It hath been doubted, and disputed, and denied too, that this text, 'O my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send', hath any relation to the sending of the Messiah, to the coming of Christ, to Christmas day; yet we forbear not to wait upon the ancient Fathers, and as they said, to say, that Moses 'at last' determines all in this, 'O my Lord', &c. It is a work, next to the great work of the redemption of the whole world, to redeem Israel out of Egypt; and therefore do both works at once, put both into one hand, and 'mitte quem missurus es, Send him whom I know thou wilt send'; him, whom, pursuing thine own decree, 'thou shouldest send'; send Christ, send him now, to redeem Israel from Egypt. This is one of the happier accommodations of the 'gnosis', that is, the science of detecting the mysteries of faith in the simplest texts of the Old Testament history, to the contempt or neglect of the literal and contextual sense. It was, I conceive, in part at least, this 'gnosis', and not knowledge, as our translation has it, that St. Paul warns against, and most wisely, as puffing up, inflating the heart with self-conceit, and the head with idle fancies. Ib. 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.