they bemoaned so only thus much shee might perceive his face whosoe're he was was so defaced with bloud as a cleerer and lesse clouded eye than hers might well be excused it s not reading the contents of it untill at length one of that sorrowfull company giving first a heave or two like one oppressed under some ponderous waight to raise her words above her woes burst forth into this short exclamation O Iesu Iesu and said no more At this shee strait great with suspition as sorrow is ever pregnant of suspect to be delivered of it like those who seeke what willingly they would not find and but hunt their owne feares with curiositie demanded of another who it was they lamented so When she surveying her with a wondring eye And are you alone said shee so much stranger not only to Hierusalem but to the world to be ignorant who they have crucified here Can you feele the earth-quake under you and not know it is for his suffering who made the earth Can you behold the Heavens the Sun and Moone lost in Cimerian darknesse and not perceive hee who enlightned them is here ecclips'd Looke upon yonder rock it cleft senslesse as it is that instant as hee died and what a heart have you then not to bee so much as sensible of his death But I forget my selfe and whilst I seeke to find you out a griefe by invasion of speech have almost lost mine owne wherefore let me tell you in a word and then make good my silence It is Iesus of Nazareth they have crucified here At hearing of which it was no griefe no passion of the living that ceazed her but such a stupiditie as death could not have rendred her more immovable for the time so true it is Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent Senec. Untill at last as if but then the floud-gates of her tears were drawen up they gushed forth in such abundance as if each drop had stroven to fall first to the ground In so much as had you beheld Niobe weeping her childrens losse you had seene an image but an image only of her weeping him and yet in this excesse of teares and griefe as if she had beene all defective to exstimulate her heart the more to grieve and excitate affection to weep the more In a sad and mournfull accent shee delivered this To excitate the affection Am I a Christian then or no I can behold Christ suffering so And feele no woe Though none yet soft humanitie Shou'd make one man commiserate When he beholds another die Such interest hath he in the State So verie Iufidels we see Are not from pitie free Then am I man or am I none That can consider him as one And make no moane Yet were I none the Sun the Moone And such as but his creatures are Would cause me feele his suffrings soone Vnlesse I were more senslesse far More dull than verie rocks and stones That now burst forth in groanes Am I a creature then or not That my Creators so hard lot Should be forgot For sure I 'm none but nothing I Can let yet let not one teare fall Both God and man and Maker dye As I were not concern'd withall Nothing 'mongst Christians Creatures men Am I or worser then Oh me the whilst worthy of deepest hell If I without a teare can see dim dye More Infidell than Infidell More stone than stones les man the man am I. Having done this shee began to weep againe then shreek as if her soule would with her voyce have sallyed forth accompanying her lamentations now with wringing her hands now tearing her haire Architect Sorrow never contriving building where was more varietie of sad prospective untill at last Eccho being sooner wearied with repeating her plaints than she with uttering them to give it ease a while though not her selfe shee set her silent thoughts to task with the account of what her deerly Beloved had done suffered for her summing up everie particular most exact and carefully as it was delivered her in Inventory by one was present there As first and in generall how voluntarily hee offered himselfe to sufferance for us Oblatus est quia ipse voluit Isa. 53. Even to the pointing out himselfe unto them who came to apprehend him with an Ego sum Whence said shee wee may collect If we would be reciprocall there is a kind of will and forwardnesse requisite on our parts in suffering for him againe Next and in particular what sufferings they were he offered himselfe unto As how not one part alone but all even from head to foot everie sense of him and the whole exterior and interior man was even surfetted as it were with the bread of dolour and affliction Saturabitur opprobriis c. His head crowned with thornes and those such rigid and sharp-pointed ones as the very skin of it was wholly separated from the skull whilst those cruell Pioners digged all his blood out of that precious Mine His face livid and swolne with the unmercifull souldiers heavy Iron Gantlets bruizing and buffeting it His shoulders gall'd with supporting his heavy Crosse which Oh with what excessive paine hee did whilst they all raw before with their scourging were in that dolorous prease even squeezed as it weare to a flat cake of congealed blood and gore Then to have his armes violently wracked out whilest they nayled his hands unto the Crosse What a torment that For the nayles entring the most sinuous parts of them and they shrinking as things naturally do at sence of paine the fleshy which were nayled to 't and could not recoyl nor give must of necessity be violently divulsed from them As for his scourged body it was all torne and mangled with their bloody whips Wherefore at one glance of the eye to passe it over as too pitious a spectacle long to be look'd upon come to his boared feet How those huge boystrous Nayles must needs have torne riven them whilst his dying body hung swayed upon them with all its weight is not without horrour and cold sweat to be imagined Mean while what vying was there betwixt his hands feet which should indure most pain and torment all at his cost God knowes What tossing and retossing of his dolorous life with suffering betwixt them Now this taking it at rebound now that till lighting in death's hazzard the sport ended A cruell sport the while Then for his Senses how were they all tormented in him and he in all of them His eyes in seeing-nothing but what disconsolated and afflicted him either his Enemies rejoycing at his suffering which commonly as much agravates as pity aleviates the paine o' th' sufferer or else his friends those few poore friends he had so extreamly grieving at it as even derived from them a fresh grief to him again and forced him the comforted to become their their Comforter Filiae Hierusalem nolite flere super me c. Luk. 23.
