S. Where did Lot and his family flee unto?

T. To the little city Zoar, which at his request was preserved from destruction: and he was no sooner entered therein, about the rising of the sun, but the Lord executed his threatenings, and the vengeance of his wrath; by raining down fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroying those cities, and all the plain with all their inhabitants, lands, and goods. This tract is now a great lake or dead sca, called the Salt-sea, and Asphaltites, on account of the bitumen or pitch cast up therein, and is about fifty miles long, and fourteen broad; it is moved with no wind, and sends forth a very offensive smell.

S. Did Lot and his family arrive safe at Zoar?

T. Lot arrived safe with his

T. His daughters imagining that they and their father, were the only remains of all the inhabitants of the earth, thought it their duty not to suffer the whole generation of men to perish; wherefore having made their father drunk two several nights, did not stick to commit incest, in hopes of becoming mothers. father? S. Had they children by their

T. Yes. The elder bore him a son, called Moab, who was the fanation who inhabited the country ther of the Moabites; a powerful on the E. of the Salt-sea, where the river Jordan eastward and the the Amorites afterwards dwelt, on younger daughter bore him a son, called Ben-ammi; who became the father of the children of Ammon, who possessed the N. part of the nations were afterwards great enekingdom of Sihon. Both which mies to the people of God. This fall of Lot calls upon us to be al

daughters; but his wife, forgetting the angels' command, and looking back upon the destruction of Sodom, out of a curiosity which proceeded from unbelief, or else out of an han-ways on our guard against sin; and kering inclination to what she had left behind, was changed into a pillar of saline substance, as a monument of God's judgment upon her disobedience.

S. Did Lot continue at Zoar?

7. No. He took his two daughters, and went up into the mountain, where he lived retired from all other human conversation, and dwelt in a cave with them alone; for some suppose that the men of Zoar, not taking warning at the overthrow of their neighbours, continned to work iniquity in the sight of the Lord, which Lot was afraid would at last bring the same judgment upon themselves.

particularly to beware of drunkenin itself, but is often attended by bad ness, which is not only a beastly sin

censequences.

S. Did not this destruction of Sodom and all that country terrify Abraham?

T. No doubt but it did; for, after he had seen the smoak of that country go up as the smoak of a furnace, we find he removed from the plain of Mamre southward to Gerar, which was near Gaza; and that time the chief city of the Philistines, and which was afterwards called Bersheba, where he abode near 20 years.

S. What happened to Abraham

S. What happened to him there? at Gerar?

7. Abraham being under the same apprehensions of fear as he had wha he went into Egypt, had again engaged Sarah to pass for his sister; and Abimelech, the king of Gerar, being informed that she was a fair woman, sent and took her; but he was admonished in a dream, that she was a man's wife, and to abstain from violating her, under pain of death to him and all his faanily, if he did not restore her. Abimelech having told this to his servants, sends for Abraham, severely chides him for having concealed the truth concerning his wife, and restores her to him; disavows any intention of adultry in himself; presents him with a large sum of money, besides oxen, sheep, men servants and women servants, and permits him to dwell wherever he pleased within his land.

which is one strong presumption of the truth of these writings.

S. What does Abimelech mean? T. It means, my father the king; and was the name or title of the kings of the Philistines, as Pharaoh was of the Egyptians, and Cæsar of the Romans.

S. Why did Abimelech give Abraham such presents?

T. To justify that he had not wronged Sarah's virtue : it being then usual to give presents to confirm the truth of any thing that might be called in doubt.

S. Where and when was Sarah brought to bed?

7. At Gerar, according to the time that the angel had declared in the tent at Mamre, she was delivered of a son, whom his father, according to a former direction,

S. What return did Abraham called Isaac, which signifies laugh

make?

ter; and circumcised him on the eighth day. This child, born in T. He prayed for him and for their old age, Abraham being in his the rest of his house; who were hundredth year, and Sarah in her thereby delivered from the plague, ninetieth, was nursed with great joy which God had laid upon them for by his mother, who at the age of Sarah's sake. five years weaned him, being then S. Why did Abraham dissemble strong enough to live with her.. in this manner?

T. Because he thought that the fear of God was not in that place, and that they would slay him for his wife's sake.

S. Did not Abraham sin by this equivocation and exposing his wife's chastity and honour?

T. Yes. And these examples shew us, that we must not expect any person upon earth absolutely without some sign of infirmity and corruption; and that the scriptures gre impartial in relating the blemishes of the most famous saints,

Now Hagar was not only hereby disappointed of her expectation, that Ishmael would have been the sole heir to Abraham; but in a little time her son being caught mocking or deriding Isaac, which Sarah was not able to bear, she was, at Sarah's instigation and God's order, turned out of doors by Abraham, together with her son.

S. What became of Hagar and her son?

T. Abraham sent them away with a parcel of bread and a bottle of wa ter, And they wandered in the

neighbouring wilderness of Beersheba; where, having drank all their water, and being ready to faint with draught, God saw her tears and heard the voice of the lad, and directed her to a well of water, where they refreshed themselves; and their lives were preserved. This blessing encouraged her to continue in this retirement: for instead of proceeding towards Egypt, as might be her first intention, she took up her abode in the wilderness of Paran; where under God's protection, Ishmael grew up and became such an expert archer as to be able to provide for them both, and when marriageable, his mother procured kim a wife out of the land of Egypt. S. Had Ishmael any issue by that Egyptian?

