rich traders dispute for superiority with kings; who sees every maritime power, either as her allies or dependants; and who made herself necessary or formidable to all nations. Tyre had now filled up the measure of her iniquity, by her impiety against God, and her barbarity exercised against his people. She had rejoiced over the ruins of Jerusalem, in the insulting words following: "*Behold then the gates of "this so populous city are broken down. Her inhabitants "shall come to me, and I will enrich myslf with her spoils, ' 66 now she is laid waste." She was not satisfied with hav-ing reduced the Jews to a state of captivity, notwithstanding the alliance between them; with selling them to the Gentiles, and delivering them up to their most cruel ene-' mies she likewise had seized upon the inheritance of the Lord, and carried away from his temple the most precious things, to enrich therewith the temples of her idols. ́ This profanation and cruelty drew down the vengeance of God upon Tyre. God is resolved to destroy her, because she relied so much upon her own strength, her wisdom, her, riches, and her alliances. He therefore brought against her Nabuchodonosor, that king of kings, to overflow her with his mighty hosts, as with waters that overspread their banks, in order to demolish her ramparts, to ruin her proud palaces, to deliver up her merchandises and treasures to the soldiers, and to raze Tyre to the very foundations, after having set fire to it, and either extirpated or dispersed alk its inhabitants... By this so unexpected a fall, the Almighty will teach the astonished nations, that he more evidently displays his providence by the most incredible revolutions of states; and that his will only directs the enterprises of men, and guides them as he pleases, in order to humble the proud." But Tyre, after she had recovered her losses, and repaired her ruins, forgot her former state of humiliation, and the guilt which had reduced her to it. She still was puffed up with the glory of possessing the empire of the sea; of being the seat of universal commerce of giving birth to the most famous colonies; of having within her walls merchants whose credit, riches, and splendour, equalled them to the Ezek. xxvii. 2. ↑ Joeliii, 2-83. Anios i. 19. 10. J t princes and great men of the earth; * of being governed by a monarch, who might justly be entitled god of the sea; of tracing back her origin to the most remote antiquity; and having acquired, by a long series of ages, a kind of eternity; and of having a right to promise herself another such eternity in times to come. † But since this city, corrupted by pride, by avarice, and luxury, has not profited by the first lesson which God had given her, in the person of the king of Babylon; and that after being oppressed by all the forces of the east, she still would not learn to confide no longer in the false and imagin ary supports of her own greatness; God foretells her another chastisement, which he will send upon her from the west, near 400 years after the first. $Her destruction will come from Chittim, that is, Macedonia; from a kingdom so weak and obscure that it had been despised a few years before; a kingdom whence she could never have expect ed such a blow. " Tyre, possessed with an opinion of her 46 own wisdom, and proud of her fleets, of her immense rich"es,which she heaped up as mire in the streets," and also protected by the whole power of the Persian empire, does not imagine she has any thing to fear from those new enemies, who being situated at a great distance from her, without either money, strength, or reputation; having neither harbours nor ships, and being quite unskilled in navigation, cannot, therefore, as she imagines, annoy her with their land forces. Tyre looks upon herself as impregnable, because, she is defended by lofty fortifications, and surrounded on all sides by the sea, as with a mote and a girdle: nevertheless, Alexander, by filling up the arm of the sea which separates her from the continent, will force off her girdle, and demolish those ramparts which served her as a second inclosure. Tyre, thus dispossessed of her dignity as queen, and as a free city, boasting no more her diadem, nor her girdle, will he reduced during 70 years, to the mean condition of a slave, "The Lord hath pusposed it, to stain the pride of all glo"ry, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the "earth." ** Her fall will drag after it the ruin of trade in general, and she will prove to all cities a subject of sorrow and groans, by making them lose the present means and the future hopes of enriching themselves. ††To prove in a sensible manner, to Tyre, that the prophecy concerning her ruin is not incredible, and that all the Ezek. xxviii, 2† Ifa, xxiii. 13. JEzek. xxiii, 17, 12, 13. §1 Maccab. i, 1 Zec. ix, 2, 5, || Ifa, xxiii, 10, 11, 13. Isa, xxiii. 9. strength and wisdom of man can no ways ward off, or sus pend the punishment which God has prepared for the pride and the abuse of riches, Isaiah sets before her the example of Babylon, whose destruction ought to have been an example to her. *This city in which Nimrod laid the foundations of his empire, was the most ancient, the most populous, and embellished with more edifices, both public and private, than any other city. She was the capital of the first empire that ever existed, and was founded in order to command over the whole earth, which seemed to be inhabited only by families, which she had brought forth and sent out as so many colonies, whose common parent she was. Nevertheless says i the prophet, she is no more, neither Babylon nor her empire. The citizens of Babylon had multiplied their ramparts and citadels, to render even the besieging it impracticable. The inhabitants had raised pompous palaces, to make their names immortal; but all these fortifications were but so many dens, in the eyes of Providence, for wild beasts to dwell in; and these edifices were doomed