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much affected with the loss of his child, and thinking to prevent his wife’s grief by the sight of the body he had it removed to a kinsman’s house, and in a day or two interred it from thence, supposing it to be his son Judas.
By this time Providence had conducted Judas, alive and well, unto the coast of Iscariot, a kingdom in Palestine, where Pheophilus the king often used to recreate himself, in beholding the ships pass and repass at sea. It happened that the very day that Judas was cast on the coast, the king and his nobles came on that diversion, and as they were standing on the top of the rock, looking into the sea, the king espied a little boat floating upon the water, and thinking it to be a chest of some wrecked ship, he ordered a servant to put out a boat and fetch it; which being done, and brought to the king, he ordered it to be broken open; when to their great surprise, they found a lovely babe, who look’d up, and smiled in the king’s face. Then said the king to the child, welcome as my own child; and expressed much joy in being providentially sent to preserve the babe’s life, and taking it up in his arms, said if thou wert a child begat by me, I could not esteem or value thee more. Then he espied about its neck the aforementioned parchment, viz:
MY NAME IS JUDAS.
Well, said the king, as thy name is Judas, I will now double name thee, and then called him Judas Iscariot, because he found him near the coast of that name. He was then brought to court, treated as the king’s own child, and at a proper age educated well, and at last became a man of learning and
