\ HEB. VI. 4.6 EXPLAINED, 49
no man living ean attempt a higher dishonour against Jesus Christ, in his person or in any of his ways, than openly to profess that upon trial of them they find nothing in them for which they should _be desired. But “it had been better for such persons not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.” And this is the first aggravation of the sin mentioned, taken from _ the act ascribed unto the sinners, “they crucify him again;” they do it as much as in them lieth, and declare that they would actually do it if it were in their power. He adds another from the considera- tion of the person who was thus treated by them. It was the “Son of God” whom they dealt thus withal This they did, not when he had “emptied himself, and made himself of no reputation,” so that it was not an easy matter to look through all the veils of his out- _ ward weakness and condition in this world, to “behold his glory, as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father” (in which state he was crucified by the Jews); but now when he had been “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead,” and when his divinity was vari- ously attested unto in the world and among themselves. And this is the great aggravation of sin against the gospel, namely, of un- belief, that it is immediately against the “Son of God.” His person is despised in it, both absolutely and in the discharge of all his offices; and therefore is God himself so, because he hath nothing to do with us but by his Son. Thirdly, The apostle adds, as another ageravation of their sin, xa/ rupadsrywariZovras, “exposing him again to public ignominy,” or “shame.” Mapaderywari%w is to bring any supposed offenders unto such open punishment as is shameful in the eyes of men, and renders them vile who are so traduced and punished. The word is but once more used in the New Testament, namely, Matt. i. 19, where it is spoken of Joseph in reference unto his espoused wife, the holy Virgin: M4 SéAwy abryy rapaderywariccs,— “Not willing to make her a public example;” that is, by bringing of “her forth unto a shameful punishment, for the terror of others.* _ According unto this sense, our apostle, expressing the death of Christ as inflicted by men, reduces the evils that accompanied it “unto two heads,—(1.) The pain of it; and, (2.) The shame: Heb. xii. 2, “He endured the cross and despised the shame;” for as the death of the cross was penal, or painful and dolorous, so in the man- ner of it, in all its circumstances of time, place, person, it was most highly shameful. He was in it rapadsrywarsodeic, “ignominiously tra- duced,” or “put to an open shame;” yea, the death of the cross amongst “all people was peculiarly shameful. Thus in calling over his death in this place, he refers it unto the same heads of suffering and shame, VOL. VIL 4
50 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF APOSTASY.
— crucifying him,” and “ putting him to an open shame.” And in this latter he was not spared by these apostates more than in the former, so far as it lay in their power. y
And hence we may raise a sufficient answer unto an objection of no small importance that ariseth against our exposition of this place: for it may be said, “That if those, or many of them, or any of them, who actually and really crucified the Son of God in his own person, and put him to open shame, did yet obtain mercy and pardon of that and all other sins, as it is confessed they did, whence is it that those who renounce him, and do so crucify him and put him to shame only metaphorically and to themselves, should be excluded from all hopes of repentance and pardon?”
I answer, That the sin of those who forsake Christ and the gos- pel, after their conviction of its truth and profession of it, is on many accounts far greater than that of those who crucified him in the days of his flesh. And there are sundry reasons whereon God will exercise more severity towards this latter sort of sinners than towards the former :— .
1. The sin is greater, because no way to be extenuated by igno- rance. This is everywhere allowed as that which made the sin of crucifying of Christ pardonable upon their repentance, and their re- pentance possible. So Peter, in his sermon to them, lays down this as the foundation of his exhortation unto repentance: “And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers,” Acts iii. 17. “Had they known it, they would not have cru- cified the Lord of glory,” 1 Cor. 11. 8; which our apostle pleads also in his own case, 1 Tim.i.13. This put their sin among the num- ber of those which sacrifices were allowed for of old, and which fell under the care of Him who knows how to have “compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way.”