reverse his sentence, and thus frustrate the great end of his incarnation. Then Pilate saith unto him, speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. Being sensible that you are Cæsar's servant, and accountable to him for your management, I forgive you any injury which, contrary to your inclination, the popular fury constrains you to do unto me. Thou hast thy power from above, from the emperor; for which cause, the Jewish high-priest, who hath delivered me into thy hands, and by pretending that I am Cæsar's enemy, obliged thee to condemn me; or, if thou refusest, will accuse thee as negligent of the emperor's interest; he is more to blame than thou. This sweet and modest answer made such an impression on Pilate, that he went out to the people, and declared his resolution of releasing Jesus, whether they would or no. Finding the governor's determination, they told him, with a threatening air, that by thus releasing one who had endeavoured to excite rebellion, he would shew himself unfaithful to the interests of Cæsar, and therefore give them an opportunity of accusing him at Rome. This argument was weighty, and shook the resolution of Pilate to the ground. He was terrified at the very thought of being accused to Tiberias, who, in matters of government, always suspected the worst, and was ready to punish every default with death. Being thus constrained to yield, he was angry with the priests for agitating the people, and resolved to affront them. He, therefore, brought forth Jesus a second time unto. the pavement, wearing the purple robe and crown of thorns; and, pointing to him, said, Behold your king! either in ridicule of the national expectation, or to shew: how vain the fears were which they pretended to entertain about the emperor's authority in Judes; the person who was the occasion of them being wholly unambitious, aud suffering with the greatest resignation. But they cried out, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, we have no king but Cæsar; thus renouncing their allegiance to God, giving up their hope of the Messiah, excluding themselves from every peculiar claim to divine protection, and bringing down upon their heads those awful judgments which have pursued them from that time to the present.

The unwillingness of the governor to pass sentence upon Jesus has something in it very remarkable, as being totally opposite to his general character. To what then could it be owing, that so wicked a man thus steadily adhered to the cause of justice, and defended Christ with an uncommon bravery, till he was vanquished by the threatenings of the grandees? And when he did vield, taking from our Lord his life, how came he to leave him his innocence? Certainly this can be attributed to no meaner cause than the direction of the providence of God, who intended that, while his Son was condemned and executed as a malefactor, his innocence should be announced in the most public manner, and vindicated by the most authentic evidence.

The governor, having now laid aside all thoughts of saving Jesus, gave him up to the will of his enemies, and commanded the soldiers to prepare for his execution. The soldiers obeyed, and led Jesus away, after they had clothed him in his own garments. It is not said that they took the crown of thorns off his head; probably, he. died wearing it, that the title which was written over him might be the better understood. According to custom, Jesus walked to the place of execution bearing his cross, that is, the transverse beam to which he was to be nailed, the other being at the place already. But the fatigue of the preceding night spent without sleep, the sufferings he had undergone in the garden, his having been hurried from place to place, and obliged to stand the whole time of his trials, the want of food, and loss of blood which he had sus-s Z z

tained, and not his want of courage on this occasion, concurred to make him so faint, that he was not long able to bear his cross. The soldiers, therefore, laid it on one Simon, a native of Cyrene in Egypt, the father of Alexander and Rufus, two noted men among the first Christians at the time Mark wrote his gospel, and forced him to bear it after Jesus. This they did, however, not out of compassion to Jesus, but for fear he had died with fatigue, and by that means have eluded his punish

ment.

As Jesus went along, he was followed by a great crowd, particularly of women, who sighed, shed tears, beat their breasts, and bitterly lamented the severity of his lot. Jesus, who ever felt the woes of others more than he did his own, forgetting his distress at the very time that it lay heaviest upon him, turned about, and, with a benevolence and tenderness truly divine, said to them, daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps that never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the moun➡ tains, fall on us; and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? If the Romans are permitted by heaven to inflict such heavy punishments on me, who am innocent, how dreadful must the vengeance be which they shall inflict on the nation whose sins cry aloud to heaven, hastening the pace of the divine judgments, and rendering the perpetrators as fit for punishment as dry wood is for burning.

