took the blood, which Pilate seemed to wash off "upon themselves and their children," and the blood of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead, and marked them, not to escape, but to fall under the sword of the destroying angel, and they perished either by a more hasty death, or, shortly after, in the extirpation and miserable ruin of their nation. And Pilate, who had a less share in the crime, yet had a black character of a secular judgment; for, not long after, he was, by Vitellius, the president of Syria, sent to Rome, to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews, whom to please he had done so much violence to his conscience; and, by Cæsar's sentence, he was banished to Vienna, deprived of all his honors, where he lived ingloriously, till, by impatience of his calamity, he killed himself with his own hand. And thus the blood of Jesus, shed for the salvation of the world, became to them a curse; and that which purifies the saints stuck to them that shed it, and mingled it not with the tears of repentance, to be a leprosy lothesome and incurable. So manna turns to worms, and the wines of angels to vinegar and lees, when it is received into impure vessels, or tasted by wanton palates; and the sun himself produces rats and serpents, when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus.

The Prayer.

O holy and immaculate Lamb of God, who wert pleased to suffer shame and sorrow, to be brought before tribunals, to be accused maliciously, betrayed treacherously, condemned unjustly, and scourged most rudely, suffering the most severe and most unhandsome afflictions which could be procured by potent, subtle, and extremest malice, and didst choose this out of love greater than the love of mothers, more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropped from the eyes of most passionate

women, by these fontinels of blood issuing forth life, and health, and pardon upon all thine enemies; teach me to apprehend the baseness of sin, in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to suffer, that I may hate the cause of thy sufferings, and adore thy mer cy, and imitate thy charity, and copy out thy pa tience and humility, and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections. Lord, what am I, that the eternal Son of God should suffer one stripe for me? But thy love is infinite: and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy, and despise so miraculous a goodness, and to do fresh despite to the Son of God! But our sins are innumerable, and our infirmities are mighty. Dearest Jesu, pity me, for I am accused by my own conscience, and am found guilty; I am stripped naked of my innocence, and bound fast by lust, and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged appetites. But let thy innocence excuse me, the robes of thy righteousness clothe me, thy bondage set me free, and thy stripes heal me; that thou being my Advocate, my Physician, my Patron, and my Lord, I may be adopted into the union of thy merits, and partake of the efficacy of thy sufferings, and be crowned as thou art, having my sins changed to virtues, and my thorns to rays of glory under thee, our Head, in the participations of eternity, O holy and immaculate Lamb of God. Amen.

SECTION XVI.

Considerations upon the Crucifixion of the Holy

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 sceptre 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 sceptres, and be engraved and signed upon the foreheads of kings.

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It cannot be thought but the ministers of Jewish malice used all the circumstances of affliction, which, any case, were accustomed towards malefactors and persons to be crucified, and therefore it was that in some old figures we see our blessed Lord described with a table appendent 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 pain 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 af fronts, 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 walk as he walked; and he that follows his own desires, when he meets with a cross there, (as it is certain 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 abstinencies, 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 self-denial, 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.

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 field 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