28. His ears played upon from every side with whole volleyes of fearfull blasphemies as alios salvos fecit seipsum non potest salvum facere He could save others and cannot save himselfe Matth. 27. 42. Or else with such bitter scornes and taunts as these Si Rex Israel est descendat de cruce c. Let him now descend from the Crosse if he be the King of Israel Ibid. which to a man sensible of his honour had been most grievous but to a God most intolerable unlesse perhaps he were enamoured of griefe as sure he was that day even to Espouse it on the Crosse and take denomination from thence of vir dolorum the very husband of it as Esaias had prophecyed of him long before For his smelling I will not offend the nice delicate with commemorating the abhominable stench of those filthy and loathsome Crachets the very Entrails of the Jewes malice hung clottering in his face that face in quem desiderant Angeli prospicere Which so much delighted the Angels to behold of which then they might well say indeed vidimus eum non erat ei species neque decor that they had seen it and there was neither feature nor beauty in it For his taste to have nothing administred it to sweeten the bitternesse of death but Gall and Vinegar When for other Malefactors most pleasant wines were allowed provided at the publike cost O it was cruell barbarous cruell that But he foresaw it necessary for us whilst we live here where the wheele of affliction with variety of new suffering every day fetches its turne about us to have for Imitation his great Example of patiently suffering all For his feeling we have spoken of that before if it were not altogether unspeakeable what he felt But alas all this of the exterior compared to his Interior suffrings is but as a single drop of water to the whole Ocean or the Center-point of Earth unto the vast circumference of Heaven for the soule as an instrument strung with finer strings than the body is of more delicate resentment more sensible of everie little touch And how rudely did they play upon it Hee could not speake to them though nothing but sugar and honey like the Bridegroome in the Canticles but in churlish and bitter speech they repartyed againe If in soft and silken phrase he question'd them either in pure disdaine and spight they not vouchsaf'd him answer So Si interrogavero non respondebitis mihi c. Luk. 22. Or else it was in words as hard as Semai's to David were everie one accompanied with a stone so crosse so contrarie were they in words unto him But in action it goes a thought beyond imagination how contrarie they were putting sinister interpretation still to disguise the right meaning on whatsoever he did If he cured their sick it was to breake their Sabbaoth if he cast their Devils out it was in the name of Beelzebub They held him for Libertine if hee eat or drunk with them if not for Samaritan so well hee might say of them Cecinimus vobis non saltâstis lamentavimus non planxistis c. Mat. 11. but they went further yet Pericles could say of the Samians not content with courtesies they received from those of Athens that they were Infantibus similes qui cibum non nisi illachrymando admittebant c. Plutarch Like children who whilst they were benefited cryed But what should one say of these Never men borne in the disgrace of better Nature had such antipathy with their best good as they For marke how this perverse wicked and viperous generation out-doing spight it selfe requited him for love with hatred for good with ill and for honouring them with dishonouring him againe And first of their hatreds to him let this be sufficient argument that they could not so much as endure his sight and when wee once withdraw our eyes from any one 't is signe we have withdrawne our affection before but whilst he projected such right and full beames of love on them as even reflected them to his very hart the sons of Iacob never with more oblique auerted eyes beheld their brother Ioseph than they did him Now if as they say the chiefest attraction of love bee love and he holds no commercewith humanitie who will nor give nor take affection What should one think or say of this malignitie But for more ample declaration of their inhumanitie to him wee are to note how that hate and aversion from a thing which the more civill creature doth expresse by simple flight and avoydance the more savage and effeâ—ate doth by violent assault So Naturalists observe in the wild Bull such hatred and nocivenesse to man as but object unto it the picture of one and presently with horne hoofe it furiously sets upon it And mark now if they did not the like by him when Pilat proposing him unto them with an Ecce homo Behold the man they stantly bellowed out Crucifige crucifige eum Let him be crucified so as hee might well say of them Tauri pingues obsiderunt me that hee was encompassed with Bulls on everie side But the proofe of love consisting in action Probatio enim amoris exhibitio est operis c. Greg. Let us from thence behold his love to them as their hatreds to him againe and so consider how they rewarded him for good with ill You know wee have compassion for none but those wee have passion for and where the soyle is hate there pitie never growes Now what compassion had he for them Miserior super turbam c. and that not only in words but in effect multiplying bread for the hungrie and for the thirstie for those who were necessitous hee as we may say turned stones into water for the delicious hee turned water into wine sweetly violencing all natures but theirs the while for their sick he restored them unto health their dead unto life againe To say nothing of his spirituall benefits since they were of nature so carnall they had scarce a capacitie of them and how did they requite him Audite coeli obstupescite So little compassion had they of him as when he came to die at what time others hate leaves the condemned to pitie these pursue him farther than ever any 's did within the limits of humanitie not only to death but even after it when Unus militum lancea latus ejus aperuit et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua One of the Souldiers pierced his side with a lance and presently there streamed forth bloud and water A barbarisme and inhumanitie no water could expiate enough but that which then issued from his sacred side no fire but of that charitie which made him then shed his last drop of bloud But to proceed for his food they repayed him with the bread of dolour panem doloris c. and for his drink with gall and vinegar Their
