C

apart. And therefore doth Gregory Nazianzen infer upon a place of St. Paul, Quod si Paulo licuisset effari ea, quorum ipsi cognitionem cœlum tertium et usque ad illud progressio suppeditavit, fortasse de Deo nobis aliquid amplius constaret; "If Paul might have uttered the things, the knowledge whereof the third heavens, and his going thi"ther, did bring unto him, peradventure we might know "somewhat more of God."

66

Pythagoras, saith Reuclin, thought it not the part of a wise man, asino lyram exponere, aut mysteria, quæ ita reciperet, ut sus tubam, et fidem graculus, et unguenta scarabæus; quare silentium indixit discipulis, ne vulgo divinorum arcana patefacerent, quæ meditando facilius, quam loquendo apprehendantur; "to set an ass to a harp, or to "learn mysteries, which he would handle as a swine doth a trumpet, or a jay a viol, or scarabees and unclean flies "sovereign ointment: wherefore he commanded silence to "his disciples, that they should not disclose divine myste"ries to the common sort, which are easier learnt by medi"tation than by babbling." And therefore did the Egyptians communicate their mysteries among their priests in certain hieroglyphic letters, to the end that their secrets might be hidden from the vulgar; and that they might bestow the more time in the contemplation of their covered meanings.

But to proceed with the contemporaries of Aod, or Ehud, with him it is also said that Tityus lived, whom Apollo slew, because he sought to force his mother Latona. Euphorion hath it thus, that Tityus was the son of Elara, the daughter of Orchomenus; which Elara being beloved of Jupiter, to avoid Juno's revenge he hid Elara in the earth, where she was delivered of Tityus; whose mother dying, and himself therein nourished, he was therefore called the son of the earth. Pausanias, speaking of the grave of this giant, affirms, that his body occupied the third part of a furlong. But Tibullus hath a louder lie of his stature out of Homer:

C

Greg. in Orat. de recta ratione dis. de Deo. 2 Cor. xii.

d

Porrectusque novem Tityus per jugera terræ,
Assiduas atro viscere pascit aves.

Nine furlongs stretch'd lies Tityus, who for his wicked deeds
The hungry birds with his renewing liver daily feeds.

This Strabo doth thus expound; that Apollo killing this cruel and wicked tyrant of Panopea, a city in Phocis, it was feigned by the poets, to the terror of others, that he was still eaten in hell by birds, and yet still lived, and had his flesh renewed.

Admetus, king of Thessaly, lived also in this age, whom it is said that Apollo first served as a herdman, and afterwards, for his excellent wit, was by him advanced; but having slain Hyacinthus, he crossed the Hellespont, and fled into Phrygia; where, together with Neptune, he was entertained by Laomedon, and got his bread by working in brick, for building of the walls of Troy, not by making the bricks leap into their places by playing on his harp, according to him in Ovid, which saith,

Ilion aspicies, firmataque turribus altis,

Mania Apollineæ structa canore lyræ.

Strong Ilion thou shalt see with walls and towers high,
Built with the harp of wise Apollo's harmony.

Thus the poets; but others, that he laboured with his hands, as hired in this work. And that he also laboured at the building of the labyrinth in Greece all the Megarians witness, saith e Pausanias.

In these days also of Ehud, or (as some find it) in the days of Deborah, lived Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, by whose soldiers (as they sailed out of Peloponnesus to seek their adventure on Africa side) Medusa, the daughter and successor of Phorcus, being weakly accompanied as she hunted near the lake fTriton, was surprised and slain; whose beauty when Perseus beheld, he caused her

d Hom. Odyss. II.

e Paus. in Ått.

f Triton, a lake of Africa, which

Pliny calleth Pallantias. Didym. in
Pereg. Hist.

head to be embalmed and carried into Greece: the beauty whereof was such, and so much admired, and the beholders so astonished which beheld it, as thereof grew the fiction, that all that looked on Medusa's head were turned into stones.

