When in many ways, dearly beloved, Jewish impiety labored to find some cause for perpetrating a crime against the Lord Jesus, and the lies which the false witnesses had put forth in service to the unjust priests brought forward nothing that was worthy of death, they found this as though insurmountable: to press upon the Lord of the world the odium of an affected kingship. And when Pilate wished that Jesus, whom he saw accused in vain, should be acquitted, they cried out calumniously and threateningly: 'If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend: for everyone who makes himself a king contradicts Caesar' (John 19:12). Foolishly, Pilate, did you fear a foolish accusation.
But let the royal name have been formidable, so that for the sake of Caesar's rule the plotting of a new power ought to be suppressed, if a tyrannical apparatus had betrayed to you a design of domination, if a provision of arms, if a gathering of riches, if garrisons of soldiers had been detected. Why do you allow Him to be burdened with an affected power, whose special teaching was of humility? He did not contradict the Roman laws; He submitted to the census, He paid the didrachma, He did not forbid the taxes; He established that the things which are God's are to be rendered to God, and the things which are Caesar's to Caesar; He chose poverty, He counseled obedience, He preached meekness: this is truly not to attack Caesar, but to help him.
But nevertheless, lest the Jews' objection seem wholly empty, examine more diligently, O governor, what is known concerning the works of the Lord Jesus, what is ascertained concerning His power. To the blind He gave sight, to the deaf hearing, to the lame walking, to the mute speech; He drove away fevers, He dissolved pains, He cast out demons, He restored the dead to life, He commanded the sea and the winds to be still (Matt. 8:27). These things assuredly demonstrate a great King, who excels not by human might, but by divine power. Let the Jews therefore charge Him with this power, let them change their action, and let them bring forth with the mouth that which they hold in the heart. Why do they slander in earthly matters those who persecute heavenly things?
Although therefore Pilate felt it burdensome and hateful to himself that the Jews were assailing Him over the neglect of Caesar's friendship, yet for some time he tried to mitigate their fury: and therefore he either permitted or ordered the Lord Jesus to be afflicted with various contumelies, that their iniquity, sated with the injuries of an innocent man, might rage no further. But obstinate malice grew by its own increases, and against Him over whom it had obtained the right of mockery, it demanded also the right of death. Whence, when both the chief priests and the rulers of the Jews and the whole multitude acclaimed with frequent voices: 'Crucify, crucify,' he handed Jesus over to the will of the persecutors, Barabbas the robber being released to them, so that they who on the festal day were slaying the Author of life, might grant impunity to a murderer.
When therefore, dearly beloved, the Lord went to the place of His glorification, and mercy went forth from the tabernacles of the impious, so that there might be fulfilled what is written: 'Salvation is far from sinners' (Ps. 119:155), there followed Him a multitude of the people, and of women bewailing and lamenting Him (Luke 23:27). For the weaker sex is wont to be moved to tears even for those who are worthy of death, and to pity the ends of the condemned out of consideration for the common nature. But the Lord Jesus disdained that this expenditure be bestowed upon Him as pleasing to Himself, because grief did not befit a triumph, nor lamentation a victory.
At length, turning to them, He said: 'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days shall come in which they shall say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the breasts that have not given suck' (Luke 23:28-29). Where is the sadness of one about to be crucified? Where the dread of one about to die? The hour of punishment does not terrify the mind of Him who is to suffer, and teaching that there is no reason for weeping on His account, He enjoins penance by proclaiming vengeance. 'There is no cause,' He says, 'daughters of Jerusalem, that you should grieve over Me; weep for yourselves, and wail for your sons.'
This weeping is founded upon this: that your wombs have brought forth such offspring. You are plainly to be mourned—not over the Savior of believers, but over the impiety of those who perish. I willingly suffer the cross, and I admit into Myself the death which I am about to destroy. Weep not for one dying for the redemption of the world, whom you shall behold judging in the majesty of the Father. Christ Jesus therefore, exalted upon the wood, turned death back upon the author of death, and by the presentation of His passible flesh crushed all principalities and adverse powers, admitting into Himself the audacity of the ancient enemy, who, in raging against a nature subject to himself, dared even there to be an exactor of debt, where he could find no vestige of sin.
That general and deadly bond of our sale was therefore annulled, and the covenant of captivity passed into the right of the Redeemer. Those nails, which had pierced the hands and feet of the Lord, fixed the devil with perpetual wounds, and the punishment of the holy members was the slaying of the hostile powers: Christ so consummating His victory that in Him and with Him all who believe in Him might triumph. When therefore the Lord, sublime by the elevation of His body to be crucified, was accomplishing the reconciliation of the world upon a certain citadel of punishment, and was calling the converted robber to the dwelling of paradise;
you, princes of the Jews and doctors of the law, pricked neither by conscience at your impiety nor mitigated by the effect of the crime, added the darts of your tongues to the piercing of the nails, saying: 'He saved others, He cannot save Himself. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him' (Matt. 27:42). But to these your foolish and blasphemous voices all the elements gave answer, and heaven, earth, sun, and stars pronounced one sentence together against you, which by a terrible convulsion and an unwonted eclipse attest you unworthy of their ministry, and display to the world the darkness of your blindness.
But if to convict you neither the heavenly nor the infernal things suffice, and the rocks and the tombs were able to feel the cross of Christ more than your hearts; at least advert knowingly to what was done in the temple. The veil, by whose obstruction the holy of holies was shut off, was rent from top to bottom, and that sacred and mystical secret, which the high priest alone had been ordered to enter, was unlocked, so that there might now be nothing of separation where nothing of holiness had remained. You ought therefore to have recognized that you were repudiated, and had lost all right of the priesthood, because that was true which the Truth had said to you: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe Me also' (John 5:46).
Deservedly therefore both Testaments condemn you, both emptied of grace and deprived of the law, you who resist the new precisely because you did not believe the ancient. But we, dearly beloved, who, freed from the darkness of ignorance, have received the light of faith, and have entered into the inheritance of the New Testament by the election of adoption, let us rejoice in the festival which carnal Israel lost: since 'our Passover, Christ, is sacrificed' (1 Cor. 5:7);
by whose ineffable grace we are enriched with the blessing of all spiritual gifts, and are so transferred from oldness into newness, that we are not only restored to the dwelling of paradise, but are also prepared for the glory of the heavenly kingdom, with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.