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Considerations upon the Crucifixion of the holy Jesus.

1. WHEN the sentence of death pronounced against the Lord was to be put in execution, the soldiers pulled off the robe of mockery, the scarlet mantle which in jest they put upon him, and put on his own garments. But, as Origen observes, the evangelist mentioned not that they took off the crown of thorns: what might serve their interest they pursue, but nothing of remission or mercy to the afflicted Son of man. But so it became the King of sufferings, not to lay aside his imperial thorns, till they were changed into diadems of glory. But now Abel is led forth by his brother to be slain. A gay spectacle to satisfy impious eyes, who would not stay behind, but attended and waited upon the hangman to see the catastrophe of this bloody tragedy. But when piety looks on, she beholds a glorious mystery.' Sin laughed to see the King of heaven and earth, and the great lover of souls, instead of the scepter of his kingdom, to bear a tree of cursing and shame. But piety wept tears of pity, and knew they would melt into joy, when she should behold that cross, which loaded the shoulders of her Lord, afterward sit upon the scepters, and be engraved and signed upon the foreheads of kings.

2. It cannot be thought but the ministers of Jewish malice used all the circumstances of affliction, which in any case were accustomed towards malefactors and persons to be crucified; and therefore it was, that in some old figures we see our

1 S. Aug. Tract. 119, in Joan.

blessed Lord described with a table, appendant to the fringe of his garment, set full of nails and pointed iron; for so sometimes they afflicted persons condemned to that kind of death. And St. Cyprian affirms that Christ did stick to the wood that he carried, being galled with the iron at his heels, and nailed even before his crucifixion.' But this and the other accidents of his journey and their malice so crushed his wounded, tender, and virginal body, that they were forced to lay the load upon a Cyrenian, fearing that he should die with less shame and smart than they intended him. But so he was pleased to take man unto his aid, not only to represent his own need and the dolorousness of his passion, but to consign the duty unto man, that we must enter into a fellowship of Christ's sufferings, taking up the cross of martyrdom when God requires us, enduring affronts, being patient under affliction, loving them that hate us, and being benefactors to our enemies, abstaining from sensual and intemperate delight, forbidding to ourselves lawful festivities and recreations of our weariness, when we have an end of the spirit to serve upon the ruins of the body's strength, mortifying our desires, breaking our own will, not seeking ourselves, being entirely resigned to God. These are the cross, and the nails, and the spear, and the whip, and all the instruments of a Christian's passion. And we may consider, that every man in this world shall in some sense or other bear a cross, few men escape it, and it is not well with them that do; but they only bear it well that follow Christ, and tread in his steps, and bear it for his sake, and

1 S. Cypr. de Pass.

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walk as he walked; and he that follows his own desires, when he meets with a cross there, (as it is certain enough he will,) bears the cross of his concupiscence, and that hath no fellowship with the cross of Christ. By the precept of bearing the cross we are not tied to pull evil upon ourselves, that we may imitate our Lord in nothing but in being afflicted; or to personate the punitive exercises of mortification and severe abstinences which were eminent in some saints, and to which they had special assistances, as others had the gift of chastity, and for which they had special reason, and, as they apprehended, some great necessities: but it is required that we bear our own cross; so said our dearest Lord. For when the cross of Christ is laid upon us, and we are called to martyrdom, then it is our own, because God made it to be our portion: and when, by the necessities of our spirit, and the rebellion of our body, we need exterior mortifications and acts of selfdenial, then also it is our own cross, because our needs have made it so: and so it is when God sends us sickness or any other calamity, whatever is either an effect of our ghostly needs, or the condition of our temporal estate, it calls for our sufferance, and patience, and equanimity. For 'therefore Christ hath suffered for us,' saith St. Peter, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps," who bore his cross as long as he could; and when he could no longer, he murmured not, but sank under it: and then he was content to receive such aid, not which he chose himself, but such as was assigned him.

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Matt. xvi. 24.

21 Pet. ii. 21.

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3. Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem, that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale, even for all the world.' And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary;-a place difficult in the ascent, eminent and apt for the publication of shame, a hill of death and dead bones, polluted and impure;—and there beheld him stripped naked who clothes the fields with flowers, and all the world with robes, and the whole globe with the canopy of heaven; and so dressed, that now every circumstance was a triumph. By his disgrace he trampled upon our pride; by his poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our covetousness and love of riches; and by his pains chastised the delicacies of our flesh, and broke in pieces the fetters of concupiscence. For as soon as Adam was clothed, he quitted Paradise; and Jesus was made naked, that he might bring us in again. And we also must be despoiled of all our exterior adherences; that we may pass through the regions of duty and divine love to a society of blessed spirits, and a clarified, immortal, and beatified estate.

4. There they nailed Jesus with four nails, fixed his cross in the ground, which with its fall into the place of its station gave infinite torture by so violent a concussion of the body of our Lord, which rested upon nothing but four great wounds; where he was designed to suffer a long and lingering torment. 3 For crucifixion, as it was an exquisite pain, sharp and passionate, so it was not of quick effect towards taking away the life. St. Andrew

'Heb. xiii. 13. 2 Athanas. de Pass. et Cruce Domini. κεῖθι φονῆες Εἰς δόρυ τετράπλευρον.— Nonn,

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was two whole days upon the cross; and some martyrs have upon the cross been rather starved, and devoured with birds, than killed with the proper torment of the tree. But Jesus took all his passion with a voluntary susception, God heightening it to great degrees of torment supernaturally; and he laid down his life voluntarily, when his Father's wrath was totally appeased towards mankind.

5. Some have fancied, that Christ was pleased to take something from every condition of which man ever was or shall be possessed; taking immunity from sin from Adam's state of innocence, punishment and misery from the state of Adam fallen, the fulness of grace from the state of renovation, and perfect contemplation of the divinity and beatific joys from the state of comprehension and the blessedness of heaven: meaning, that the humanity of our blessed Saviour did, in the sharpest agony of his passion, behold the face of God, and communicate in glory. But I consider that, although the two natures of Christ were knit by a mysterious union into one person, yet the natures still retain their incommunicable properties. Christ, as God, is not subject to sufferings, as a man he is the subject of miseries; as God he is eternal, as man, mortal and commensurable by time; as God, the supreme lawgiver, as man, most humble and obedient to the law; and therefore that the human nature was united to the divine, it does not infer that it must in all instances partake of the divine felicities, which in God are essential, to man communicated without necessity, and by an arbitrary dispensation. Add to this, that some virtues and excellencies were in the soul of Christ which could not consist with the state of glorified

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