PART III. the beloved disciple into Mary's kindred, making him to be her adopted son, and her to be his mother by fiction of law. Woman, behold thy son; and man, behold thy mother. And from that time forward John took her home to his own house, which he had near Mount Sion, after he had sold his inheritance in Galilee to the high priest. 34 Cels. 1. 2. actis sui Mart. While these things were doing, the whole frame of nature seemed to be dissolved and out of order, while their Lord and Origen.contr. 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 Galls, and Dionysius, while he was yet a heathen; excellent scholars all, great historians and philosophers, who also noted the day of the week and 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. Aut Deus pa titur, aut patienti compatitur: et hac de causa Athenienses erexisse aram αγνώτω Θεω aiunt quidam. 36 * Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. 31. c. 11. Veteres Spongia conglutinant vulnera. Tertul. de Spect. c. 25. Poterit et de misericordia moveri defixus in morsus uncorum, et spongias retiariorum. 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 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 36 Ep. 150, q.8. he said, It is finished, and crying with a loud voice, Father, | PART III. 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. Then was the vail of the temple, which separated the secret Mosaic rites from the eyes of the people, rent in the midst S. Hierom. 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, 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. But because the next day was the Jews' sabbath, and a paschal festival besides, the Jews hastened that the bodies should be taken from the cross, and therefore sent to Pilate to hasten their death by breaking their legs, that before sunset they might be taken away, according to the commandment, and be buried. 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 she once got free from the nails, she kissed and embraced with 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. But she was highly satisfied with her own meditations, that Apud Metaph. die 16 Octob. 37 Philo de Leg. 38 gust. 15. PART III. now that great mystery determined by Divine predestination before the beginning of all ages was fulfilled in her Son; and Metaphr. Au- 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 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 Beda de Locis 2. Niceph. 1. 1, c. 32. 1 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 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 at 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 HE E 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 PART III. 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 interior 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 always prepared his table. And therefore now knowing that his time determined by the Father was nigh, he hastened up to Jerusalem, he went before his disciples, saith St. Mark, and they followed him trembling and amazed; and yet before that even then when his brethren observed he had a design of publication of himself, he suffered them to go before him, and went up as it were in secret. For so we are invited to martyrdom, and suffering in a Christian cause by so great an example: the holy Jesus is gone before us, and it were a holy contention to strive whose zeal was forwardest in the designs of humiliation and self-denial; but it were also well, if in doing ourselves secular advantage, and promoting our worldly interest we should follow him, who was ever more distant from receiving honours than from receiving a painful death. Those affections which dwell in sadness, and are married to grief, and lie at the foot of the cross, and trace the sad steps of Jesus, have the wisdom of recollection, the tempers of sobriety, and are the best imitations of Jesus, and securities against the levity of a dispersed and a vain spirit. This was intimated by many of the disciples of Jesus in the days of the Spirit, and when they had tasted of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come; for then we find many ambitious of martyrdom and that have laid stratagems and designs by unusual deaths to get a crown. The soul of St. Lawrence was so scorched with so ardent desires of dying for his Lord, that he accounted the coals of his gridiron but as a julap or the aspersion of cold water to refresh his soul; they were chill as the Alpine snows in respect of the heats of his diviner flames; and if these lesser stars shine so brightly, and burn so warmly, what heat of love may we suppose to have been in the Sun of Righteousness? If they went fast towards a crown of martyrdom, yet we know that the holy Jesus went before them all; no PART III. wonder that he cometh forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course. 2 When the disciples had overtaken Jesus, he begins to them a sad homily upon the old text of suffering, which he had well nigh for a year together preached upon; but because it was an unpleasing lesson, so contradictory to those interests upon the hopes of which they had entertained themselves, and spent all their desires, they could by no means understand them: for an understanding prepossessed with a fancy or an unhandsome principle construes all other notions to the sense of the first; and whatsoever contradicts it we think it an objection, and that we are bound to answer it. But now that it concerned Christ to speak so plainly, that his disciples by what was to happen within five or six days might not be scandalized, or believe it happened to Jesus without his knowledge and voluntary entertainment, he tells them of his sufferings to be accomplished in this journey to Jerusalem; and here the disciples shewed themselves to be but men, full of passion and indiscreet affection; and the bold Galilean, St. Peter, took the boldness to dehort his Master from so great an infelicity, and met with a reprehension so great, that neither the Scribes, nor the Pharisees, nor Herod himself ever met with its parallel. Jesus called him Satan, meaning, that no greater contradiction can be offered to the designs of God and his holy Son than to dissuade us from suffering; and if we understood how great are the advantages of a suffering condition, we should think all our daggers gilt, and our pavements strewed with roses, and our halters silken, and the rack an instrument of pleasure, and be most impatient of those temptations which seduce us into ease, and divorce us from the cross, as being opposite to our greatest hopes and most perfect desires. But still this humour of St. Peter's imperfection abides amongst us: he that breaks off the yoke of obedience, and unties the bands of discipline, and preaches a cheap religion, and presents heaven in the midst of flowers, and strews carpets softer than the Asian luxury in the way, and sets the songs of Sion to the tunes of Persian and lighter airs, and offers great liberty of living, and bondage under affection and sins, and reconciles eternity with the present enjoyment, he shall have his schools filled with disciples; but he that preaches the cross, and the severities of Christianity, and the strictnesses of a |