If death be this bitter cup, He died also.
If infirmity shrink with horror from any particular kind of death, none
was at that time more ignominious than the death of the cross. For it
was not in vain, that the apostle, when setting forth His obedience,
added, "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."
VIII. But because He designed to honor His faithful ones at the end of
the world, He hath first honored the cross in this world; in such wise
that the princes of the earth who believe in Him have prohibited any
criminal from being crucified; and that cross which the Jewish
persecutors with great mockery prepared for the Lord, even kings, His
servants, at this day, bear with great confidence on their foreheads.
Only the shameful nature of the death which our Lord vouchsafed to
undergo for us is not now so apparent, Who, as the apostle says, "Was
made a curse for us." And when, as He hung, the blindness of the Jews
mocked Him, surely He could have come down from the cross, who, if He
had not so willed, had not been on the cross; but it was a greater thing
to rise from the grave than to come down from the cross.
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