Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem, that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale, even for all the world. And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary; a place difficult in the ascent, eminent and apt for the publication of shame, a bill of death and dead bones, polluted and impure; and there beheld him stripped naked who clothes the fields with flowers, and all the world with robes, and the whole globe with the canopy of heaven; and so dressed, that now every circumstance was a triumph. By his disgrace he trampled upon our pride; by his poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our covetousness and love of riches; and by his pains chastised the delicacies of our flesh, and broke in pieces the fetters of concupiscence. For as soon as Adam was clothed, he quitted Paradise; and Jesus was made naked, that he might bring us in again ...And now behold the priest and the sacrifice of all the world laid upon the altar of the cross, bleeding, and tortured, and dying, to reconcile his Father to us: and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron. The crown of thorns was his mitre, the cross his pastoral staff, the nails piercing his hands were instead of rings, the ancient ornament of priests, and his flesh rased and chequered with blue and blood, instead of the parti-coloured robe. But as this object calls for our devotion, our love and eucharist to our dearest Lord; so it must needs irreconcile us to sin, which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame, and pain, and amazement upon the Son of God, when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place.
The Great Exemplar Part III, Section XV (3 & 6), 'Considerations upon the crucifixion of the holy Jesus'
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