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S Y L V A BOOK iv 



grove, and called upon the name of the Lord. Such 

 another tuft we read of (for we must not always restrain 

 it to one single tree) when the patriarch came to Elon 

 Moreh, ad con^allem illustrium : But whether that were 

 the same in which the high-priest reposited the famous 

 stone, after the exhortation mention'd, Joshua 24. 26, 

 we do not contend; under an oak says the Scripture, 

 and it grew near the Sanctuary, and probably might 

 be that which his grand-child consecrated with the 

 funeral of his beloved Rebecca, Gen. 35. For 'tis 

 apparent by the context, that there, God appeared to 

 him again : So Grotius upon the words (subter quercum) 

 illam ipsam (says he) cujus mentio^ Gen. 35.4, in his tor ia 

 yacobi & Judae ; and adds, is locus in honor em Jacofo diu 

 pro templo fuit. That the very spot was long after 

 us'd for a temple in honour of him; and that place 

 which Sozomen calls Terebinthum, from certain trees 

 growing there as ancient as the world it self, says 

 Joseph us de bell. Jud. 1. 5. Others report that this 

 tree sprung from a staff, which one of the angels, who 

 appear'd to the patriarch, fixed in the ground: So Geor. 

 Syncellus in Chronico. Mirum ^oero est (says Valesius 

 on this passage of Eusebius) cum quercus ibidem fuer it , 

 sub qua Abraham tabernaculum posuerit, (ut legitur in 

 cap. 1 8. Gen.) cur locus ipse a terebintho potius quam 

 a quercu nomen acceperit. In the mean time, as to the 

 prohibition, XVI. Deut. 21, whether this patriarchal 

 devotion in groves, and under arboreous shades, was 

 approv'd by God, till there was a fixed altar, and his 

 ceremonial worship confin'd to the Tabernacle and 

 Temple, I think needs be no * question. 



3. If we therefore now would track the religious 

 esteem of trees and woods, yet farther in Holy Writ, 



1 D. Doughty. Analecta Sacra, Excurs. XIII. 



