If we consider the person of the Judge, we first perceive that He is
interested in the injury of the crimes He is to sentence: "They shall
look on Him whom they have pierced." It was for thy sins that the
Judge did suffer such unspeakable pains as were enough to reconcile
all the world to God; the sum and spirit of which pains could not be
better understood than by the consequence of His own words, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" meaning, that He felt such
horrible, pure, unmingled sorrows, that, altho His human nature was
personally united to the Godhead, yet at that instant he felt no
comfortable emanations by sensible perception from the Divinity, but
He was so drenched in sorrow that the Godhead seemed to have forsaken
Him. Beyond this, nothing can be added: but then, that thou hast for
thy own particular made all this sin in vain and ineffective, that
Christ thy Lord and Judge should be tormented for nothing, that thou
wouldst not accept felicity and pardon when he purchased them at so
dear a price, must needs be an infinite condemnation to such persons.
How shalt thou look upon Him that fainted and died for love of thee,
and thou didst scorn His miraculous mercies? How shall we dare to
behold that holy face that brought salvation to us, and we turned away
and fell in love with death, and kissed deformity and sins? And yet in
the beholding that face consists much of the glories of eternity. All
the pains and passions, the sorrows and the groans, the humility and
poverty, the labors and watchings, the prayers and the sermons, the
miracles and the prophecies, the whip and the nails, the death and the
burial, the shame and the smart, the cross and the grave of Jesus,
shall be laid upon thy score, if thou hast refused the mercies and
design of all their holy ends and purposes. And if we remember what a
calamity that was which broke the Jewish nation in pieces, when Christ
came to judge them for their murdering Him who was their King and the
Prince of Life, and consider that this was but a dark image of the