or of any other calamity, they presently, to expiate their offences against their supposed incensed gods, and to clear themselves of their present miseries or dangers, sacrificed some mean persons, who for this reason were called καθάρματα, expiations,[138] and to this doth the apostle allude in 1 Cor. iv. 13, as Budæus, Stephanus, Grotius, and many others think; as if he should say, we are as much despised and loaded with cursings as those that are sacrificed for public expiation. But what cruel usage may we expect for the poor barbarous nations of the world, where he had all possible advantages for the exercise of his bloody tyranny! Many sad instances of this kind are collected by Purchas in his Pilgrimage, in his discourses of Virginia, Peru, Brasilia, Mexico, Florida, and other places, whose stories of this subject are so terrible, and occur so frequently, that they are almost beyond all belief,[139] all which for brevity’s sake I omit, contenting myself to note one instance or two out of the Scripture: 2 Kings iii. 27, the king of Moab ‘took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall.’ This he did, according to the customs of the Phœnicians and others, being reduced to great straits, as supposing by this means, as his last refuge, to turn away the wrath of his God. Of Ahaz it is recorded, 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, that ‘he burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen.’ That this was not a lustration or consecration of their children, though that also was used, but a real sacrificing, is without doubt to Josephus, who expresseth it thus: ‘He offered his son as an holocaust,’ [ὁλοκάυστωσε.] But whatever Ahaz did, it is certain the children of Israel did so; ‘They offered their sons and daughters to devils,’ Ps. cvi. 37. And if the ‘sacrifices of the dead’ which they ate in the wilderness, mentioned ver. 28, be understood of the feasts which were made at ‘the burning of their children,’ as some think[140]—though many understand it of their senseless dead gods or their deceased heroes, or for their deceased friends—then this cruelty had soon possessed them. However, possess them it did, as appears also by the description of their devouring Moloch, which the Jewish Rabbins say was a hollow brazen image in the form of a man, saving that it had the head of a calf, the arms stretched in a posture of receiving; the image was heated with fire, and the priest put the child in his arms, where it was burnt to death; in the meantime a noise was made with drums, that the cries of the child might not be heard, and hence was it called Tophet, from _toph_, which signifies a drum; so that the name and shape of the image shews that it was used to these execrable cruelties.[141]