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Observe here, 1. The horrid impiety of the people of Nazareth, in thrusting their Saviour out of their city, and their barbarous and bloody cruelty in bringing him to the brow of the hill, with full intent to cast him down headlong. But Christ was to die a clean contrary way, not by throwing down, but by lifting up.
O ungrateful and unhappy Nazareth! Is this the return you make the divine Guest, which for thirty years had sojourned in your coasts? No wonder that the ablest preaching, and most exemplary living, of the holiest and best of Christ's ministers obtain no greater success at this day amongst a people, when the presence of Christ at Nazareth, for thirty years together, had no better influence upon the minds and manners of that people; but instead of receiving his message, they rage at the messenger: neither let any of the ministers of Christ think it strange, that they are ignominiously despised, when our Master before us was in danger of being barbarously murdered, and that for his plain preaching to his own people, the men of Nazareth.
But observe, 2. The miraculous escape of our blessed Lord from the murdering hands of the wicked Nazarites: He, passing through the midst of them, went his way. How and after what manner he escaped is not declared, and therefore cannot without presumption be determined.
Although the Romanists, to make way for their doctrine of transub- stantiation, positively affirm, that, contrary to the nature of a body, he penetrated through the breasts of the people. But whether he struck them with blindness that they did not see, or smote them with fear that they durst not hold him, or whether by a greater strength than theirs, (which his Godhead could easily supply his human nature with), he escaped from them.
It is neither prudent to enquire nor possible to determine: we know it was an easy thing for him who was God as well as man, to quit himself of any mortal enemies; and at the same time, when he rescued himself, could have ruined them, by frowning them into hell, or looking them into nothing.