last year of Uzziah's reign, about 758 years before Christ. Some have supposed that he did not live beyond the fifteenth or sixteenth year of Hezekiah's reign; in which case he prophesied during a space of about fortyfive years. But others are of opinion, that he survived Hezekiah, and that he was put to death in the reign of Manasseth. There is, indeed, a Jewish tradition, that he suffered martyrdom by command of that tyrant, in the first year of his reign, about 698 years before Christ, being cruelly sawn asunder with a wooden saw. However this may have been, the story was certainly embellished with many fictitious circumstances, as, that

the Prophet was sawed asunder in a cedar which had opened itself to receive him in his flight; and other particulars fabricated in credulous reverence for his memory. Epiphanius and Dorotheus, who furnish us with this account, add, that he was buried near Jerusalem, under the oak Rogel, near the royal sepulchre, on the river Siloe, at the side of Mount Sion.

JEREMIAH was the son of Hilkiah; probably not of that Hilkiah who was high priest in the reign of Josiah; but certainly of sacerdotal extraction, and a native of Anathoth, a village about three miles from Je

rusalem, appointed for the priests, in that part of Judæa which was allotted to the tribe of Benjamin.

He was called to the prophetic office nearly at the same time with Zephaniah, in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah the son of Amon, A.M. 3376. Like St. John the Baptist and St. Paul, he was even in his mother's womb ordained a prophet to the Jews and other nations. He was not, however, expressly addressed by the word of God till about the fourteenth year of his age; when he diffidently sought to decline the appointment on account of his youth, till influenced by divine encouragement, he obeyed, and continued to

prophesy upwards of forty years, during several successive reigns of the degenerate descendants of Josiah; to whom he fearlessly revealed those marks of the divine vengeance which their fluctuating and rebellious conduct drew on themselves and their country. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, he suffered by Nebuchadnezzar to remain and lament the miseries and desolation of Judea, from whence he sent consolatory assurances to his captive countrymen. He was afterwards, as we are by himself informed, carried with his disciple Baruch, into Egypt by Johanan the son of Koreah. who. contra to his advic

was

and prophetic admonitions, returned from Judæa. He appears to have been exposed to cruel and unjust persecution from the Jews, and especially from those of his own village, during his whole life, on account of the zeal and fervour with which he censured their incorrigible sins; and he is sometimes provoked to break out into the most feeling and bitter complaints of the treatment which he received. According to the account of St. Jerom, he was stoned to death at Tahpanhes, a royal city of Egypt, about 586 years before the birth of Christ: either by his own countrymen, as is generally maintained, or by the Egyptians, to