The altar. The rings. The laver.

On the north were six orders of rings, each of which contained four. There are some who assert there were four orders, and each contained six, at which they killed the sacrifices: there, therefore, was the place of slaughter. Near by were low pillars set up, upon which were laid, overthwart, beams of cedar: in these were fastened iron hooks, on which the sacrifices were hung; and they were flayed on marble tables, which were between those pillars.

There was a laver or cistern between the porch and the altar, and it lay a little to the south. "Ben Kattin made twelve cocks for it, which before had but two. He also made the machine of the cistern": that is, as the Gloss explains it, "Ben Kattin, when he was the chief priest, made those cocks for the cistern, that the waters might flow out of them; he made also a pulley, or a wheel, whereby water might be drawn for the use of the cistern."

Between the altar and the porch was the space of two and twenty cubits. They went up thither by twelve steps, each half a cubit in height.

The Temple was strait on the hinder part, but broad on the fore part; and resembled the figure of a lion, because it is said, "Woe to Ariel" (the lion of the Lord), "to Ariel, the city where David encamped." As the lion is narrower behind, and broader before, so also was the Temple. For the porch was broader than the Temple fifteen cubits on the north, and fifteen cubits on the south; and that space, jetting out on both sides, was called "The place of knives,"--namely, where the holy knives, used in killing of the sacrifices, were laid up.

The length of the Temple contained a hundred cubits,--the breadth seventy: including within this measure the porch, the chambers, and the thickness of the outward wall; to trace all which would be too much. And these things, which we have said, we have, therefore, run through with the more haste, both because the famous Constantine L'Empereur hath, very learnedly and largely, treated of them; and because we ourselves largely enough, though much more unlearnedly, have heretofore done these things in a just volume, in our English tongue.