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On-line at PTW: June 15, 2005
  Last update: January 20, 2013

A Manuscript Fragment:
  C O N C E R N I N G    M O S E S

Francis Lee, M.D.

The Holy Scripture is a wellspring of life and light.     And what St. Paul has said of the essential Word of God may be said also of his written word, viz., that all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God are therein included.    The first of the books of Scripture is Genesis; and the author who has written it is MOSES.

If we consider the person of this holy man of God, we shall find nothing in him but what is great and extraordinary.    He was educated as the adopted son of a princess, who had a design of rendering him worthy to be king;  and he was instructed in all the [deep divine and natural wisdom, and ] sciences of the sages of Egypt, whose reputation was then famous among the learned.

If we have regard to antiquity, he was without comparison — more ancient than all those authors so illustrious in the world, who have acquired for Greece the name of the mother of science and arts.    For he was near five hundred years before Homer, eight hundred years before the philosopher Thales, who was the first that treated of Nature;  nine hundred years before Pythagoras, and more than eleven hundred years before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who were as the chiefs and masters of all the wisdom of the Greeks.

If we consider what appears of greatness in his writings, and in the whole course of his life, we shall find that without having been able to borrow any light from all profane antiquity, or reap any assistance from it, as having flourished before it in the world with great lustre, he was at the same time an orator, a poet, a historian, a philosopher, a lawgiver, a divine, a prophet;  more than a prophet;   more than sovereign pontiff, for as much as he consecrated the high priest;   the minister of God, with whom he treated as one friend treats with another;   the leader of his people;  lastly, to say all in a word, the master and arbiter of nature, the interpreter of heaven, the vanquisher of kings, the God of Pharoah.

All these qualifications, both human and divine, were collected and united in MOSES, to the end he might possess an authority to which none should be obliged to pay the same deference, as to that of God himself.

The Scripture says of him, that he was mighty in deed and in word.    His deeds were his miracles by which . . . {end of fragment}

Note from Pass the WORD:The manuscript fragment above appeared in Notes & Materials for an Adequate Biography of William Law, p.520; by Christopher Walton, London, 1854.  Immediately following the fragment, Walton commented...

   “Here we may likewise remark, what holy sanctuaries of recondite wisdom, solid learning and patriarchal holiness were undoubted the colleges of Egypt where Moses was educated;  notwithstanding such a description of them may be as liable to exceptions as if applied to the most eminent sanctuaries of Christian piety and erudition, even the Society of Jesus, or yet more recent institutes.    The writings of Moses, one of their initiates, are perhaps the only documents extant which may afford to us any direct intimations of the intellectual and moral grandeur of the priests of the Most High (I-AM), and sons of heavenly Wisdom, in those times.”

  

End of:  'Concerning Moses'

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