the Church the Judgments of God both on the Jews and on the Gentiles Pag. 298. VIII Particular Reflections upon the Punishment of the Jews and upon the Predictions of Jesus Christ who had taken Notice of it Pag. 316. IX Two memorable Predictions of our blessed Saviour are explained and their Accomplishment justified by History Pag. 330. X. The Progress of the Jewish Errors and the manner how they explain the Prophecies Pag. 345. XI Particular Reflections on the Conversion of the Gentiles The profound Councils of God which resolved to convert them by the Cross of Jesus Christ The Arguing of St. Paul upon this manner of their Conversion Pag. 366. XII Divers ways of Idolatry Sense Interest Ignorance a false respect of Antiquity Policy Philosophy and Heresies came to its Succor but the Church triumphs over all Pag. 376. XIII General Reflection on the Progress of Religion and the Relation there is between the Books of the Scriptures Pag. 401. A Table to the Third Part. THE Empires Pag. 437. I. That the Revolutions of Empires are regulated by Providence and serve to humble Princes Ibid. II. The Revolutions of Empires have particular Causes which Princes ought to study Pag. 445. III. The Scythians the Ethiopians and the Egyptians Pag. 447. IV. The Assyrians both antient and new the Medes and Cyrus Pag. 475. V. The Persians the Grecians and Alexander Pag. 48â— VI. The Roman Empire Pag. 505. VII The Successive Changes of Rome Explained Pag. 543. FINIS
they never thought they did so Constance who persecuted St. Athanasius the Defender of the Ancient Faith ardently desired says Ammianus Marcellinus Id. lib. 15. to get him condemned by the Authority which the Bishop of Rome had over the others By seeking to support himself with that Authority he made the Heathens themselves sensible of what was wanting to his Sect and honoured the Church from which the Arrians had departed thus the Gentiles themselves acknowledged the Catholick Church If any one asked them where they kept their Assemblies and who were their Bishops they never deceived them As for Heresies whatsoever they made they could never get rid of the name of then Authors The Sabellians the Paulianists the Arrians the Pelagians and the rest were scandalized in vain at the title of the Faction which was given to them The World whatsoever they could do would speak naturally and designed every Sect by him from whom it first sprung As for the great Church the Catholick and Apostolick Church it was always impossible to affix any other Author to it than Jesus Christ himself nor to assign to it the first of its Pastors without going up as high as to the very Apostles nor to give it any other name than what it had before taken So that what Hereticks soever were made they could not conceal it from the Heathens She opened to them her Bosom all â—he World over and they ran to her in troops Some of them were possibly lost in the by-Paths but the Catholick Church was the great way wherein entred always most of those who sought after Jesus Christ and Experience has sufficiently discovered that to her it was given to bring in the fulness of the Gentiles Her also it was whom the unbelieving Emperours attacked with all their power and force Orig. cont Cels 7. Just. Apol. 2. Origen tells us that few of the Hereticks were sufferers for the Faith St. Justin more ancient than he hath observed that the Persecution spared the Marcionites and the other Hereticks The Heathens only persecuted that Church which they saw spread her self over the face of the whole Earth and only acknowledged her self for the Church of Jesus Christ What matters it to pull off some of the Branches her good Sap was not lost for all that she went into other places and the cutting down the superfluous Wood served but to make the Fruit come better In fine if we consider the History of the Church we shall always find that when ever one Heresie impaired it she recovered her losses both by enlarging outwardly and increasing inwardly light and piety whilst she beheld in some distant Corners the cut off Branches to dry and wither The work of man was perished notwithstanding the power of Hell to support it the work of God has continued and the Church hath triumphed over Idolatry and all Errours whatsoever THIS Church so always attacked XIII General Reflections on the Progress of Religion and the relation there is between the Books of the Scripture yet never overcome is a perpetual Miracle and a clear and shining Testimony of the Immutability of the Divine Councils In the midst of the agitation of Humane Affairs she still supported her self with an invincible force so that by an uninterrupted course for near these seventeen hundred years do we see her come up even to Jesus Christ in whom she hath collected the Succession of the ancient People and was found reunited to the Prophets and Patriarchs And so many astonishing Miracles which the Hebrews of old saw with their eyes