CHAPTER XXIV
☙ Of the illustrious title of the Name of Jesus set up above His Head upon the Cross
I BLESS Thee, and give thanks to Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, Prince of Almighty Power, and King of every creature, for the illustrious title of Thy Holy and Blessed Name, openly displayed above Thy Head. It was carefully written, by Pilate the Governor, in the three most renowned languages of the world, in letters of Hebrew and Greek and Latin, in this form, and in these words: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.
O title in very truth illustrious, not the creature of man's ingenuity, but rather of Divine ordinance, foreseen, and dictated by God, from all eternity. Pilate, indeed, could not, and ought not, to have written otherwise than as he was inspired by Thee to write; and so it is that the mystic sense of this title is found in the famous scriptures of the prophets expressed in their own words. What, therefore, the sacred page had long before predicted, what clear tradition had handed down along the ages, in praise of Thy life-giving Name, that the heathen Governor, inspired by God, wrote upon a small tablet, as an everlasting memorial of the Crucified, in these words: " Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." When, therefore, many of the Jews had read this title, the priests, in the fury of their ill-will, could not bear that the glory of Thy Name, which they had been struggling with all their might to obscure, and — which was yet more senseless — to wipe out at the same time as