And there were also two other malefactors, or rather, "two others, who were malefactors, were" led with him to be put to death. [Mat. xxvii. 33.] And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, the place of a skull, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall, (Mark, they gave him wine mingled with myrrh,) and when he had tasted thereof he would not drink. When Jesus refused the potion, the soldiers, according to custom, stripped him quite naked, and, in that condition, began to fasten him to the tree. But while they were piercing his hands and his feet with the nails, instead of crying out through the acuteness of his pain, he calmly, though fervently, prayed for them, and for all who had any hand in his death, beseeching God to forgive them, and excusing them by the only circumstance that could alleviate their guilt....their ignorance. This was infinite meekness and goodness, truly worthy of God's only begotten Son; an example of forgiveness, which, though it never can be equalled by any, is fit to be imitated by all. Thus was the only begotten Son of God, who came down to save the world, crucified by his own creatures. Hear, O heavens! O earth, earth, earth, hear! The Lord hath nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against him.

As usual, the governor put up a title, or writing, on the cross, signifying the crime for which Jesus was condemned. This writing was in black characters on a whitened board; and in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages, that foreigners, as well as natives, might be able to read it. All the evangelists have given an account of the title; but the words of it are different in each, which may seem strange, considering that it is an inscription they have undertaken to relate, the propriety whereof lieth in the precise words. But the difference may easily have arisen from the languages in which the title was wrote; for one of the evangelists may have transcribed the words of the Greek inscription; a second might translate the Hebrew; a third, the Latin; and a fourth may have given a different translation of the Hebrew or Latin. Thus the inscription of the title they be exactly given by each of the evangelists, though the words they have mentioned be different, especially as they all agree in the meaning of it: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. When the

priests read this title they were exceedingly displeased, because, as it represented the crime for which Jesus was condemned, it insinuated that he had been acknowledged for Messiah. Besides, being placed over the head of one who was dying by the most infamous punishment, it implied, that all who attempted to deliver the Jews should come to the same end. Wherefore, the faith and hope of the nation being thus publicly ridiculed, the priests thought themselves bighly affronted, and came to Pilate in great concern, begging that the writing might be altered. But he would not hear them, having intended the affront, because they had constrained him to crucify Jesus, contrary both to his judgment and inclination,

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, i. e. crected his cross, they divided his garments, and cast lots for the shares. His coat was excepted out of this division, because, being without a seam, they agreed to cast lots for it by itself. The evangelists observe, that all this was done agreeably to antient prophecy, wherein these circumstances of Messiah's sufferings were mentioned to shew that he was to be crucified naked, and consequently that he was to suffer a most ignominious as well as a most painful death. And it was the third hour, and they crucified him; or rather, it was the third hour when they crucified him. The evangelist means that it was the third Jewish hour when the cross was erected, and the clothes divided; for he had mentioned our Lord's being nailed to the cross in the preceding verse. Then were two thieves crucified with him; one on the right hand, and the other on the left. They placed Jesus in the middle by way of mock honour, because he had called himself a king, and was now crowned with thorns: or, if the priests had any hand in this, they might design thereby to impress the spectators the more strongly with the thought of his being an impostor, and to make them look on him as the chief malefactor. This passage is reconciled with Luke xxiii. 33, by supposing that Luke speaks of the nailing of the three to their crosses, whereas, Matthew and Mark speak of the erection of the crosses. [Mark xv. 28.] And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, and he was numbered with the transgressors. In giving the history of our Lord's sufferings, the evangelists make their readers sensible, that all the circumstances of them were fore-ordained of God. Their design was to prevent the offence which might otherwise have been taken at Christ's sufferings.

The common people, whom the priests had incensed against our Lord by the malicious lies which they spread concerning him, and which they pretended to found on the evidence of the witnesses, seeing him hang as a malefactor on the cross, and reading the superscription that was placed over his head, expressed their indignation against him by railing on him. The rulers, having, as they imagined, wholly overturned our Lord's pretensions as Messiah, ridiculed him on that head and, with a meanness of soul which will render them for ever infamous, mocked him while in the agonies of death. They scoffed at the miracles of healing by which he demonstrated himself Messiah, and promised faith, on condition he would prove his pretensions by coming down from the cross. In the mean time, nothing could be more false and hypocritical; for they continued in their unbelief, notwithstanding Jesus raised himself from the dead, which was a much greater miracle than his coming down from the cross would have been; a miracle, also, that was attested by witnesses, whose veracity they could not call in question. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. And the soldiers alse mocked him, coming to him and offering him vinegar, and saying, if thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself. The insult did not lie in the offering our Lord vinegar. for that was the soldiers' common drink when mixed with water; but it lay in what they said to him when they offered it, which shewed that they did him the office, not