do still serve at this day to confirm our Faith That great God who wrought them for a Testimony of his Unity and his Almightiness what could he do more authentick to preserve the memory of them than to leave in the hands of so great a People the Acts which punctually attest them in order of time this is what we now have in the Books of the Old Testament that is to say in the most ancient Books that are in the World in those Books which are the only ones of Antiquity where the knowledge of the true God is taught and his service ordained in those Books which the Jews have always so religiously kept 'T is certain that they were the only People who originally knew God the Creator of Heaven and Earth and consequently the only People to whom the Divine Secrets were to be committed They also kept them with a most religious care Those Books which the Egyptians and the other People called Divine are lost long since and there scarce remains so much as any confused Remembrance of them in ancient Histories The sacred Books of the Romans wherein Numa the Author of their Religion had written the Mysteries of them are perished even by the hands of the Romans themselves and the Senate commanded them to be burnt as tending to the overthrow of Religion And those same Romans at last suffered likewise the Books of the Sibyls Tit. Liv. li. 40. c. 29. Varr. l. de Cult Deor ap Aug. de Civ 12. 34. to be destroyed which were for so long time reverenced by them as Prophetical and wherein they would make the World believe that they found the Decrees of the Immortal Gods concerning their Empire and yet notwithstanding they never published I do not say one single Volume but so much as one single Oracle It has been only the Jews who have had the Sacred Scriptures in so much the greater Veneration as they were the more known Of all the ancient People these alone preserved the Primitive Monuments of their Religion albeit they so fully gave testimony of their Infidelity with that of their Ancestors And at this very day do this People still remain upon the Earth to carry into all Nations where they are dispersed together with the course and progress of their Religion the Miracles and Predictions which render it immoveable When Jesus Christ was come and sent by his Father to accomplish the Promises of the Law he confirmed his Mission and that of his Disciples by new Miracles which have been also written with the same exactness The Acts of them have been published all the World over the Circumstances of Time Persons and Places have made the Examen easie to all that have been careful of their Salvation The World was informed the World has believed and if we have but ever so little considered the ancient Monuments of the Church we must avow that never has any thing been determined with more of reflection and knowledge But as to the Relation which the Books of the two Testaments have to one another there is one difference to be considered that is that the Books of the ancient People were composed at divers times Some are the times of Moses others those of Joshua and the Judges and others of the Kings some are those when the People were brought out of Egypt and received the Law others those when they obtained the
promised Land and others those when they were re-established by visible Miracles To convince the incredulity of a People who were wholly devoted to their Senses God took a long extent of Ages in which he distributed his Miracles and his Prophets that so he might often renew the sensible Testimonies by which he attested his holy Truths In the New Testament he tooks another conduct He would no more reveal any thing anew to his Church after Jesus Christ In him was perfection and fulness and all the Divine Books that have been composed in the New Testament were made in the times of the Apostles That is to say that the Testimony of Jesus Christ and of those whom Jesus Christ hath been pleased to choose for the Witnesses of his Resurrection hath been sufficient for the Christian Church All that has come since has edified it but it has not been looked upon as purely inspired by God but what the Apostles have written or what they have confirmed by their Authority But in that difference which is found between the Books of the two Testaments God hath always observed that admirable order of making things to be written just at the times when they happened or at least when the memory of them was very fresh And so those that knew them wrote them those that knew them received the Books which bore witness of them and both the one and the other have left them to their Posterity as a most precious and invaluable Inheritance and they most carefully and piously have preserved them And thus was formed the Body of the Holy Scriptures as well the Old as the New Testament Scriptures which from their Original have been regarded as true in the whole as given by God himself and which have been also kept with that great Religion that it was thought none could dare to alter the least Letter of it without a strange Impiety And thus it was that they came down to us always holy always sacred always inviolable the one kept by the constant Tradition of the Jews and the other by the Tradition of the Christians so much the more certain as it was confirmed by the Blood and Martyrdom as well of those who wrote those Divine Books as of them that received ' em St. Austin and the other Fathers demand upon whose Faith we attribute the profane Books to certain Times and Authors Aug. cont Faust 11. 