these are but rags of patience the poor and wretched soule puts on whilst the gallant and richer scornes to weare such piec'd-up stuffe this is for those who never endevour to limb and pourtraiture in the table of their hearts any brave and noble piece because they never take patterne by any but base and ignoble ones Inspice fac secundum exemplar quod tibi in monte monstratum c. Did they but consider our Saviours sufferings their own would shrink to nothing in comparison Which whilst she considered it made her so brave in purpose and resolution as even death it selfe would have appeared lovely and amiable to her which now since hee died for us to those who truly love him even seemes to have exchanged darts with love indeed As thus they fable it Love and death o' th' way once meeting Having past a friendly greeting Sleep their wearie eye-lids closing Laid 'em downe themselves reposing Love whom divers cares molested Could not sleep but whilst death rested All in haste away he posts him But his haste full deerly costs him For it chanc'd that going to sleeping Both had given their darts in keeping Vnto Night who Errors mother Blindly knowing not one from t'other Gave Love deaths and ne're perceiv'd it Whilst as blindly Love receiv'd it Since wch time their darts confounding Love now kils in stead of wounding Death a joy in hearts distilling Sweetly wounds in stead of killing And thus in various cogitation she wandred about Mount Calvary affording a large and ample field for her devotion to exspaciate in her pious thought still going in circle from her Beloved unto her selfe and from her selfe to him againe untill at last it was suddenly surprized by the unexpected arivall of some new-commers there who tending directly towards the crosse made her feare some ill intention in it till espying Ioseph of Aramathea a principall amongst them she assured her feares there was nothing but good intended as indeed their comming onely was to take downe the body from the Crosse and bury it To which every one lending a ready and pious hand it had soone beene done had not this impediment occurred in the doing it that their griefes for his death rendred them so nigh dead themselves as they scarcely could performe the offices of the living and those who swouned not for love of him would swoune for verie sorrow they loved him not enough confirming what they report with admiration of the effects of divine love O heavenly darts Of love unto heaven loving harts Whether ye wound or spare How equally yee mortall are For if yee wound them presently They with the sweetnesse dye And if yee spare 'em then With bitternesse they dye agen O sacred flame To hearts once melted in the same Whether or no yee burne How both to their destruction turne For if yee burne they presently In flames consume and dye If not in teares they then Consume and dye agen So as like two wayes that run Their severall course then joyne in one And whilst diversly they tend One and the same is still their end So both equally destroy Be it sorrow be it joy Or in water or in flame The end of both is still the same Neither is it to be so much admired they thus could dye as it were for him but the greatest wonder is that they could live now hee was dead who was their very life hee who had so many attractive sweets in him as drew all to him but such who like Scarrebs delighted to live in stench Curremus in odorem unguentorum tuorum c. Hee who had such divine magick in his face as charm'd all that beheld it and was of so ravishing entertainment besides hee spake all flame and fire Nonne cor nostrum ardens in nobis erat dum loqueretur c. Able to burne and dissolve the ice of as many hearts as ever the cold of death or tepiditie had frozen up provided that venomous serpent had not first fixt its black tooth in them for then the Pollinctori will tell you that hearts envenom'd will not burne No wonder then I say that him who they so loved living they so lamented dead It being by Natures Lawes decreed wee then should love things most passionately and deerest when wee were deprived of them Whether because the appetitive irrascible power then joyntly move more strongly towards the object than can joy alone in the fruition of it or that our sharp appetite of things wee want is soone blunted with the enjoying them Certaine it is whatsoever the cause be such is the effect as they well experienced everie one of them his blessed mother whilst shee called to mind what a deere and amiable son his friends what a true and constant friend and what a kind and loving Master his Disciples had lost of him In remembrance of which when they had buried him as with all due rites and ceremonies of griefe they did his sacred mother embalming him with her teares the holy Magdalen with her sweet unguents for which her memorie is so pretious in the Gospell as there never occurs mention of any but her name enters as an Ingredient They departed each one with somewhat to foment their memories of him One with the thought of his sweet and gentle conversation of life another with that of the excessive love he declared unto them in death Amongst the rest our pious Soule ever to have a memoriall of his passion digged him a new monument in her bosome and buried him in her heart FINIS