POINT IV.
ON THE GREATNESS Of OUR SINS, UNDERSTOOD BY THE PAINS THAT CHRIST OUR LORD SUFFERED FOR THEM.
1. The fourth point shall be both matter of a sweet colloquy and of a most devout consideration, to see the greatness of sin and the dreadfulness of God's justice by another example, very different but no less effectual than the former; that is/ by the chastisements which the divine justice inflicted upon Christ Jesus our Lord, not for His own sins, but for mine, and for the sins of the whole world; that I may understand how He will chastise man laden with his own sins that so chastised Him that bore the burden of other men's sins, and how the guilty slave shall be handled when the innocent Son was so terribly punished, calling to mind that dreadful sentence which our Redeemer spake to the daughters of Jerusalem, "If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?" [1] As if He should say to me, " If I be treated with such rigour being a green tree and full of fruit, with what rigour wilt thou be treated that art a dry tree and without any manner of fruit at all?"
2. Then I must set before my eyes Christ Jesus crucified, beholding His head crowned with thorns, His face spit upon, His eyes obscured, His arms disjointed, His tongue embittered with gall and vinegar, His hands and feet pierced with nails, His back and shoulders torn with whips, and His side opened with a lance; and then pondering that He suffers all this for my sins, I will draw various affections from the inwardest part of my heart, sometimes trembling at the rigour of God's justice, who (as the prophet Zacharias said) unsheathed his "sword" against the man that
- ↑ Luc. xxiii. 31.