T. Yes: he had twelve sons, who became princes, according to their nations; which lay between Havilah and Shur, in Arabia Petræa; and as their decendants were called Ishmaelites from their father, so we find some of them in heathen authors, under the name of Hagarens or Hagarites, from Hagar, the mother of Ishmael.

S. Did Abraham presper in Gera; T. Yes. And the king entered into a solemn league with him at Beersheba, in the presence of his people, & redressed such complaints as Abraham had just reason to offer against his subjects. And now finding himself and family firmly settled, and intending there to end his days, he built an altar, and planted a grove for religious worship, and called upon the name of the Lord, the everlafting God. But his greated trial was yet to come. For in order to jastify the sincerity of his faith and obedience, and to make him an ilF

lustrious pattern of an intire deper. dance on the Almighty; the Lord commanded him to carry his only son Isaac, the son of the promise, into the land of Meriah, and there to offer him for a burt offering upon one of the mountains.

S. How did Abraham receive this command?

T. In faith, nothing doubting. He delayed not, but took his son, with provisions for the journey and instruments for the sacrifice, and after three days journey they arrived in Moriah; where, according to the tradition of the Jews, Abrahaw saw a pillar of fire, reaching from the earth to the heavens, by which he knew that mountain to be the place, appointed by God for that dreaful scene, which he presently prepared to act with his son Isaac, whom, at the bottom of the mount, he laded with the wood and the other materials for a burnt onering. These two journeying alene, the lad said to his father, where is the lamb for the burnt offering? to which the father without expressing any tokens of grief or concern, replied, (little thinking bow prophetically) that. God would provide himself with one. Being arrived at the spot of ground, on which Christ afterwards actually offered himself unto God for the redemption of mankind (for mount Calvary was part of this mount Moriah) Abraham built an altar, bound his son and laid him upon the wood: but when the utmost strength of his obedience appeared by stretching forth his hand, and taking the knife to slay his son, God called to him from heaven, accepted of his re solution and intention in this extra ordinary proof of his piety, forbade him to lay hand upon his son; and

sent him a ram, caught by the horns in a thicket behind him, which Abraham offered up for a burnt offering instead of his son. Abraham, in memory of this transaction, called the place Jehovah-Jireh, that is, God will provide himself a lamb : which appelation, has a relation to that immaculate Lamb of God, which Abraham foresaw would be provided and offered up on that very mount for the sins of the whole world. Abraham having thus manifested his entire submission to the divine will and shewn his piety to be proof against all temptations, God with an oath confirmed to him all his former promises, with great additions, one of which was, that his sced should possess the gate of his enemies. Then Abraham and his son went down from the mount, and returned to Beersheba, with his ervants, that waited there with the provisions and beasts.

S. You said that Terah, Abraham's father, had a son named Na. hor? Pray what becaine of him?

7. Moses, keeping always his principal design in view, gives us ac account of Nahor till Abraham's acturn from Moriah, and his son was marriageable; though it is no incongruous opinion, that Nahor either accompanied, or soon after followed his father Terah to Haran in Mesopotamia, where he settled and had a numerous family, eight sons by his wife Milcah, and four by his concubine Reumah.

S. Where was Sarah buried? T. In the cave of the field of Machpelah, which signifies double, or one with another, or, according to the Arabic derivation, shut or walled up. Abraham purchased this burial place, for himself and family,

of Ephron, a principal inhabitant of Hebron, at the price of 400 shekels of silver, or 60 pounds sterling. The burials in churches and cities are of modern date; for the ancients always reposited their dead in grottos or vaults, built in fields or gar dens.

S. What became of Isaac after the death of his mother?

T. Abraham being now advanced in years, and being desirous of settling his son, sends his steward Eliezar, to his own country and kindred, the descendants of Nahor, who dwelt at Haran, to take a wife from among them, for Isaac; which was accordingly done, to the great joy of both parties, by his marriage with Rebeccah, the daughter Bethuel, Nahor's youngest son.

S. Where and in what manner did Isaac meet his intended bride?

T. Isaac was accidentally walking and meditating in a field about the close of the day, when Rebeccah who was with the steward, and her other attendants on her journey to Canaan, being informed by her guide that he was the man to whom she was betrothed, lighted off her camel, and covered herself with a veil and, the servant having told Isaac all things that he had done, Isaac conducted her into the tent that had been his mother's, took her to be his wife, and loved her.

S. Did Nahor's descendants retain the worship of the true God?

T. Yes though much corrupted with Idolatrous inventions.

S. Did Abraham marry another wife?

T. Yes; whose name was Ket rah, and by whom he had six so Zimram, Joksham, Medan, Midia Ishbak and Shuah. And Jocksha.

S. What children had Isaac by tain, and turn them off at pleasure. Rebeccah?

T. Yes he did not die till they A people, that have always deserved were fifteen years of age.

the vengeance of the sword, and have often been attacked by the greatest warriors of antiquity, but have never been conquered. When Alexander was meditating their ruin, death cut him off: in the wars between the Romans and Parthians, though they