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CHAP. XXVII.

OF MANASSEH, AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

SECT. I.

The wickedness of Manasseh. His imprisonment, repentance, and death.

MANASSEH, ANASSEH, the son of Hezekiah, forgetting the piety of his father, and the prosperity which followed him, set up, repaired, adorned, and furnished all the altars, temples, and high places, in which the devil was by the heathen worshipped. Besides, he himself esteemed the sun, the moon, and the stars, with all the host of heaven, as gods, and worshipped them; and of all his acts the most abominable was, that he burnt his sons for a sacrifice to the devil Moloch, or Melchor, in the valley of Hinnom, or Benhennon, wherein was kindled the fire of sacrifice to the devils.

He also gave himself to all kind of witchcraft and sorcery; accompanied and maintained those that had familiar spirits, and all sorts of enchanters; besides, he shed so much innocent blood, as Jerusalem was replenished therewith, from corner to corner. For all his vices and abominations when he was reprehended by that aged and reverend prophet Isaiah', (who was also of the king's race, and, as the Jews affirm, the father-in-law of the king,) he caused the prophet, near unto the fountain of Siloe, to be sawn

Just. Mart. Cedrenes, c. xix. Glycas, p. 275. Tertull. de Pat.

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in sunder, with a wooden saw, in the eightieth year of his life; a cruelty more barbarous and monstrous than hath been heard of. The scriptures indeed are silent hereof, yet the same is confirmed by Epiphanius, Isidorus, Eusebius, and others, too many to rehearse, and too good to be suspected. Therefore 'the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the kings of Ashur, which took Manasseh, ' and put him in fetters, and bound him in chains, * and carried him to Babylon*;' when, after he had lain twenty years as a captive, and despoiled of all honour and hope, yet, to his hearty repentance and continual prayer, the God of infinite mercy had respect, and moved the Assyrians' heart to deliver him.

It is also likely that Merodach, because he loved his father Hezekiah, was the more easily persuaded to restore Manasseh to his liberty and estate. After which, and when he was again established, remembering the miseries which followed his wickedness, and God's great mercies towards him, he changed form, detested his former foolish and devilish idolatry, and cast down the idols of his own erecting, prepared the altar of God, and sacrificed thereon. He repaired a great part of Jerusalem, and died after the long reign of fifty-five years. Glycas and Suidas report, that Manasseh was held in a case of iron by the Assyrians, and therein fed with bread of bran and water, which men may believe as it shall please their fancies,

SECT. II.

Of troubles in Egypt following the death of Sethon. The reign of Psammeticus.

THAT the wickedness of king Manasseh was the cause of the evil which fell upon his kingdom and person, any Christian must needs believe; for it is affirmed in the scriptures. Yet was the state of things

2 Chron. xxxiii. 11.

in those parts of the world such, at that time, as would have invited any prince, (and did perhaps invite Merodach, who fulfilled God's pleasure, upon respect borne to his own ends,) desirous of enlarging his empire, to make attempt upon Judah. For the kingdom of Egypt, which was become the pillar whereon the state of Judah leaned, about these times was miserably distracted with civil dissention, and, after two years, ill amended by a division of the government between twelve princes, After some good agreement between these, eleven of them fell out with the twelfth of their colleagues, and were all finally subdued by him, who made himself absolute king of all. This interregnum, or mere anarchy, that was in Egypt, with the division of the kingdom following it, is placed by Diodorus, who omitteth Sethon, between the reigns of Sabacus, and Psammeticus; but Herodotus doth set the aristocracy, or twelve governors, immediately before Psammeticus, who was one of them, and after Sethon.

The occasion of this dissention seems to have been the uncertainty of title to that kingdom, (for that the crown of Egypt passed by succession of blood, I have often shewed,) which ended for a while by the partition of all among twelve, though things were not settled until one had obtained the sovereignty.

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These twelve rulers governed fifteen years, in good seeming agreement, which, to preserve, they made strait covenants and alliances one with another, being jealous of their estate, because an oracle had foretold, that one of them should depose all the rest, noting him by this token, that he should make a drink-offering, in Vulcan's temple, out of a cop, per goblet. Whilst this unity lasted, they joined together in raising a monument of their dominion, which was a labyrinth, built near unto the lake Moris; a work so admirable, that, (as Herodotus, who beheld it, affirms,) no words could give it

commendation answerable to the stateliness of the work itself. I will not here set down that imperfect description which Herodotus makes of it, but think enough to say, that he prefers it far before the pyramids, one of which, (as he saith,) excelled the temple of Diana at Ephesus, or any of the fairest works in Greece. Diodorus reports this labyrinth to have been the work of Maurus, or Menides, a king which lived five generations before Proteus, that is, before the war of Troy; and from this labyrinth, saith he, Dædalus took the pattern of that which he made for Minos in Crete. Who this Marus or Menides was, I cannot tell. Reineccius takes him to have been Annemenes, who reigned immediately before Thuoris. But this agrees not with Diodorus; for Dædalus and Minos were both dead long before Annemenes was king. Belike Reineccius, desiring to accommodate the fabulous relations of Manethon, Charemon, and others, that are found in Josephus, touching Amenophis and his children', to the story of Amasis, and Actisanes the Ethiopian, mentioned by Diodorus, held it consequent, after he had conjectured Manethon's Amenophis to be Diodorus's Amasis, that Sethon should be Actisanes, and that Annemenes should be Marus. If in this case I might intrude a conjecture,-the times which we now handle are those about which Reineccius had erred in making search; Amasis was Amysis; Actisanes was Sabacus; and Maurus was one of those twelve princes, to whom Herodotus gives the honour of building this famous labyrinth. For Actisanes the Ethiopian deposed Amasis, Sabacus the Ethiopian deposed Anysis; Actisanes governed well, and was mild in punishing offenders; so likewise was Sabacus; Marus the next king after Actisanes, built this labyrinth; and the next, (saving Sethon, whom Diodorus omits, as having not heard of him,) that ruled after Sabacus, performed the same work, according to

1 Joseph. cont. Appion, l. 1.

Herodotus, who was more likely to hear the truth, as living near to the age wherein it was performed. The variety of names, and difference of times, wherein Diodorus believed the priest, might be a part of the Egyptian vanity, which was familiar with them, in multiplying their kings, and boasting of their antiquities. Here I might add, that the twelve great halls, parlours, and other great circumstances remembred by Herodotus, in speaking of this building, do help to prove, that it was the work of these twelve princes. But I hasten to their end.

At a solemn feast in Vulcan's temple, when they were to make their drink-offerings, the priest, forgeting himself, brought forth no more than eleven cups, Hereupon Psammeticus, who standing last had not a cup, took off his brazen helmet, and therewith supplied the want. This caused all the rest to remember the oracle, and to suspect him as a traitor; yet, when they found that it was not done by him upon set purpose, or ill intent, they forbare to kill him; but, being jealous of their estate, they banished him into the marsh countries by the sea-side. This oracle, and the event, is held by Diodorus as a fable, which I believe to have been no other; in the rest Herodotus and Diodorus agree, saying, that Psammeticus hired soldiers out of Caria and Ionia, by whose aid he vanquished his companions, and made himself sole king.

The years of his reign, according to Herodotus, were fifty-four; according to Eusebius forty-four: Mercator, to reconcile these two, gives forty-four years to his single reign, and ten to his ruling jointly with the princes before spoken of. Indeed, he that was admitted, being a man grown, (for he cannot in reason be supposed to have been then a young fellow,) into the number of the twelve governors, must be thought to have lived unto extreme old age, if he ruled partly with others, partly alone, threescore and nine years. I therefore yield rather to

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