spoke the
truth when I said, Touch not this. Be healed then now, at length, and
recover the life thou hast lost. Lo, I am bearing thine infirmity; drink
then the bitter cup. For thou hast of thine own self made those my so
sweet precepts, which were given to thee when whole, so toilsome. They
were despised, and so thy distress began; cured thou canst not be,
except thou drink the bitter cup, the cup of temptations, wherein this
life abounds, the cup of tribulation, anguish, and suffering. Drink
then," He says, "drink, that thou mayest live." And that the sick man
may not make answer, "I can not, I can not bear it, I will not drink";
the Physician, all whole tho He be, drinketh first, that the sick man
may not hesitate to drink. For what bitterness is there in this cup
which He hath not drunk? If it be contumely, He heard it first when He
drove out the devils. "He hath a devil, and by Beelzebub He casteth out
devils." Whereupon, in order to comfort the sick, He saith, "If they
have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they
call them of His household?" If pains are this bitter cup, He was bound,
and scourged, and crucified. 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. Our Lord, then,
in doing these divine and in suffering these human things, instructs us
by His bodily miracles and bodily patience, that we may believe an