obtained for the land: for, according to this account, it must have lasted at least eighty years: which being what they never had enjoyed from the time they were a nation, or what scarce any other nation ever had, I would rather choose to allow a fiction in this particular, than for the sake of it condemn the whole book as such, which seemeth to carry with it the air of a true history in all other particulars.

However, I must acknowledge, that what is above said in the defence of this book, for its being a true history, doth not so far clear the matter, especially in respect of the fourth objection, but that if any one will still contend, that it is only a religious romance, and not a true history; that, according to the intention of the author, the scene of it was put under the reign of Xerxes, when Joakim, the son of Joshua, was high priest, and the civil government of Judea, as well as the ecclesiastical, was in the hands of that officer; and that the inconsistency of so many particulars in that book, with the state and transactions of those times, was only from the ignorance of the author in the history of the said times, and his unskilfulness in placing the scene of his story in them; I say, if any one will insist on all this, notwithstanding what is above said, I shall not enter into any controversy with him about it; only thus much I must insist on, that if it be a true history (which I am inclined most to think, though I will not be positive in it,) it can fall no where else, but in the time where I have laid it.

After the death of Deioces, & Phraortes his son succeeded in the kingdom of Media, and reigned over it twenty-two years.

An. 648.

In the fifty-first year of Manasseh, died ↳ Saosduchinus, king of Babylon and Assyria, Manas. 51. and Chyniladanus reigned in his stead.

e For, allowing her to have been forty-five years old at the time of her killing Holofernes, there must be sixty years after to the time of her death, and "a long time after" in the text, (Judith xvi, 25,) cannot imply less than twenty years more. But if we suppose her to be but twenty-five at the killing of Holofernes, (which is more likely) it will carry down the computation even beyond the destruction of Jerusalem, which makes the objection much stronger. f Neh. xii, 10, 26. h Canon Ptolemæi,

g Herodotus lib. 1,

An. 644.

Manasseh, king of Judah, after he had reigned fifty-five years, and lived sixty-seven, died at Jerusalem; and notwithstanding his signal repentManas. 55. ance, since his former wickedness had been so great, they would not allow him the honour of being buried in the sepulchres of the sons of David, but laid him in a grave made for him in his own garden.

An. 643.

Ammon 1.

After Manasseh, reigned Ammon his son; who, imitating the first part of his father's reign, rather than the latter, gave himself up to all manner of wickedness and impiety; whereon the servants of his house conspired against him, and slew him after he had reigned two years. But the people of the land severely revenged the murder; putting them all to death that had any hand in it. However, they would not give him in his burial the honour of a place among the sepulchres of the song of David, but buried him in the garden by his father; which shews, that though they condemned the wickedness of his reign, they would not allow of the violence that was offered to his person; though it may well be supposed that nothing less than the highest tyranny and oppression could have provoked his own domestics to it.

An. 640.

After the death of Ammon, Josiah his son succeeded him in the kingdom, being then but Josiah 1. eight years old. But having the happiness to fall under the conduct of better guardians in his minority, than did Manasseh his grandfather, he proved, when grown up, a prince of very extraordinary worth; equalling in piety, virtue, and goodness, if not exceeding herein, the best of his predecessors.

Although Ammon reigned but two years, yet the beginning of the reign of Josiah, is here put at the distance of three years from the beginning of the first year of Ammon, because the odd months of the reign of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Ammon, over and above the round number of years, which they are said to have reigned, do by this time amount to a whole year

i 2 Kings xxi, 18. 2 Chron. xxiii, 20. k 2 Kings xxii. 2 Chron. xxxiv.

more, which the chronology of the ensuing history makes necessary to be here supposed.

An. 635.

Josiah 6.

In the sixth year of Josiah, Phraortes, king of Media, having brought under him all the upper Asia (which is all that lay north of Mount Taurus, from Media to the river Halys,) and made the Persians also to become subject unto him, elated his thoughts on these successes, to the revenging of himself upon the Assyrians for his father's death, and accordingly marched with a great army against them, and having made himself master of the country, laid siege to Nineveh itself, the capital of the empire. But he had there the misfortune to meet with the same ill fate that his father had in the former war; for, being overthrown in the attempt, he and all his army perished in it.

An. 663.

Josiah, in the eighth year of his reign, being now sixteen years old, took on him the administration of the kingdom, and, beginning with the Josiah 8. reformation of religion, endeavoured to purge it of all those corruptions, which had been introduced in the time of Ammon and Manasseh, his father, and grandfather; and did set his heart to seek the Lord his God with all his might, as did David his father.

