1 Cor. v. 7. prophecies, that Christ our passover is slain: that he whom we believe to be the true and only Messias did really and truly die. Which affirmation we may with confidence maintain, as being secure of any even the least denial. Jesus of Nazareth upon his crucifixion was so surely, so certainly dead, that they which wished, they which thirsted for his blood, they which obtained, which effected, which extorted his death, even they believed it, even they were satisfied with it: the chief priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees, the publicans and sinners, all were satisfied: the Sadducees most of all, who hugged their old opinion, and loved their error the better, because they thought him sure for ever rising up. But if they had denied or doubted it, the very stones would cry out and confirm it. Why did the sun put on mourning? Why were the graves opened, but for a funeral? Why did the earth quake? Why were the rocks rent? Why did the frame of nature shake, but because the God of nature died? Why 211 did all the people, who came to see him crucified, and love to feed their eyes with such tragic spectacles, why did they beat John xix. 30. upon their breasts and return, but that they were assured it was finished, there was no more to be seen, all was done? It was not out of compassion that the merciless soldiers brake not his legs, but because they found him dead whom they came to despatch; and being enraged that their cruelty should be thus prevented, with an impertinent villany they pierce his side, and with a foolish revenge endeavour to kill a dead man; thereby becoming stronger witnesses than they would, by being less the authors than they desired, of his death. For out of his sacred but wounded side, came blood and water, both as evident signs of his present death, as certain seals of our future and eternal life. These are the two blessed sacraments of the spouse of Christ, each assuring her of the death of her beloved. The sacrament of baptism, the water through which we pass into the Church of Christ, teacheth us that he died to whom we come. For know ye not (saith St Paul) that so many of us as are baptized in Jesus Christ, are baptized into his death? The sacrament of the Lord's supper, the bread broken, and the wine poured forth, signify that he died which instituted it; 1 Cor. xi. 26. and as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do shew forth the Lord's death till he come. Rom. vi. 3. the cross; and Dead then our blessed Saviour was upon that not by a feigned or metaphorical, but by a true and proper, death. As he was truly and properly man, in the same mortal nature which the sons of Adam have; so did he undergo a true and proper death, in the same manner as we die. Our life appeareth principally in two particulars, motion and sensation1; and while both or either of these are perceived in a body, we pronounce it lives. Not that the life itself consisteth in either or both of these, but in that which is the original principle of them both, which we call the soul; and the intimate presence or union of that soul unto the body is the life thereof. The real distinction of which soul from the body in man, our blessed Saviour taught most clearly in that admonition, Fear not them which kill the body, but are not Matt. x. 23. able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Now being death is nothing else but the privation or recession of life, and we are then properly said to die when we cease to live; being life consisteth in the union of the soul unto the body, from whence, as from the fountain, flow motion, sensation, and whatsoever vital perfection: death can be nothing else but the solution of that vital union, or the actual separation of the soul, before united to the body. As therefore when the soul of man doth leave the habitation of its body, and being the sole fountain of 1 Τὸ ἔμψυχον δὴ τοῦ ἀψύχου δυοῖν μάλιστα διαφέρειν δοκεῖ, κινήσει τε καὶ τῷ αἰσθάνεσθαι· παρειλήφαμεν δὲ καὶ παρὰ τῶν προγενεστέρων σχεδόν δύο ταῦτα περὶ ψυχῆς. Arist. de Anima. 1. i. c. 2. § 2. Ὧι διαφέρει τὰ ἄψυχα (leg. ἔμψυχα) τῶν ἀψύχων, τοῦτο ἔστι ψυχή διαφέρει δὲ κινήσει, αἰσθήσει, φαντασίᾳ, νοήσει. Sallust. de Diis et Mundo, c. 8. * As Secundus: φυγὴ καὶ ἀπόκτη σις βίου. [Sentent. 19. τί ἐστι θάνατος ; p. 639.] 3 As the philosophers have anciently expressed it, especially Plato, who by the advantage of an error in the original of souls, best understood the end of life: Τοῦτό γε θάνατος όνομάζεται, λύσις καὶ χωρισμὸς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ σώματος. In Phadone, [p. 67 D]. Again: Ο θάνατος τυγχάνει ὤν, ως ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ, οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ δυοῖν πραγ vitality bereaves it of all vital activity, we say that body or Nor is this only our conception, or a doubtful truth; but 212 we are as much assured of the propriety of his death, as of the death itself. For that the unspotted soul of our Jesus was really and actually separated from his body, that his flesh was bereft of natural life by the secession of that soul, appeareth Luke xxiii. by his own resignation, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and by the evangelist's expression, and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. When he was to die, he resigned his soul; when he gave it up, he died; when it was delivered. out of the body, then was the body dead': and so the eternal Son of God upon the cross did properly and truly die. 16. Phocylides, [Carm. Admon. v. 97,100.] Σῶμα γὰρ ἐκ γαίης ἔχομεν, καὶ πάντες ἐς αὐ Δυόμενοι κόνις ἐσμέν· ἀὴρ δ' ἀνὰ πνεῦμα δέ- So Tertullian: 'Opus autem mortis in 1 This is expressed three ways, all doth not always signify an absolute expiration, but sometimes a lipothymy only; (as Hesychius, Εκψύχουσι, λειTоlνμοûσ. So Hippocrates useth it: Εἰσὶ δὲ ὀξύτατοι (καιροί) ὅσοις ἢ ἐκψύχουσι δεῖ τι ὠφελῆσαι. 