2. 32. 21. 33. 6. Every one readily answers that the Books are distinguished by the different Relations they have to the Laws Customs and Histories of a certain Time by the Stile it self which bears impressed the Character of particular Ages and Authors and more than all that Iren. 1.2.17 Tertul. adv Marc. 4. l. 4 5. Aug. de utilit ced 3. 17. cont Faust Manich. 22. 79. 28. 4. 32. 33. Cont. adv leg Porph. 1. 20. c. by the publick Faith and by a constant Tradition All these things concur to the establishment of the Divine Books to distinguish the Times and to mark out the Authors of them and the more Religion there was in preserving them entire the more indisputable is the Tradition which preserved them for us Thus hat it been always acknowledged not only by the Orthodox but also by Hereticks and even by Infidels Moses has ever passed in all the East and afterwards in all the World for the Legislator of the Jews and for being the Author of those Books that are attributed to him The Samaritans who had received them from the ten separated Tribes have as religiously kept them as the Jews You have seen their Tradition and their History Two People so opposite took them not one from the other but both received them from their Common Original in the Times of Solomon and David The ancient Hebrew Characters which the Samaritans still retain do sufficiently shew that they have not followed Esdras who changed them Thus the Pentateuch of the Samaritans and that of the Jews are two compleat Originals independant one on the other The perfect conformity that is seen in the substance of the Texts justifies the Sincerity of both those People They are faithful Witnesses that agree without understanding one another or to speak better who agree together notwithstanding all their Enmities V. sup 1. part p. 24 25 34 49 59 63 80 86 87. and which only Immemorial Tradition of both Parties hath united in the same mind Those therefore who say tho' without any reason that those Books being lost or having never been were set up or composed a new or altered by Esdras besides their being contradicted by Esdras himself as may very well be observed in the course of his History are likewise so by the Pentateuch which is even now at this day to be seen in the hands of the Samaritans so as it had been read in the first Agas by Eusebius of Cesaria St. Jerome and the other Ecclesiastical Author so as those People had kept it in their Original and a Sect so weak as that seems not to continue so long but to bear this Testimony to the Antiquity of Moses The Authors that wrote the four Evangelists received no less assured Testimony from the unanimous consent of the Faithful the Heathens and the Hereticks That great Number of various People who received and translated those Divine Books as soon as they were made agree in their date and in their Authors The Heathens have not contradicted this Tradition Nor Colsus who attacked those Sacred Books even in the first beginning of Christianity nor Julian the Apostate tho' he was neither ignorant of any thing nor omitted any thing that might descredit them nor has any other Heathen ever suspected them to be supposititious but on the contrary they have all given them the same Authors as the Christians The Hereticks although they were confounded by the Authority of those Books yet durst not say that they were not of the Disciples of our Lord. Nay some of those Hereticks saw the beginnings of the Church and before whose eyes were written the Books of the Gospel So that fraud if there could possibly be any would have appeared too near to have been successâ—ul 'T is true after the time of the Apostles and when the Church was already spread over the face of the Earth Marcion and Mannes always the most rash and the most ignorant of all the Hereticks notwithstanding the Tradition coming from the Apostles coâ—tinued by their Disciples and by the Bishops to whom they had left their Chair and the Conduct of the People and unanimously received by all the Christian Church were so bold as to say that there Evangelists were supposititious and that that of St. Luke which they preferred to all the others they knew not why since it came by no other way had been falsified But what proofs gave they of this nothing but meer Visions no positive Matters of Fact All the reason they gave was that what was contrary to their