Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel
himself. There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous
than the death of Christ. It is true, _libere egit_, he died
voluntarily; but yet when we consider the contract that had passed
between his Father and him, there was an _oportuit_, a kind of necessity
upon him: all this _Christ ought to suffer_. And when shall we date this
obligation, this _oportuit_, this necessity? When shall we say that
began? Certainly this decree by which Christ was to suffer all this was
an eternal decree, and was there any thing before that that was eternal?
Infinite love, eternal love; be pleased to follow this home, and to
consider it seriously, that what liberty soever we can conceive in
Christ to die or not to die; this necessity of dying, this decree is as
eternal as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this
necessity and this dying? His Father calls it but a bruise, and but a
bruising of his heel[378] (the serpent shall bruise his heel), and yet
that was, that the serpent should practise and compass his death.
Himself calls it but a baptism, as though he were to be the better for
it. I _have a baptism to be baptised with_,[379] and he was in pain till
it was accomplished, and yet this baptism was his death. The Holy Ghost
calls it joy (_for the joy which was set before him he endured the
cross_),[380] which was not a joy of his reward after his passion, but a
joy that filled him even in the midst of his torments, and arose from
him; when Christ calls his _calicem_ a cup, and no worse (_Can ye drink
of my cup_)[381], he speaks not odiously, not with detestation of it.
Indeed it was a cup, _salus mundo_, a health to all the world. And _quid
retribuam_, says David, _What shall I render to the Lord?_[382] Answer
you with David, _Accipiam calicem, I will take the cup of salvation_;
take it, that cup is salvation, his passion, if not into your present
imitation, yet into your present contemplation. And behold how that Lord
that was God, yet could die, would die, must die for our salvation. That
Moses and Elias talked with Christ in the transfiguration, both Saint
Matthew and Saint Mark[383] tells us, but what they talked of, only
Saint Luke; _Dicebant excessum ejus_, says he, _They talked of his
disease, of his death, which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem_.[384]
The word is of his _exodus_, the very word of our text, _exitus_, his
_issue by death_. Moses, who in his exodus had prefigured this issue of
our Lord, and in passing Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, had
foretold in that actual prophecy, Christ passing of mankind through the
sea of his blood; and Elias, whose exodus and issue of this world was a
figure of Christ's ascension; had no doubt a great satisfaction in
talking with our blessed Lord, _de excessu ejus_, of the full
consummation of all this in his death, which was to be accomplished at
Jerusalem. Our meditation of his death should be more visceral, and
affect us more, because it is of a thing already done. The ancient
Romans had a certain tenderness and detestation of the name of death;
they could not name death, no, not in their wills; there they could not
say, _Si mori contigerit_, but _si quid humanitas contingat_, not if or
when I die, but when the course of nature is accomplished upon me. To us
that speak daily of the death of Christ (he was crucified, dead, and
buried), can the memory or the mention of our own death be irksome or
bitter? There are in these latter times amongst us that name death
freely enough, and the death of God, but in blasphemous oaths and
execrations. Miserable men, who shall therefore be said never to have
named Jesus, because they have named him too often; and therefore hear
Jesus say, _Nescivi vos, I never knew you_, because they made themselves
too familiar with him. Moses and Elias talked with Christ of his death
only in a holy and joyful sense, of the benefit which they and all the
world were to receive by that. Discourses of religion should not be out
of curiosity, but to edification. And then they talked with Christ of
his death at that time when he was in the greatest height of glory, that
ever he admitted in this world, that is, his transfiguration. And we are
afraid to speak to the great men of this world of their death, but
nourish in them a vain imagination of immortality and immutability. But
_bonum est nobis esse hic_ (as Saint Peter said there), _It is good to
dwell here_, in this consideration of his death, and therefore transfer
we our tabernacle (our devotions) through some of those steps which God
the Lord made to his _issue of death_ that day. Take in the whole day
from the hour that Christ received the passover upon Thursday unto the
hour in which he died the next day. Make this present day that day in
thy devotion, and consider what he did, and remember what you have done.