1. i. de Morbis, [Vol. II. p. 170], and again, [p. 188] Εκψύχουσι δὲ διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τὴν μετάστασιν ἐξαπίνης γινομένην), lest therefore we should take ἐξέπνευσε in such an imperfect sense, St Matthew hath it ἀφῆκε τὸ πνεῦμα, and St John παρέδωκε τὸ πνεῦμα. Which is a full expression of the secession of the soul from the body, and consequently of death, which is, in the language of Secundus, πνεύματος ἀπόστασις. [Sentent. τί ἐστι θάνατος ; p. 639.] 2 These three points or distinctions of time I have therefore noted, that I might occur to any objection which possibly might arise out of the ancient philosophical subtilty, which Aulus Gellius reports to be agitated at the table of Taurus. The question was propounded thus: Quæsitum est, quando moriens moreretur, quum jam in morte esset, an tum etiam quum in vita foret?' [1. vi. c. 13.] Where Taurus admonisheth the rest, that this was no light question: for, says he: Gravissimi philosophorum super hac This reality and propriety of the death of Christ is yet farther illustrated from the cause immediately producing it, which was an external violence and cruciation, sufficient to dissolve that natural disposition of the body which is absolutely necessary to continue the vital union of the soul: the torments which he endured on the cross did bring him to that state, in which life could not longer be naturally conserved, and death, without intervention of supernatural power, must necessarily follow. For Christ who took upon him all our infirmities, sin only excepted, had in his nature not only a possibility and aptitude, but also a necessity of dying; and as to any extrinsical violence, able, according to the common course of nature, to destroy and extinguish in the body such an aptitude as is indispensably required to continue in union with the soul, he had no natural preservative; nor was it in the power of his soul, to continue its vital conjunction unto his body bereft of a vital disposition. It is true that Christ did voluntarily die, as he said of himself, No man taketh away my life from me, but I lay it John x. 18. down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. For it was in his power whether he would come into the power of his enemies; it was in his power to suffer or not to suffer the sentence of Pilate, and the nailing to the cross; it was in his power to have come down from the cross, when he was nailed to it: but when by an act of his will he had submitted to that death, when he had accepted and embraced those torments to the last, it was not in the power of his soul to continue any longer vitality to the body, whose vigour was totally exhausted. So not by a re serio quæsiverunt : et alii moriendi verbum atque momentum manente adhuc vita dici atque fieri putaverunt; alii nihil in illo tempore vitæ reliquerunt, totumque illud quod mori dicitur, morti vindicaverunt.' Ibid. The ancienter philosophers were divided; some saying a man died in the time of his life, others in the time of his death. But Plato observed a contradiction in both; for a man can neither be said to die while he is alive, nor when he is dead: 'et idcirco peperit ipse expressitque aliud quoddam novum in con finio tempus quod verbis propriis atque Mark xv. 44. necessary compulsion, but voluntary election, he took upon him It is true that Pilate marvelled he was dead so soon, and the two thieves lived longer to have their legs broken, and to 213 die by the accession of another pain: but we read not of such long furrows on their backs as were made on his, nor had they such kind of agony as he was in the night before. What though he cried with a loud voice, and gave up the Mark xv. 37, ghost? What though the centurion, when he saw it, said, Truly this man was the Son of God? The miracle was not in the death, but in the voice: the strangeness was not that he should die, but that at the point of death he should cry out so loud: he died not by, but with, a miracle. 39. Acts ii. 23. Acts v. 30. Should we imagine Christ to anticipate the time of death, and to subtract his soul from future torments necessary to cause an expiration: we might rationally say the Jews and Gentiles were guilty of his death, but we could not properly say they slew him: guilty they must be, because they inflicted. those torments on which in time death must necessarily follow; but slay him actually they did not, if his death proceeded from any other cause, and not from the wounds which they inflicted whereas St Peter expressly chargeth his enemies, Him ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; and again, The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Thus was the Lamb properly slain, and the Jews authors of his death, as well as of his crucifixion. Wherefore being Christ took upon himself our mortality in the highest sense, as it includeth a necessity of dying; being he voluntarily submitted himself to that bloody agony in the garden, to the hands of the plowers, who made long their furrows, and to the nails which fastened him to the cross; being these torments thus inflicted and continued did cause his death, and in this condition he gave up the ghost: it followeth that the only-begotten Son of God, the true Messias 1 [Minus bene S. Cyprianus de Idol. Vanitate: 'Nam et crucifixus prævento carnificis officio spiritum sponte dimisit.' p. 16. Ed. Fell. Idem docuit Origenes, Comment. in Ioan. Tom. XIX. cap. 4. Sed perperam. M. J. Routh.] 2 In both which places the original sheweth more expressly, that by their crucifixion they slew him: in the former thus, διὰ χειρῶν ἀνόμων προσπή ξαντες, ἀνείλετε. In the latter thus, ὃν ὑμεῖς διεχειρίσασθε κρεμάσαντες ἐπὶ ξύλου. |