Filial affection’s to old Jacob good, When Canaan’s land lay destitute of food, Then Joseph kind his aged father fed, When thousands daily starved for want of bread; His love expressed with mind sedate and calm, Then with rich spices did his corpse embalm; When breathless lay upon a bed of down, He treats blest Jacob, father of renown; Falls on his clay and with a kind embrace, Salutes the late most venerable face Of Pious Jacob, now growing stiff and cold. It must be so when life is charged to mould, Plenty of tears did from his eye balls flow, To show mankind he did his duty know, That nought’s too much to pay a parent dear, From children that the awful GOD do fear. JACOB’S FUNERAL. [Illustration] When seventeen long years Jacob had dwelt, Behold, the fatal hand of death he felt: To Joseph he commits the special care Of his great funeral, and tells him where He would be laid, which was fulfilled at large, According to the tenor of his charge; For having yielded up his vital breath, He dropped into the frozen arms of death. Numbers of mourning coaches out of hand Prepared were; thus to his native land He was conveyed a sleeping-place to have, Near to the borders of his father’s grave. Upright he was, and just in all his ways; Pray now observe the number of his days, He was, when he dropt off this earthly stage, One hundred and forty-seven years of age. THE LIFE OF ST. PAUL. Saint Paul, though not one of the twelve, yet for his great eminence in the ministry of the gospel, had the honour to be styled an apostle, particularly above all the rest that were not of the number, and hath justly the next place to St. Peter allotted to him, both in regard they were so conversant in their lives, and inseparable in their deaths. He was born at Tarsus, not only of Jewish parents, but originally descended from an ancient Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin in Judea, where he had his education, which was a flourishing Academy, whose scholars (as Strabo testifies) excelled those of Alexandria, and even Athens itself. In the schools of this city, he was brought up from his childhood, and became an excellent proficient in all the polite learning of the ancients, yet at the same time he was brought up to a manual trade, as even the most learned of their Rabbins were, for enabling them to get a livelihood if occasion required it; it being a maxim (especially amongst the Jews,) that he who teacheth not his son a trade, teacheth him to be a thief; for learning of old was not made an instrument to get a maintenance by, but for the better polishing the mind; so that the learned among the Jews were frequently denominated (as Drusius observes,) from some one or other handy-craft trade, as Rabbie Judah, the baker; Rabbie Jochanan, the Shoemaker, &c.