In the blast of the flame
It remained unaltered
As if neither leaf nor twig
Perceived the death-giving blaze.
In this we may recognize
The full magnificence of thy maidenhood.’[146]
And we find this burning Thorn Bush with the Ivory Tower, the Sealed Fountain, the Fleece of Gideon and other emblems of the Virgin, in the fifteenth-century renderings of the Hortus Inclusus and in the background of the essentially German allegory of the Incarnation, known as the ‘Hunting of the Unicorn.’ There are some fine embroideries and tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Bavarian National Museum,[147] in which the burning thorn bush, with the other symbols of the Virgin’s purity, are worked with most careful detail.
The burning bush, not particularly a thorn bush, but the ‘bush’ of our Authorized Version, is now the chosen emblem of the Church of Scotland.
There were neither thorns nor thistles in Eden. It was not till the day when Adam fell that God laid a curse upon the ground: ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ Therefore thorns and thistles are in general the symbols of sin and death. A little German woodcut expresses eternal death with gruesome completeness: a skull, with the apple of damnation between its bare jaws, has round its brow a wreath of twisted thorns.