E.
But as a thoughtful man, a pensive, a considerative man, that stands still for a while with his eyes fixed upon the ground before his feet, when he casts up his head, hath presently, instantly the sun or the heavens for his object; he sees not a tree, nor a house, nor a steeple by the way, but as soon as his eye is departed from the earth where it was long fixed, the next thing he sees is the sun or the heavens; — so when Moses had fixed himself long upon the consideration of his own insufficiency for this service, when he took his eye from that low piece of ground, himself, considered as he was then, he fell upon no tree, no house, no steeple, no such consideration as this — God may endow me, improve me, exalt me, enable me, qualify me with faculties fit for this service, but his first object was that which presented an infallibility with it, Christ Jesus himself, the Messias himself, &c.
Beautifully imagined, and happily applied.
Ib.
p. 40. B.
That germen Jehovæ, as the prophet Esay calls Christ, that offspring of Jehova, that bud, that blossom, that fruit of God himself, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Redeemer, Christ Jesus, grows upon every tree in this paradise, the Scripture; for Christ was the occasion before, and is the consummation after, of all Scripture.
If this were meant to the exclusion or neglect of the primary sense, — if we are required to believe that the sacred writers themselves had such thoughts present to their minds, — it would, doubtless, throw the doors wide open to every variety of folly and fanaticism. But it may admit of a safe, sound, and profitable use, if we consider the Bible as one work, intended by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the Church in all ages, and having, as such, all its parts synoptically interpreted, the eldest by the latest, the last by the first, and the middle by both. Moses, or David, or Jeremiah (we might in this view affirm) meant so and so, according to the context, and the light under which, and the immediate or proximate purposes for which, he wrote: but we, who command the whole scheme of the great dispensation, may see a higher and deeper sense, of which the literal meaning was a symbol or type; and this we may justifiably call the sense of the spirit.
Ib.
p. 41. B.
So in our liturgy we stand up at the profession of the creed thereby to declare to God and his Church our readiness to stand to, and our readiness to proceed in, that profession.