d
rather to trust the safety and care of the child to God, than to
depend on his own concealment of him, which he looked upon as a thing
uncertain, and whereby both the child, so privately to be nourished,
and himself should be in imminent danger; but he believed that God would
some way for certain procure the safety of the child, in order to secure
the truth of his own predictions. When they had thus determined, they
made an ark of bulrushes, after the manner of a cradle, and of a bigness
sufficient for an infant to be laid in, without being too straitened:
they then daubed it over with slime, which would naturally keep out the
water from entering between the bulrushes, and put the infant into it,
and setting it afloat upon the river, they left its preservation to God;
so the river received the child, and carried him along. But Miriam,
the child's sister, passed along upon the bank over against him, as her
mother had bid her, to see whither the ark would be carried, where God
demonstrated that human wisdom was nothing, but that the Supreme Being
is able to do whatsoever he pleases: that those who, in order to their
own security, condemn others to destruction, and use great endeavors
about it, fail of their purpose; but that others are in a surprising
manner preserved, and obtain a prosperous condition almost from the very
midst of their calamities; those, I mean, whose dangers arise by the
appointment of God. And, indeed, such a providence was exercised in the
case of this child, as showed the power of God.

5. Thermuthis was the king's daughter. She was now diverting herself by
the banks of the river; and seeing a cradle borne along by the current,
she sent some that could swim, and bid them bring the cradle to her.
When those that were sent on this errand came to her with the cradle,
and she saw the little child, she was greatly in love with it, on
account of its largeness and beauty; for God had taken such great care
in the formation of Moses, that he caused him to be thought worthy of
bringing up, and providing for, by all those that had taken the most
fatal resolutions, on account of the dread of his nativity, for the
destruction of the rest of the Hebrew nation. Thermuthis bid them bring
her a woman that might afford her breast to the child; yet would not the
child admit of her breast, but turned away from it, and did the like to
many other women. Now Miriam was by when this happened, not to appear to
be there on