Before he instituted and celebrated the sacrament (which was after the
eating of the passover), he proceeded to that act of humility, to wash
his disciples' feet, even Peter's, who for a while resisted him. In thy
preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament, hast thou with a sincere
humility sought a reconciliation with all the world, even with those
that have been averse from it, and refused that reconciliation from
thee? If so, and not else, thou hast spent that first part of his last
day in a conformity with him. After the sacrament he spent the time till
night in prayer, in preaching, in psalms: hast thou considered that a
worthy receiving of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness
after, as well as in a preparation before? If so, thou hast therein also
conformed thyself to him; so Christ spent his time till night. At night
he went into the garden to pray, and he prayed prolixious, he spent much
time in prayer, how much? Because it is literally expressed, that he
prayed there three several times,[385] and that returning to his
disciples after his first prayer, and finding them asleep, said, _Could
ye not watch with me one hour_,[386] it is collected that he spent three
hours in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentest, or how
thou disposedst of thyself, when it grew dark and after last night. If
that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thyself to God, and a
submission of thy will to his, it was spent in a conformity to him. In
that time, and in those prayers, was his agony and bloody sweat. I will
hope that thou didst pray; but not every ordinary and customary prayer,
but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively
in a readiness to shed blood for his glory in necessary cases, puts thee
into a conformity with him. About midnight he was taken and bound with a
kiss, art thou not too conformable to him in that? Is not that too
literally, too exactly thy case, at midnight to have been taken and
bound with a kiss? From thence he was carried back to Jerusalem, first
to Annas, then to Caiaphas, and (as late as it was) then he was examined
and buffeted, and delivered over to the custody of those officers from
whom he received all those irrisions, and violences, the covering of his
face, the spitting upon his face, the blasphemies of words, and the
smartness of blows, which that gospel mentions: in which compass fell
that gallicinium, that crowing of the cock which called up Peter to his
repentance. How thou passedst all that time thou knowest. If thou didst
any thing that needest Peter's tears, and hast not shed them, let me be
thy cock, do it now. Now, thy Master (in the unworthiest of his
servants) looks back upon thee, do it now. Betimes, in the morning, so
soon as it was day, the Jews held a council in the high priest's hall,
and agreed upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to
Pilate, who was to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou
wakedst this morning, and wast thou content even with false accusations,
that is, rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not,
than to smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spentest
that hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no evidence against him,
and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment upon Herod,
tetrarch of Galilee, who was at that time at Jerusalem (because Christ,
being a Galilean, was of Herod's jurisdiction), Pilate sent him to
Herod, and rather as a madman than a malefactor; Herod remanded him
(with scorn) to Pilate, to proceed against him; and this was about eight
of the clock. Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition, this
examination, this agitation, this cribration, this pursuit of thy
conscience; to sift it, to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy
present sins, from the sins of thy bed to the sins of thy board, and
from the substance to the circumstance of thy sins? That is time spent
like thy Saviour's. Pilate would have saved Christ, by using the
privilege of the day in his behalf, because that day one prisoner was to
be delivered, but they choose Barabbas; he would have saved him from
death, by satisfying their fury with inflicting other torments upon him,
scourging and crowning with thorns, and loading him with many scornful
and ignominious contumelies; but they regarded him not, they pressed a
crucifying. Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin, by fasting, by alms,
by disciplines and mortifications, in way of satisfaction to the justice
of God? That will not serve, that is not the right way; we press an
utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee: and that conforms thee
to Christ. Towards noon Pilate gave judgment, and they made such haste
to execution as that by noon he was upon the cross. There now hangs that
sacred body upon the cross, rebaptized in his own tears, and sweat, and
embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those bowels of compassion
which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them
through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their sight,
so as the sun, ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too.
And then that Son of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a
new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soul (which was
never out of his Father's hands) by a _new way_, a voluntary emission of
it into his Father's hands; for though _to this God our Lord belonged
these issues of death_, so that considered in his own contract, he must
necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery which they had made upon
his sacred body issued his soul; but _emisit_, he gave up the ghost; and
as God breathed a soul into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed
his soul into God, into the hands of God.
There we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that
hangs upon the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his
wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a
resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom which He hath prepared
for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:
[347] Psalm cxv. 6.
[348] Psalm cxxxix. 6.
[349] Psalm cxviii. 23.
[350] Psalm c. 3.
[351] Isaiah, xxxvii. 3.
[352] Rom. vii. 24.
[353] Gen. vi. 14.
[354] Gen. iv. 1.
[355] John, xiv. 2.
[356] Matt. viii. 20.
[357] Heb. xiii. 14.
[358] Exod. xvii. 1.
[359] Gen. xlvii. 9.
[360] 2 Cor. v. 6.
[361] Job, x. 18, 19.
[362] Exod. xvi. 3.
[363] 1 Kings, xix. 4.
[364] Jonah, iv. 3.
[365] Rev. i. 18.
[366] 1 Cor. xv. 33.
[367] Acts, ii. 31; xiii. 35.
[368] Ver. 10.
[369] Job, xxiv. 20.
[370] Job, xxi. 23, 25, 26.
[371] Isaiah, xiv. 11.
[372] Heb. xi.
[373] De Civitate Dei, lib. xvii.
[374] Matt. i. 21.
[375] Luke, xxiv. 26.
[376] Cant. viii. 6.
[377] _Ibid._ 7.
[378] Gen. iii. 15.
[379] Luke, xii. 50.
[380] Heb. xii. 2.
[381] Matt. xx. 22.
[382] Psalm cxvi. 12.