OF SPIRITUAL MEDICINE.
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drove the poison from the root. The tree, before barren, was now loaded with fruit.
APPLICATION.
My beloved, the child represents the soul and body of man. The tree is also man; the fruit good works. The serpent, is the devil; and the gardener is God. The branch is the blessed Virgin Mary:—so Isaiah, "A branch shall spring from the root of Jesse." And thus also Virgil, in the second of his Bucolics[1].
"Jam redit et virgo redeunt saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies cœlo dimittitur alto.
Tu modo nascendi[2] puero, quo ferrea primum,
Desinet, et[3] toto surget gens aurea mundo."
- ↑ The reader will be surprised to meet with a quotation from Virgil in this place. It is most probable, from its corruptness, that the passage was not drawn immediately from the poet. But it is remarkable from its similarity to that in Isaiah, from whence perhaps Virgil extracted it. Pope says, "from a Sybilline prophecy on the same subject." See his "Messiah."
- ↑ The true reading is—
"Tu modo nascenti puero, &c.
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Casta fave Lucina."—Ecl. IV. Line 10.
It is nonsense as it stands above; but the edition of 1521, 18mo. has, "tu modo nascenti" - ↑ It should be Ac
