order, while their Lord and Creator suffered. For the sun was so darkened, that the stars appeared; and the eclipse was prodigious in the manner as well as in degree, because the moon was not then in conjunction, but full:' and it was noted by Phlegon, the freed man of the emperor Hadrian, by Lucian out of the Acts of the Gauls, and Dionysius, while he was yet a heathen, excellent scholars all, great historians and philosophers; who also noted the day of the week and the hour of the day, agreeing with the circumstances of the cross. For the sun hid his head from beholding such a prodigy of sin and sadness, and provided a veil for the nakedness of Jesus, that the women might be present, and himself die with modesty. 6 35. The eclipse and the passion began at the sixth hour, and endured till the ninth; about which time Jesus, being tormented with the unsufferable load of his Father's wrath due for our sins, and wearied with pains and heaviness, ́ cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' And, as it is thought, repeated the whole two-and-twentieth Psalm, which is an admirable narrative of the passion, full of prayer and sadness, and description of his pains at first, and of eucharist and joy and prophecy at the last. But these first words, which it is certain and recorded that he spake, were in a language of itself, or else by 1 Origen. cont. Cels. lib. ii. Tertul. Apolog. Lucian. in actis sui mart. August. ep. 80, ad Hesychium. Suidas in vita Dionys. ait eum dixisse, Aut Deus patitur, aut patienti compatitur: et hac de causa Athenienses erexisse aram ȧyvory Be, aiunt quidam.—“ Suidas, in the life of Dionysius, says, that he observed, Either God is suffering, or compassionating the sufferer; and that from this the Athenians erected, as is reported, an altar to the unknown God." reason of distance, not understood; for they thought he had called for Elias to take him down from the cross. Then Jesus, being in the agonies of a high fever, said, 'I thirst. And one ran, and filled a sponge with vinegar, wrapping it with hyssop, and put it on a reed, that he might drink.' The vinegar and the sponge were, in executions of condemned persons, set to stop the too violent issues of blood, and to prolong the death; but were exhibited to him in scorn; mingled with gall,' to make the mixture more horrid and ungentle.' But Jesus tasted it only, and refused the draught. And now, knowing that the prophecies were fulfilled, his Father's wrath appeased, and his torments satisfactory, he said, 'It is finished : and crying with a loud voice, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, he bowed his head, and yielded up his spirit' into the hands of God, and died, hastening to his Father's glories. Thus did this glorious Sun set in a sad and clouded west, running speedily to shine in the other world. 36. Then was the veil of the temple, which separated the secret Mosaic rites from the eyes of the people, rent in the midst, from the top to the bottom; and the angels, presidents of the temple, called to each other to depart from their seats; and so great" an earthquake happened, that the rocks did rend, the mountains trembled, the graves opened, and the bodies of dead persons arose, walking from their cemeteries to the holy city, and appeared unto many." And so great apprehensions and amazements happened to them all that stood by, Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxi. c. 11. Tertul. de Spect. c. 25. that they departed, smiting their breasts, with sorrow and fear. And the centurion that ministered at the execution said, ' Certainly this was the Son of God;' and he became a disciple, renouncing his military employment, and died a martyr.' 37. But because the next day was the Jews' sabbath, and a paschal festival besides,' the Jews bastened, that the bodies should be taken from the cross; and therefore sent to Pilate to hasten their death by breaking their legs, that before sun-set they might be taken away, according to the commandment, and be buried.3 The soldiers therefore came, and brake the legs of the two thieves; but espying and wondering that Jesus was already dead, they brake not his legs; for the Scripture foretold, that a bone of him should not be broken. But a soldier with his lance pierced his side, and immediately there streamed out two rivulets of water and blood. But the holy virgin-mother, (whose soul, during this whole passion, was pierced with a sword and sharper sorrows, though she was supported by the comforts of faith, and those holy predictions of his resurrection and future glories, which Mary had laid up in store against this great day of expense,) now that she saw her holy Son had suffered all that our necessities and their malice could require or inflict, caused certain ministers, with whom she joined, to take her dead Son from the cross; whose body, when once she got free from the nails, she kissed and embraced with Apud Metaph. die 16 Octob. Plin. lib. xi. c. 45. Vide Lactant. lib. i. c. 26. Rosc. 3 Philo de leg. special. Deut. xxi. Cic. pro entertainments of the nearest vicinity that could be expressed by a person that was holy and sad, and a mother weeping for her dead son. 38. But she was highly satisfied with her own meditations, that now that great mystery, determined by divine predestination before the beginning of all ages, was fulfilled in her Son; and the passion that must needs be, was accomplished. She therefore first bathes his cold body with her warm tears, and makes clean the surface of the wounds, and delivering a winding-napkin to Joseph of Arimathea, gave to him in charge to enwrap the body and embalm it, to compose it to the grave, and to do it all the rites of funeral; having first exhorted him to a public confession of what he was privately till now.' And he obeyed the counsel of so excellent a person, and ventured upon the displeasure of the Jewish rulers, and 'went confidently to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.' And Pilate gave him the power of it. 39. Joseph therefore takes the body, binds his face with a napkin, washes the body, anoints it with ointment, enwraps it in a composition of myrrh and aloes, and puts it into a new tomb, which he for himself had hewn out of a rock: (it not being lawful among the Jews to inter a condemned person in the common cemeteries :) for all these circumstances were in the Jews' manner of burying. But when the sun was set, the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate, telling him that Jesus, whilst he was living, foretold his own resurrection upon the third day; and lest his disciples should come and steal the body, and say he 'Metaphr. August. 15. was risen from the dead, desired that the sepulchre might be secured against the danger of any such imposture. Pilate gave them leave to do their pleasure, even to the satisfaction of their smallest scruples. They therefore sealed the grave, rolled a great stone to the mouth of it,' and, as an ancient tradition says, bound it about with labels of iron, and set a watch of soldiers, as if they had intended to have made it surer than the decrees of fate, or the never-failing laws of nature.' AD. SECTION XV. Considerations of some preparatory Accidents before the Entrance of Jesus into his Passion. 1. HE that hath observed the story of the life of Jesus, cannot but see it all the way to be strewed with thorns and sharp-pointed stones; and, although by the kisses of his feet they became precious and salutary, yet they procured to him sorrow and disease. It was meat and drink to him to do his Father's will; but it was bread of affliction, and rivers of tears to drink: and for these he thirsted like the earth after the cool stream; for so great was his perfection, so exact the conformity of his will, so absolute the subordination of his inferior faculties to the infinite love of God, which sat regent in the court of his will and understanding, that in this election of accidents he never considered the taste, but the goodness; never distinguished sweet from bitter, but duty and piety Beda de locis sanctis. c. 2. Niceph. lib. i. c. 32. |