Churches are Mahometan Mofques, and all the trade of this once flourishing and highly favoured City, is beads, relicts, and provifion for Travellers.

The City reduced to a poor thinly inhabited Town, on a rocky mountain; the Soil ftoney, fandy, and barren.

A fhort lived change (and one we read of with aftonishment) this City experienced under the Emperor Adrian, after Titus had plundered, burnt, and demolished it. The Emperor built a City on its Ruins, and erected a ftatue of Jupiter over the place of the Refurrection, a Venus on Mount Calvary, and an Adonis at Bethlehem; and thefe all continued till the Emperor Conftantine, and his mother Helena, a British lady, pulled them down, and erected in their ftead magnificent Churches, now remaining; but the Turks are the mafters, and keep the keys in their poffeffion.

New Colonies from diftant countries re-peopled Judæa.

Inundations of Northern Barbarians, and the blind zeal of Chriftians encountering with

Mahometans, have completed the fad and total devaftation of it. Herds of wild Arabs, living altogether on plunder and depredation, seize on all and every thing they meet. The dread and horror of Travellers, inquifitively viewing fo diftinguished a spot, and its once famous cities, villages, and towns, now moft dangerous to refort to, and moft comfortless to live in.

Of all the other Tribes their very name is loft, and their memory memory swallowed up in the neighbouring kingdoms, whofe Princes divided the land, and added it each to his own territories.

ESSAY

ESSAY II.

112

On the Life of the Patriarch

ABRAHAM.

AR

BRAHAM, the faithful fervant, and the friend of GOD, was the Son of Terah, a lineal defcendant of Noah.

ABRAHAM was born in Ur, a city of Chaldea, 2097 Years before CHRIST, and 1072 after the Flood.

In the very ancient Statutes of Chaldea it is recorded," Abraham was a righteous and emiC 2

"nent

1

"nent man, well skilled in celeftial Science, and "a teacher of Aftronomy."

By others he has been called a Royal Shepherd; and this highly diftinguished Character, and venerable Patriarch, was the Father and the Founder of the Jewish Empire.

The facred Hiftorian is entirely filent as to the early part of his life. He firft introduces him at the age of feventy-four, but fills up all the remaining Period with a minute and moft entertaining fucceffion of domestic Anecdotes divinely inftructive and exemplary.

The first thing told of Abraham is his filial Piety and dutiful attendance on his aged parent; who now, at the advanced period of two hundred and five years, removed with all his family and flocks from Chaldea to Haran,'a city in Mefopotamia, and the year following died in that country.

It was foon after Abraham had paid his last due honours to his Father, and attended on his funeral, that God commanded him to leave his patrimonial estate, and native home, to fojourn all his life, a pilgrim, in a strange and diftant country, to which GOD

GOD had directed him. And Mofes, his hiftorian, gives a long and interefting account of his life, travels, trials, and the very wonderful means by which divine Wisdom and Goodness led him by the hand through all, by fignal and most glorious promises, prefent bleffings, extraordinary interpofitions, deliverances, and fupport.

Among many, there was one promife which highly animated and encouraged Abraham :

"In his offspring all the Nations of the whole "earth fhould be bleffed."

And yet the promise was made under very apparent fingular difcouragements, which occafioned him to be more thoughtful, and much less expecting the bleffing.

ABRAHAM however instantly pursued the orders which were given him; he collected all his herds, and his flocks, and packed up his furniture, household goods, and treafures; he fet out. on his journey, with his beautiful wife, his fervants, and his cattle, from Haran, his family refidence, and travelled through Mefopotamia to the land of the Canaanites; and there, near a populous city, named Sichem, pitched his tents,

and