Looking unto Jesus a view of the everlasting gospel, or, the souls eying of…

I shall not contend about the number of his stripes; but this is certain, that the soldiers, with violence and unrelenting hands, executed their commission; they tore his tender flesh, till the pillar and pavement were purpled with a shower of blood; and if we may believe Bernard, They ploughed with their whips upon his back, and made long furrows, and after that they turned his back upon the pillar, and whipped his belly and his breast, till there was no part free from his face unto his foot. A scourging able to kill any man, and would have killed him, but that he was preserved by the Godhead to endure, and to suffer a more shameful death.

I shall not contend about the number of his stripes; but this is certain, that the souldiers, with violence and unrelenting hands, executed their commission; they tore his tender flesh, till the pillar and pavement were purpled with a shower of blood; and if we may believe Bernard, They plowed with their whips upon his back, and made long furrows, and after that they turned his back upon the pillar, and whipt his belly and his breast, till there was no part free from his face unto his foot. A scourging able to kill any man, and would have killed him, but that he was preserved by the Godhead to endure, and to suffer a more shameful death.

We may read here a Lecture of the immense love of God in Christ to us poor Gentiles; he is therefore whipped that he might marry us to himself,¹ and never reject us, or cast us off: we read of a Law in Moses, that if a man took a wife, and hated her, and gave occasions of speech against her, and brought an evil name upon her undeservably; that then the Elders of the City should take that man, and chastise him, ²—and she should be his wife, he might not put her away all his days. There is a great mystery in this ceremony; for that man (say some) was Christ, who by his incarnation betrothed unto himself the Gentile Church, but he seems to hate her, and to give an occasion of a speech against her, and to bring an evil report upon her, as Into the way of the Gentiles ye shall not go, and into the City of the Samaritans ye shall not enter;