Reason 4. Fourthly, But the great end and reason of his inter- ment was the conquering of death in its own dominion and territo* ries ; which victory over the grave furnished the saints with that triumphant svivtxiov song of deliverance, 1 Cor. xv. 55. " O death ! " where is thy sting ? O grave ! where is thy destruction ?" Our graves would not be so sweet and comfortable to us, when we come to lie down in them, if Jesus ,,had not lain there before us and for us. Death is a dragon, the grave its den ; a place of dread and terror ; but Christ goes into its den, there grapples with it, and for ever overcomes it ; disarms it of all its terror ; and not only makes it to cease to be inimical, but to become exceeding beneficial to the saints ; a bed of rest, and a perfumed bed ; they do but go into Christ's bed, where he lay before them. For these ends he must be buried.
Secondly, Next let us enquire what manner of funeral Christ had?
And if we intently observe it, we shall find many remarkable properties in it.
First, We shall find it to be a very obscure and private funeral. Here was no external pomp or gallantry : Christ affected it not in his life, and it was no way suitable to the ends and manner of his death. Humiliation was designed in his death ; and state is in- consistent with such an end ; besides, he died upon the tree ; and persons so dying, do not use to have much ceremony and state at their funerals. Three things shew it to be a very humble and ob- scure funeral, as to what concerned outward glory, with which the great ones of the earth are usually interred. For,
1. The dead body of the Lord was not brought from his own house, as other men's commonly are, but from the tree. They begged it of his judge. Had they not obtained this favour from Pilate, it must have been. buried in Golgotha; it had been tumbled into a pit digged under the cross.
2. As it was first begged, then buried, so it was attended with
458 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. SEEM. XXXVII
a very poor train : a few sorrowful women followed the bier. Other men are accompanied to their graves by their relations and friends : the disciples were all scattered from him ; afraid to own him dying, and dead.
3. And these few that were resolved to give him a funeral, are forced, by reason of the straits of time, to do it in great haste. Time was short ; they take the next sepulchre they can get, and hurry him away that evening into it ; for the preparation for the passover was at hand. This was the obscure funeral which the body of the Lord had. Thus was the Prince of the kings of the earth, who has the keys of death and hell, laid into his grave.
Secondly, Yet though men could bestow little honour upon it, the heavens bestowed several marks of honour upon it : adorned it with divers miracles, which wiped off the reproach of his death from him. These miracles were antecedent to his interment, or concomitants of it.
1. There was that extraordinary and preternatural eclipse of the sun ; such an eclipse as was never se^en since it first shone in hea- ven ; the sun fainted at the sight of such a rueful spectacle, and clothed the whole heaven in black. The sight of this caused a great philosopher, who was then far from the place where this un- paralleled tragedy was acting, to cry out upon the sight of it, " * Either the God of nature now suffers, or the frame of the " world is now dissolved." The same Dionysius, writing to Apollophanes, a philosopher, who would not embrace the Chris- tian faith, thus goes about to convince him. " -f- What thinkest " thou, (saith he) of the eclipse when Christ was crucified ? were " we not both of us at Heliopolis, and standing in the same place ? " Did we not see the moon in a new manner following the sun : " and not in the conjunction, but from the ninth hour until the " evening, by a reason unknown in nature, directly opposite to " the sun ? didst thou not then, being greatly terrified, say unto " me, O my Dionysius, what strange communications of the hea- " venly bodies are these ?"
Such a preternatural eclipse is remembered in no other history ; for it was not in time of conjunction, but opposition, the moon being then at full. From the sixth to the ninth hour, the sun and moon were together in the midst of heaven ; but in the even- ing she appeared in the east, her own place, opposite to the sun. And then miraculously returning from east to west, did not pass by
* Aut Deus naturce pr.tititr, aut mundi machina dissohitur. Dionysius Areopag.
t T/ /.i/.si; z:ioi rrt; sv tfoir^/w zavoo) zx/.u^sug ; u[j,<pon%oi yap ro ri xara rL~>.i'j)~6htv a,aa at*g#whg, y.ai 6vv$?ursg ^a^ado^sug rqv (TsXrjv^v z'Lmi'xIxria.Y iChtaza'jLiv, a yag 'o fwod* XtU§og9 fyc. Theod. Metochit, Hist Rom.}}. 3"9.
SERM. XXXVII. THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. 450
the sun, and set in the west before it, but kept it company for the space of three hours, and then returned to the east again. And whereas in all other natural eclipses, the shadow always begins on the western parts of the body of the sun, and that part is also first cleared ; it was quite contrary in this ; for though the moon was opposite to the sun, and distant from it the whole breadth of hea- ven, yet with a miraculous swiftness it overtook the sun, dark- ened first the eastern part of it, and soon prevailed over its whole body ; which caused darkness over all the land ; i. e. say some, over the whole earth ; or, as others, over the whole land of Jewry; or, as others, over the whole horizon, and all places of the same altitude and latitude, which is most probable.
Secondly, And as Christ's funeral was adorned with such a mira- culous eclipse, which put the heavens and earth into mourning ; so the rocks did rend : the vail of the temple rent in twain from top to bottom ; the graves opened, and the dead bodies of many saints arose and went into the holy city, and were seen of manv. The rending of' the rocks was a sign of God's fierce indignation,* Nahum i. 6. and a discovery of the greatness of his power ; shewing them what they deserved, and what he could do to them that had com- mitted this horrid fact ; though he rather chose at this time to shew the dreadful effects of it upon inanimate rocks, than rocky-hearted sinners ; but especially it served to convince the world, that it was none other but the Son of God that died ; which was farther ma- nifested by these concomitant miracles.