to fall to dust, or else to sink to humble cottages. After so signal an example, continues the prophet, shall Tyre, which is so much inferior to Babylon, in many respects, dare to hope that the menaces pronounced by heaven against her, viz. to deprive her of the empire of the sea, and destroy her fleets, will not be fulfilled? To make her the more strongly sensible how much she has abused her prosperity, God will reduce her to a state of humiliation and oblivion during 70 years. But after this season of obscurity, she will again endeavour to appear with the air of an harlot, whose charms and artifices she shall assume; she will employ her utmost endeavours to corrupt youth, and soothe their passions. To promote her commerce, she will use fraud, deceit, and the most insidious arts. She will visit every part of the world, to collect the most rare and most delicious products of every country; to inspire the various nations of the universe with a love and admiration for superfluities and splendour; and fill them with an aversion for the simplicity and frugality of their ancient manners. And she will set every engine at work, to renew her ancient treaties; to recover the confidence of Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not till the Assyriaus founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness. They set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for your strength is laid waste. Isa. xxiii, 13, 14. Ibid. 16. Isaiah xxiii. 15. her former correspondents; and to compensate, by a speedy abundance, the sterility of 70 years. *Thus, in proportion as the Almighty shall give Tyre an opportunity of recovering her trade and credit, she shall re-> turn to her former shameful traffic, which God had ruined, by stripping her of the great possessions she had applied to such pernicious uses. But at last, Tyre, converted by the gospel, shall no more be a scandal and a stumbling-block to nations. She shall no longer sacrifice her labour to the idolatry of wealth, but to the worship of the Lord, and the comfort of those that serve him. She shall no longer render her riches barren and use- ' less by detaining them; but shall scatter them, like fruitful seed, from the hands of believers and ministers of the gospel. : One of God's designs, in the prophecies just now cited, is to give us a just idea of a traffic whose only motive is avarice, and whose fruits are pleasures, vanity, and immorality. Mankind look upon cities enriched with a commerce like that of Tyre (and it is the same with private persons) as happier than any other; as worthy of envy, and as fit, from their industry, labour, and the success of their applications and conduct, to be proposed as patterns for the rest to copy after but God, on the contrary, exhibits them to us under the shameful image of a woman lost to all sense of virtue; as a woman, whose only view is to seduce and corrupt youth; who only soothes the passions and flatters the senses; who abhors modesty and every sentiment of honour; and who, banishing from her countenance every characteristic of chastity, glories in ignominy. We are not to infer from hence that traffic is sinful in itself; but we should separate from the essential foundation of trade, which is just and law ful when rightly used, the passions of men which intermix with, and by that means pervert the order and end of it. Tyre, converted to Christianity, teaches merchants in what manner they are to carry on their traffic, and the uses to which they ought to apply their profits. SECTION VII. ALEXANDER'S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.—HE SUBDUES' EGYPT. IS DECLARED SON OF JUPITER. a WHILST Alexander was carrying on the siege of Tyre,✔ he had received a second letter from Darius, who at last gave him the title of king. "He offered him 10,000 talents (30 millions) as a ransom for the captive princesses, and ❝his daughter Statira in marriage, with all the country he "had conquered as far as the Euphrates, Darius hinted to " him the inconstancy of fortune; and described, in the most "pompous terms, the numberless troops who were still un"der his command. Could he (Alexander) think, that it was so very easy to cross the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Araxes, and the Hydaspes, which were as so many bul"warks to the Persian empire? That he should not be always shut up between rocks and passes: That they ought "both to appear in a plain, and that then Alexander would "be ashamed to come before him with only a handful of & men." The king hereupon summoned a council, in which Parmenio was of opinion that he ought to accept of those of fers, declaring he himself would agree to them, were he Alexander. And so would I," replied Alexander, "were "I Parmenio." He therefore returned the following answer, "that he did not want the money Darius offered him; that "it did not become Darius to offer a thing he no longer possessed, or to pretend to distribute what he had entirely lost. "That in case he was the only person who did not know "which of them was superior, a battle would soon determine "it. That he should not think to intimidate with rivers a "man who had crossed so many seas. That to whatsoever place he might find it proper to retire, Alexander would not fail to find him out." Darius, upon receiving this ans wer, lost all hopes of accommodation, and prepared again " for war. From Tyre Alexander marched to ferusalem, firmly resolved to show it no more favour than he had done the former city; and for this reason: the Tyrians were so much employed in traffic, that they quite neglected husbandry, and brought most of their corn and other provisions from the countries in their neighbourhood. Galilea, Samaria, and Judea, furnished them with the greatest quantities. At the same time that Alexander laid siege to their city, he himself Plat, in Alex. p. 681. Q. Curt. 1. iv. e. 5. Arrian, l. ¡í, p. 101. f Joseph, Antiq. 1. xi. c. 8.. Acu xii. 20, |