Cecrops, the second of that name, and 7th king of Athens, and Acrisius the 13th, or, after & Eusebius, the 14th king of the Argives, began also their reigns, as it is said, in the time of this judge; of which the first ruled 40 years, and the second 31 years. Also Bellerophon lived in this age, being the son of Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus; who enticed by Antea or Sthenobia, the wife of Prætus of the Argives, to accompany her, but refusing it, she accused him to her husband that he offered to force her: whereupon Prætus sent Bellerophon into Lycia about some affairs of weight between him and his son-in-law Jobates; giving secret order to Jobates to despatch him: but Jobates thinking it dishonourable to lay violent hands on him, employed him against Chimæra, a monster vomiting or breathing fire. Now the gods, (as the report is,) pitying his innocency, sent him the winged horse Pegasus, sprung up of the blood of Medusa, formerly slain by the soldiers of Perseus in Africa, to transport him; a horse that none other could master or bridle but Minerva: upon which beast Bellerophon overcame Chimara, and performed the other services given him in charge; which done, as he returned toward Lycia, the Lycians lay in ambush to have slain him; but being victorious also over all those, he arrived to Jobates in safety; whom Jobates for his eminent virtues honoured, first, with one of his daughters, and afterward with his kingdom: after which he grew so insolent, as he attempted to fly up to heaven upon his Pegasus; whose pride Jupiter disdaining, caused one of his stinging flies so to vex Pegasus, as he cast off Bellerophon from his back into the valley of Cilicia, where he died blind; of which burden Pegasus being discharged, (as the fable goeth,) flew back to heaven; and, being fed in

Euseb. in Chron.

Jupiter's own stable, Aurora begged him of Jupiter to ride on before the sun. This tale is diversely expounded; as first, by some, that it pleaseth God to relieve men in their innocent and undeserved adversity, and to cast down those which are too highminded; according to that which is said of Bellerophon, that when he was exposed to extreme hazard, or rather certain death, he found both deliverance and honour; but waxing over proud and presumptuous in his glorious fortunes, he was again thrown down into the extremity of sorrow and everduring misery. Secondly, by others, that under the name of h Chimera was meant a cruel pirate of the Lycians, whose ship had in her prow a lion, a goat in the midship, and a dragon in the stern, of which three beasts this monster Chimæra was said to be compounded, whom Bellerophon pursued with a kind of galley of such swiftness, that it was called the flying horse; to whom the invention of sails (the wings of a ship) are also attributed. Many other expositions are made of this tale by other authors; but it is not unlikely that Chimæra was the name of a ship, for so i Virgil calleth one of the greatest ships of Æneas.

Ion also, from whom the Athenians (being ignorant of the antiquity of their parent Javan) derive their name of Iones, is said to have been about Ehud's time: Homer calls them Iaones, which hath a near resemblance to the word Javan. Perhaps it might be so, that Ion himself took name from Javan; it being a custom observable in the histories of all times to revive the ancient name of a forefather in some of the principal of his issue.

The invasion of India by Liber Pater is by some reported as done in this age: but St. Augustine makes him far more ancient; placing him between the coming out of Egypt and the death of Joshua.

About the end of the 80 years ascribed to Ehud and Samgar, Pelops flourished; who gave name to Peloponnesus in Greece, now called Morea.

h Plutarch. in Claris Mulier. i L. 5. Æneid.

k Homer in Hymno ad Apoll. lib. 18. c. 12. De Civ. Dei, l. 18. c. 15.

SECT. IV.

Of Deborah, and her contemporaries.

AFTER Israel had lived in peace and plenty to the end of these 80 years, they again began to forget the Giver of all goodness; and many of those being worn out which were witnesses of the former misery, and of God's deliverance by Ehud, and after him by Samgar, the rest began to return to their former neglect of God's commandments. For as plenty and peace are the parents of idle security, so is security as fruitful in begetting and bringing forth both danger and subversion; of which all estates in the world have tasted by interchange of times. Therefore, when their sins were again ripe for punishment, Jabin, king of Hazor, after the death of Ehud, invaded the territory of Israel, and having in his service 900 iron chariots, besides the rest of his forces, he held them in subjection twenty years, till it pleased God to raise up Deborah the prophetess, who encouraged Barac to levy a force out of Nephtalim and Zabulon, to encounter the Canaanites. That the men of Nephtalim were more forward than the rest in this action, it may seem to have proceeded partly from the authority that Barac had among them, being of the same tribe; and partly from their feeling of the common grievance, which in them was more sensible than in others, because Hazor and Haroseth, the chief holds of Jabin, were in Nephtalim. So in the days of Jephtha, the Gileadites took the greatest care, because the Ammonites, with whom the war was, pressed most upon them, as being their borderers. Now as it pleased God by the left hand of Ehud to deliver Israel from the Moabite, and by the counsel and courage of a woman to free them from the yoke of Canaan, and to kill the valiant Sisera by Jael the Kenite's wife; so was it his will at other times to work the like great things by the weakest means. For the mighty Assyrian Nabuchodonowho was a king of kings, and resistless, he overthrew by his own imaginations, the causers of his brutish melancholy; and changed his matchless pride into the base hu

sor,