VII.  Therefore, my brethren, since we too are born of him, and as the apostle says, “In Adam all die”; for we were all at first two persons; if we were loath to obey the physician, that we might not be sick; let us obey Him now, that we may be delivered from sickness.  The Physician gave us precepts, when we were whole; He gave us precepts that we might not need a physician.  “They that are whole,” He saith, “need not a physician, but they that are sick.”  When whole, we despised these precepts, and by experience have felt how to our own destruction we despised His precepts.  Now we are sick, we are in distress, we are on the bed of weakness; yet let us not despair.  For because we could not come to the Physician, He hath vouchsafed to come Himself to us.  Tho despised by man when he was whole, He did not despise him when he was stricken.  He did not leave off to give other precepts to the weak, who would not keep the first precepts, that he might not be weak; as tho He would say, “Assuredly thou hast by experience felt that I spoke the truth when I said, Touch not this.  Be healed then now, at length, and recover the life thou hast lost.  Lo, I am bearing thine infirmity; drink then the bitter cup.  For thou hast of thine own self made those my so sweet precepts, which were given to thee when whole, so toilsome.  They were despised, and so thy distress began; cured thou canst not be, except thou drink the bitter cup, the cup of temptations, wherein this life abounds, the cup of tribulation, anguish, and suffering.  Drink then,” He says, “drink, that thou mayest live.”  And that the sick man may not make answer, “I can not, I can not bear it, I will not drink”; the Physician, all whole tho He be, drinketh first, that the sick man may not hesitate to drink.  For what bitterness is there in this cup which He hath not drunk?  If it be contumely, He heard it first when He drove out the devils.  “He hath a devil, and by Beelzebub He casteth out devils.”  Whereupon, in order to comfort the sick, He saith, “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household?” If pains are this bitter cup, He was bound, and scourged, and crucified.  If death be this bitter cup, He died also.  If infirmity shrink with horror from any particular kind of death, none was at that time more ignominious than the death of the cross.  For it was not in vain, that the apostle, when setting forth His obedience, added, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

VIII.  But because He designed to honor His faithful ones at the end of the world, He hath first honored the cross in this world; in such wise that the princes of the earth who believe in Him have prohibited any criminal from being crucified; and that cross which the Jewish persecutors with great mockery prepared for the Lord, even kings, His servants, at this day, bear with great confidence on their foreheads.  Only the shameful nature of the death which our Lord