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.
infirmities as fast as he took them of them they laid them upon him Infirmitates nostras ipse portavit c. And lastly for giving them life they crucified him to death oh unheard of ingratitude unparallel'd wickednesse never to be wrapt up in silence nor never unfolded in speech but with detestation men worthy to be banished humane societie so little of man they had in them but whither for beasts were lesse beasts than they Bos enim cognovit possessorem suum c. Devils lesse Devils for they acknowledged him yet the son of God Quid mihi et tibi est Iesu fili Dei altissimi c. As things then worse than man beast or Devill let them still be Jewes sacrilegious in all both to the God that made them and the god they made which if it were selfe-interest as of most wicked mortals it is most sacrilegious were they even to that Now how for honoring them they repayed him with dishonouring him againe and how whilst in a manner his whole endevour was to exalt them above all other people theirs only was under all others to depresse and abase him for it Quasi opprobrium hominum et abjectio plebis holding him as the Prophet said for the most abject of people and opprobrious of men there needs no other testimony of it but that one act of theirs of preferring a Barrabas to him Non hunc sed Barrabam c. A seditious to one who instructed them in nothing but meeknesse and humilitie Discite à me quia mitis sum et humilis corde c. A thiefe to one who had given them all they had De cujus plenitudine omnes accepimus And a murtherer to him from whom they had receiv'd their very lives and being In ipso enim vivimns movemur et sumus c. O good God! But it is better to say nothing here then not to say enough and let Silence the tongue of Admiration take up where ours of necessitie must leave This was such an affront such an indignitie as we may imagine sunk heavie as lead so deep into the bottome of his divine hart no humane thought hath fathome-line enough to sound the depth of it Wherefore as a thing wholly inscrutable let us give it over Whilst this was discoursed unto her in that method and order as we have set it downe you might perceive her by often varying colour gesture of body and motion of the eye taking all the severall formes of griefe of pitie of indignation and the like as in so tender a soule could be imprest till ariving to this last period she was so brimfull of affection as able to containe no more Thus at the foot of the crosse shee powred it forth The Affection A Dithyrambus in contemplation of our Saviour crucified O God and is it thou I see here suffring under their hands now Vnder whose feet both heaven and earth do bow Annd is it thou I heare Them so blaspheme as my affrighted eare Even tingles with dire horror of 't and feare O mee What do I heare and see O eares amaz'd with hearing eyes with seeing O endles goodnesse of an endles being Deare heart that hadst the heart With such a life o part Deare life that couldst forgoe A soule that lov'd thee so And O deare soul wouldst take So sad farewell for my unworthy sake And hast thou done all this for me For all this then what shall I do for thee When thou demand'st it shall I grutch Thee this small hart as t were too much Shall I be so peorly neere To hold my life for thee too deere Or think my soule too much for thee Who nothing thoughtst enough for me Oh no I am thy thrall And here before thee prostrate fall Offring up heart life soule and all And being armed with this strong and vertuous resolve how shee longed like some young and noble Warriour to experience her yet untried force and valour in the encounter with some adversarie paine perplexitie or distresse might put her bravely to it that whilst in any part or sense of her shee found a difficultie in the fight she presently might say This this my Saviour for my sake would have made nothing of and slight it so Or if shee fainted or lost heart cry out with that great Champion of the Apostles Quis nos seperabit à charitate Christi c. What is it can seperate us from the charitie of Christ Tribulatio an angustia c. Encouraging her selfe and resuming a strength from thence to dare and challenge the worst of affliction And this from no selfe-presumption neither shee well knowing how of her selfe she could do nothing Non quasi ex nobis aliquid c. But from the confidence or rather assurance she had in him who assisted her Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat c. No no would shee say I can doe nothing I but God and I can do all And if any imagine it a presumption to name my selfe with God let them know I hold it a greater presumption for any to name themselves without him How gladly for his sake would shee have embraced a contumely and scorne would have abhorr'd an eye of flesh bloud I meane such eyes as the Devill opened in Paradise long since not such as our Saviour opened on the Crosse to day how greedily would shee have put up an injurie and affront even as a jewell in the cabinet of her heart to weare on that generall day when all our braverie here shall be quite out of fashion and they onely accounted gloriously brave who have such jewels as those to weare And never stood on such nice termes the whilst as Had I deserved it it would never have grieved me or from any but such and such from whom I least expected it it had beene far more tollerable c. And I pray from whom could our Saviour lesse have expected the payment of those injuries and affronts which past so currantly with him than from the Jewes whom he had obliged not only with all the ties of Humanitie but of Divinitie too Who ever stood more out of the way of contempt and scorn than he by birth above all exception noble ex stirpe Davidis c. borne of the Royall Stem of such dignitie of aspect as it was said of him Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum He was faire and lovely above the sons of men And to conclude of life and manners so irreprehensible as hee put his verie enemies to it with urging them Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato c. to find out a blame or fault in him And let any now that find themselves agrieved they are not respected according to their merits and deserts examine where they ever have deserved so much of respect as he and had so little paid and if they finde it so I 'll say they have reason and just cause to complaine indeed No
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