| |
| SINCE Christ embraced the cross itself, dare I | |
| His image, th’ image of His cross, deny? | |
| Would I have profit by the sacrifice, | |
| And dare the chosen altar to despise? | |
| It bore all other sins, but is it fit | 5 |
| That it should bear the sin of scorning it? | |
| Who from the picture would avert his eye, | |
| How would he fly his pains who there did die? | |
| From me no pulpit, nor misgrounded law, | |
| Nor scandal taken, shall this cross withdraw, | 10 |
| It shall not, for it cannot; for the loss | |
| Of this cross were to me another cross. | |
| Better were worse, for no affliction, | |
| No cross is so extreme, as to have none. | |
| Who can blot out the cross, which th’ instrument | 15 |
| Of God dew’d on me in the Sacrament? | |
| Who can deny me power, and liberty | |
| To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be? | |
| Swim, and at every stroke thou art thy cross; | |
| The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss; | 20 |
| Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things; | |
| Look up, thou seest birds raised on crossed wings; | |
| All the globe’s frame, and spheres, is nothing else | |
| But the meridians crossing parallels. | |
| Material crosses then good physic be, | 25 |
| But yet spiritual have chief dignity. | |
| These for extracted chemic medicine serve, | |
| And cure much better, and as well preserve. | |
| Then are you your own physic, or need none, | |
| When still’d or purged by tribulation; | 30 |
| For when that cross ungrudged unto you sticks, | |
| Then are you to yourself a crucifix. | |
| As perchance carvers do not faces make, | |
| But that away, which hid them there, do take; | |
| Let crosses, so, take what hid Christ in thee, | 35 |
| And be His image, or not His, but He. | |
| But, as oft alchemists do coiners prove, | |
| So may a self-despising get self-love; | |
| And then, as worst surfeits of best meats be, | |
| So is pride, issued from humility, | 40 |
| For ’tis no child, but monster; therefore cross | |
| Your joy in crosses, else ’tis double loss. | |
| And cross thy senses, else both they and thou | |
| Must perish soon, and to destruction bow. | |
| For if the eye seek 1 good objects, and will take | 45 |
| No cross from bad, we cannot ’scape a snake. | |
| So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest; | |
| Make them indifferent; call, nothing best. 2 | |
| But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam, | |
| And move; to th’ others th’ objects 3 must come home. | 50 |
| And cross thy heart; for that in man alone | |
| Pants downwards, and hath palpitation. | |
| Cross those dejections, 4 when it downward tends, | |
| And when it to forbidden heights pretends. | |
| And as the brain through bony walls doth vent | 55 |
| By sutures, which a cross’s form present, | |
| So when thy brain works, ere thou utter it, | |
| Cross and correct concupiscence of wit. | |
| Be covetous of crosses; let none fall; | |
| Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all. | 60 |
| Then doth the cross of Christ work faithfully | |
| Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly | |
| The cross’s pictures much, and with more care | |
| That cross’s children, which our crosses are. | |
