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A. M. B. C. down make room for fields, pastures, ham2233 lets, towns, and at length for cities. Men learn to catch certain animals, to tame others, and to accustom them to service. At first they had to encounter wild beasts. The first heroes signalized themselves in these wars: they occasioned the invention of arms, which men turned afterwards against one another*. Nimrod, the first warrior, and the first conqueror, is called in scripture a mighty hunter. With animals, man learned also to ameliorate fruits and plants; he bent even the metals to his use, and gradually made all nature subservient to it. As it was natural that time should cause many things to be invented, it must also cause others to be forgotten, at least by the greater part of mankind. The first arts, which Noah had preserved, and which we find always flourishing in the countries. where mankind was first established, were lost as they removed from thence. So that they must either have been learned anew in process of time; or those who had preserved them, must have carried them again to the rest. Hence we see every thing derived from those countries that were always inhabited, where the principles of the arts remained entire, and where many important things were daily discovered. There the knowledge of God and the remembrance of the creation were preserved, but this gradually decayed. The ancient traditions were forgotten, and fell into obscurity; the

* Gen. x. 9.

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fables which succeeded them, retained only A. M. B. C. gross ideas of them; false deities were multiplied; and this gave occasion to the calling of Abraham.

III. Epoch. The Calling of Abraham.

FOUR hundred and twenty-six years after the deluge, when men walked every one in his own way, and forgot him who made them, the great God, to stop the progress of so great an evil, in the midst of corruption begun to set apart a chosen people for himself. Abraham was made choice of to be the stock and father of all believers. God called him into the land of Canaan, where he intended to establish his worship, and to settle the children of that patriarch, whom he had resolved to multiply as the stars of heaven, and as the sand of the sea. To the promise he made him of giving that land to his offspring, he added somewhat far more glorious, and this was that great blessing which was to be extended to all the nations of the world in Jesus Christ, who was to issue from his posterity. It is Jesus Christ whom Abraham honoured in the person of the high-priest Melchisedec*, who represents him; it is to him he pays the tithe of the spoil he had won from the vanquished kings; and it is by him he is blessed. Though possessed of immense riches, and of a power which equalled that of kings, Abraham pre

* Heb. vii.

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A. M. B. C. served the primitive manners; he led always a plain and pastoral life, which, however, was not without magnificence; which that patriarch principally showed by exer1856 cising hospitality to all men. Heaven furnished him with guests; angels imparted to him the counsels of God; he believed them, and in every thing showed himself full of faith and of piety. In his time Inachus, the most ancient of all the kings acknowledged by the Greeks, founded the kingdom of Argos. After Abraham we find Isaac his son, and Jacob his grand-son, imitators of his faith and simplicity in the same pastoral life. God repeats to them also the same promises he had made to their father, and conducts them, as he had done him, in all 1759 things. Isaac blesses Jacob, to the prejudice of Esau his elder brother, and though deceived in appearance, he in effect executes the counsels of God. Jacob, whom God protected, in every thing excelled Esau. An angel, with whom he had a mysterious wrestling, gave him the name of Israel, whence his children are called Israelites. To him were born the twelve patriarchs, fathers of the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people; among others Levi, from whom were to proceed the ministers in sacred things; Judah, from whom was to spring, together with the royal race, Christ the King of kings, and Lord of lords; and Joseph, whom Jacob loved above all his other children. There new secrets of divine providence are disclosed. We see first of all the innocence and wisdom of young Joseph,

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ever an enemy to vice, and careful to repress A. M. B. C. it in his brethren; his mysterious and prophetical dreams; his brethren jealous, and jealousy a second time the cause of a parricide; the slavery of this great man; the fidelity he observes to his master, and his admirable chastity; the persecutions it draws upon him; his imprisonment and constancy; his predictions; his miraculous deliverance; the famous interpretation of Pharaoh's 2289 dreams; the merit of so great a man acknowledged; his exalted and upright genius, and the protection of God, who gives him rule wherever he is; his foresight, his wise counsels, and absolute power in the kingdom of Lower Egypt; by which he was the preservation of his father Jacob and his family. That family favoured by God is thus settled in that part of Egypt whereof Tanis was the capital, and whose kings all took the name of Pharaoh. Jacob dies, and a little before his death he makes that celebrated prophecy, in which, discovering to his children the state of their posterity, he points out particularly to Judah the time of the Messiah, who was to spring from his race. The family of that patriarch in a little time becomes a great nation; this prodigious multiplication excites the jealousy of the Egyptians; the Hebrews are unjustly hated, and unmercifully persecuted: God raises up Moses their deliverer, whom he saves from the waters of the Nile, and makes him fall into the hands of Pharaoh's daughter: she brings him up as her own son, and causes him to be instructed in all the wisdom of

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A. M. B. C. the Egyptians. In those days the people of Egypt settled in divers parts of Greece. The colony which Cecrops brought from Egypt built twelve cities, or rather twelve towns, of which he composed the kingdom of Athens, where he established the gods and the laws of his country*. A little after happened Deaucalion's deluge in Thessaly, confounded by the Greeks with the universal flood. Hellen, the son of Deucalion, reigned in Phthia, a country of Thessaly, and gave his Name to Greece. His people, before called Greeks, took after the name of Hellenes, though the Latins have preserved their ancient name. About the same time Cadmus, the son of Agenor, carried a colony of Phoenicians into Greece, and founded the city of Thebes in Boeotia. The gods of Syria and Phoenicia came into Greece with him. In the mean time Moses was 1531 growing up. When forty years old, he despised the riches of the court of Egypt; and, touched with the afflictions of his brethren the Israelites, he endangered himself for their relief. But so far were they from taking the benefit of his zeal and courage, that they exposed him to the rage of Pharaoh, who resolved on his ruin. Moses fled out of Egypt into Arabia, to the land of Midian, where his virtue, ever ready to succour the oppressed, found him a secure retreat. This great man losing the hope of delivering his people, or waiting for a better opportunity, had spent forty years in feeding

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* Marm. Arund. seu Æra Att.

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