The souls exaltation A treatiseThe soules exaltation A treatise

Now we come to the second part, that is, his sufferings upon the cross, where we shall have much to do with the Jesuits. You see what he suffered in the garden, now follow him to the cross, for when he was in the garden, he only tasted of the cup; but when he was upon the cross, he drunk the cup quite off; in the garden he only sipped the top […] it, but now he drunk the dregs of it, and the bottom and all. For the opening of this, look Mat. 27.46. about the ninth hour, that is, about three of the clock in the afternoon, when he was crucified, he cried out saying, Eli, Eli, lamusabactani: Now Divines say, and Interpreter conclude and […] profess it, and I beseech you attend to it, that in this cry & complaint of our Saviour, was discovered the dregs of the cup of the fierce indignation of the Lord; now before I come to the […] and proper sense of the words, consider thus much: there are two interpretations of it; First, there is one of the Jesuits, which we must confute and remove. Secondly, there is another interpretation of sound Divines, which we must receive and yield unto. For the first, Bellarmine and others make the meaning of the words to be this, that our Saviour Christ here complains that he was left to the hands of the Jews, and that God the Father would not deliver him from that temporal death which they would put him to; therefore said they, our Saviour in the sense of the death natural, cries out that God had left him in the hands of those ungodly men; therefore they say the words run thus, My ⟨p. 265⟩God, my God, why hast thou thus forsaken me, and lost me thus in the hands of Pilate, and Herod, and the Jews to crucify me: it is a sinew less and a weak imagination, that I may speak no worse of it, for I can hardly bear it with patience: and that this sense is false there are a reasons to bear against it. First, this meaning is taken from a false ground, and therefore the ground and bottom being brittle and weak, the building must needs fall. It is a weak thing for a man to say, that sometimes the miseries and deaths of the Saints of God, argue a forsaking of God: for I say, that though the Saints of God are sometimes delivered up to death by the wise providence of God, yet they are not said to be forsaken of God: 2 Cor. 4.9. We are persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but we perish not: