Andrewes on the Crucifixion
This is astounding. In the paragraph I’ve provided below, Andrewes draws the kind of profound parallel that can only be drawn after percolating in the Gospel–or perhaps (strangely enough) after reading or hearing it read for the first time. To understand this paragraph, you need only know two things. First, that Andrewes is preaching on Christmas Day–the day, of course, for celebrating the Incarnation. This is what he means by “to-day” in the first two sentences. Second, that “[between] Moses and Elias” and “brightness of His glory” refer to the Transfiguration of Christ (Matt. 17).
So to-day, but after much worse. To-day, in the flesh of a poor babe crying in the cratch, in medio animalium; after, in the rent and torn flesh of a condemned person hanging on the Cross, in medio latronum, in the midst of other manner persons than Moses and Elias; that men even hid their faces at Him, not for the brightness of His glory, but for sorrow and shame. Call you this manifesting? Nay, well doth the Apostle call it the “veil of the flesh,” as whereby He was rather obscured than any way set forth [Heb. 10.20]; yea eclipsed in all the darkest points of it.
- Lancelot Andrewes, from the same sermon I quoted before