Cyaxares, the son of Phraortes," having succeeded his father in the kingdom of Media, as soon as he had well settled himself in the government, drew together a great army to be revenged on the Assyrians for the late loss, and, having overthrown them in a great battle, led the Medes the second time to the siege of Nineveh; but, before he could make any progress therein, he was called off to defend his own territories against a new enemy. For the Scythians, from the parts about the Palus Meotis, passing round the Caucasus, had made a great inroad upon them; whereby he was forced to leave Nineveh to march against them. But he had not the same success in this war, which he had against the Assyrians; for the Scythians, having vanquished him in battle, dispossessed him of all the upper Asia, and reigned there twenty-eight years; during which time, they enlarged their conquests into Syria,

I Herodotus lib. I.

m 2 Chron. Xrxiv, 3.

n Herodotus lib. 1.

and as far as the borders of Egypt. But there Psammitichus, king of Egypt, having met them, prevailed with entreaties and large gifts, that they proceeded no farther, and thereby saved his country from this dangerous invasion. In this expedition, they seized on Bethshean, a city in the territories of the tribe of Manasseh on this side Jordan, and kept it as long as they continued in Asia; and therefore, from them it was afterwards called Cythopolis, or the city of the Scythians. But how far the ravages of those barbarians might affect Judea is no where said, although there can be no doubt, but that those parts, as well as the rest of Palestine, both in their march to the borders of Egypt, and also in their return from thence, must have suffered much by them. It is related of them, that in their passage through the land of the Philistines, on their return from Egypt, some of the stragglers robbed the temple of Venus at Askelon, and that for the punishment hereof they and their posterity were afflicted with emerods for a long while after; which lets us know, that the Philistines had till then still preserved the memory of what they had formerly suffered on the account of the ark of God. For, from that time, it seems, they looked on this disease, as the proper punishment from the hand of God, for all such like sacrilegious impieties: and for this reason assigned it to the Scythians in their histories, on their charging of them there with this crime. Josiah, in the twelfth year of his reign, being now twenty years old, and having farther improved Josiah 12. himself in the knowledge of God and his laws, proceeded according hereto farther to perfect that reformation, which he had begun. And therefore, making a strict inquiry, by a general progress through the land, after all the relics of idolatry which might be any where remaining therein, he broke down all the altars of Baalim with the idols erected on high before them, and all the high places, and cut down the groves, and broke in pieces all the carved images, and the molten images, and digged up the graves of

An. 629.

• Syncellus, p. 214.

Herodotus lib. 1.

q 1 Sam. v.

r 2 Chron. xxxiv, 3, 4, 5, &c.

the idolatrous priests, and burned their bones upon all places of idolatrous worship, thereby to pollute and defile them for ever; and when he had thus cleansed all Judah and Jerusalem, he went into the cities of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the rest of the land, that had formerly been possessed by the ten tribes of Israel (for all this was then subject to him,) and there did the same thing.

S

In the thirteenth year of Josiah, Jeremiah was called to the prophetic office, which he afterwards executed for above forty years, in warn- Josiah 13. ing Judah and Jerusalem of the wrath of God

An. 628.

impending on them for their iniquities, and in calling them to repentance for the averting of it: till at length, on their continuing wholly obdurate in their evil ways, it was poured out in full measure upon both in a most calamitous destruction.

In the fifteenth year of Josiah, Chyniladanus, king of Babylon and Assyria, having, by his effeminacy and unprofitableness in the state, made Josiah 15. himself contemptible to his people, Nabopo

An. 626.

lassar, who was general of his army, took this advantage to set up for himself, and, being a Babylonian by birth, made use of his interest there to sieze that part of the Assyrian empire, and reigned king of Babylon twenty-one years.

n. 623. Josiah 18.

Josiah," in the eighteenth year of his reign, took especial care for the repairing of the house of God, and therefore sent several of the chief officers of his court to take an account of the money collected for it, and to lay his command upon Hilkiah the high priest, that he should see it be forthwith laid out in the doing of the work; so that all might be put in thorough repair. The high priest, in pursuance of this order, took a general view of the house, to see what was necessary to be done; and, while he was thus examining every place, he found the authentic copy of the law of Moses. This ought to have been laid up on the side of the ark of the

s Jer. i, 2; and xxv, 3.

X

t Alexander Polihistor apud Eusebium in Chronico, p. 46, et apud Syncellum, p. 210.

u 2 Kings xxii. 2 Chron. xxxiv.

x Deut. xxxi, 26.