Though I be beset on all hands, be accused by the Law, and mine own conscience, and by Satan, and have nothing to answer for myself; yet here I will stay, for I am sure in him there is salvation, and no where else.
"Here I
will
stay." But alas! the poor sinner has forfeited the powers of willing; miserable wishing is all he can command. O, the dreadful injury of an irreligious education! To be taught our prayers, and the awful truths of religion, in the same tone in which we are taught the Latin Grammar,—and too often inspiring the same sensations of weariness and disgust!
Vol. II. p. 242.
And thus are reproaches mentioned amongst the sufferings of Christ in the Gospel, and not as the least; the railings and mockings that were darted at him, and fixed to the Cross, are mentioned more than the very nails that fixed him. And (Heb. xii. 2,) the shame of the Cross, though he was above it, and despised it, yet that shame added much to the burden of it.
I understand Leighton thus: that though our Lord felt it not as
shame
, nor was wounded by the revilings of the people in the way of any correspondent resentment or sting, which yet we may be without blame, yet he suffered from the same as sin, and as an addition to the guilt of his persecutors, which could not but aggravate the burden which he had taken on himself, as being sin in its most devilish form.