Theophilus Gale (1628-1678) on Luke 19:42

Gale:

When Professors go on in a course of hypocritical friendship with Christ, he at last puts a period to their day of Grace. Thus he dealt with the unbelieving Jews, Luke 19:42. Saying, If thou had known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Israel had her day of Grace, but now it’s gone; now her Sun is set; now farewell to all Gospel Grace and offers; farewell to all wooings, and strivings of the Spirit of Grace with her: Oh! what a complicated, twisted, binding curse is here for all Christ’s false friends? How much better were it to part with the Sun out of the firmament; yea, with life it self a thousand times over, than to bid Adieu to the day of Grace?

Theophilus Gale, Theophilie: or a Discourse of the Saints Amitie with God in Christ (London: Printed by R. W. for Francis Tyton at the three Daggers in Fleet-street, 1671), 284. [Some spelling modernized; and underlining mine.]

[Credit to Tony for the find.]

William Burkitt (1650-1703) on Luke 19:41

Burkitt:

19:41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

No sooner did our Savior come within the sight and view of the city of Jerusalem, but he burst out into tears, at the consideration of their obstinacy, and willful rejecting of the offers of grace and salvation made unto them; and also he wept to consider of the dreadful judgments that hung over their heads for those sins, even the utter ruin and destruction of their city and temple. Learn hence, 1. That good men ever have been, and are, men of tender and compassionate dispositions, sorrowing not only for their own sufferings, but for others’ calamities. 2. That Christ sheds tears as well as blood for the lost world; Christ wept over Jerusalem, as well as bled for her. 3. That Christ was infinitely more concerned for the salvation of poor sinners, than for his own death and sufferings: not the sight of his own cross, but Jerusalem’s calamities, made him weep.

William Burkitt, Expository Notes With Practical Observations on the New Testament (Philadelphia: Published by Thomas Wardle, 1835), 1:400. [Some spelling modernized; underlining mine.]

John Calvin (1509-1564) on Luke 19:41

Calvin:

And wept over it. As there was nothing which Christ more ardently desired than to execute the office which the Father had committed to him, and as he knew that the end of his calling was to gather the lost sheep of the house of Israel, (Matthew 15:24,) he wished that his coming might bring salvation to all. This was the reason why he was moved with compassion, and wept over the approaching destruction of the city of Jerusalem. For while he reflected that this was the sacred abode which God had chosen, in which the covenant of eternal salvation should dwell–the sanctuary from which salvation would go forth to the whole world, it was impossible that he should not deeply deplore its ruin. And when he saw the people, who had been adopted to the hope of eternal life, perish miserably through their ingratitude and wickedness, we need not wonder if he could not refrain from tears.

John Calvin, Luke 19:41

John Howe (1630-1705) on God’s Disposition to Lost Sinners by way of Luke 19:41

Howe:

IV. If with any that have lived under the gospel, their day is quite expired, and the things of their peace now for ever hid from their eyes, this is in itself a most deplorable case, and much lamented by our Lord Jesus Christ himself.–That the case is in itself most deplorable, who sees not? A soul lost! A creature capable of God, upon its way to him, near to the kingdom of God–shipwrecked in the port! O sinner, from how high a hope art thou fallen; into what depths of misery and woe!

And that it was lamented by our Lord, is in the text. He “beheld the city,”–very generally, we have reason to apprehend, inhabited by such wretched creatures,–”and wept over it.” This was a very affectionate lamentation. We lament often, very heartily, many a sad case, for which we do not shed tears. But tears,–such tears,–falling from such eyes,–the issues of the purest and best-governed passion that ever was,–showed the true greatness of the cause. Here could be no exorbitancy or unjust excess, nothing more than was proportionable to the occasion. There needs no other proof that this is a sad case, than that our Lord lamented it with tears; which that he did we are plainly told, so that touching that there is no place for doubt. All that is liable to question is, whether we are to conceive in him any like resentments of such cases in the present glorified state?

Indeed we cannot think heaven a place or state of sadness or lamentation; and must take heed of conceiving anything there, especially on the throne of glory, unsuitable to the most perfect nature and the most glorious state. We are not to imagine tears there, which in that happy region are wiped away from inferior eyes; no grief, sorrow, or sighing, which are all fled away and shall be no more, as there can be no other turbid passion of any kind. But when expressions that import anger or grief are used, even concerning God himself, we must sever in our conception everything of imperfection and ascribe everything real perfection. We are not to think such expressions signify nothing; that they have no meaning or that nothing at all is to be attributed to him under them.

Dabney on Luke 19:41 and His Chastising the “Extremist” Calvinists

Dabney:

The yet more explicit passage in Luke 19:41, 42, has given our extremists¹ still more trouble. We are there told that Christ wept over the very men whose doom of reprobation he then pronounced. Again, the question is raised by them, If Christ felt this tender compassion for them, why did he not exert his omnipotence for their effectual calling? And their best answer seems to be, that here it was not the divine nature in Jesus that wept, but the humanity only. Now, it will readily be conceded that the divine nature was incapable of the pain of sympathetic passion and of the agitation of grief; but we are loath to believe that this precious incident is no manifestation of the passionless, unchangeable, yet infinitely benevolent pity of the divine nature. For, first, it would impress the common Christian mind with a most painful feeling to be thus seemingly taught that holy humanity is more generous and tender than God. The humble and simple reader of the gospels had been taught by them that there was no excellence in the humanity which was not the effect and effluence of the corresponding ineffable perfection in the divinity. Second, when we hear our Lord speaking of gathering Jerusalem’s children as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and then announcing the final doom of the rejected, we seem to hear the divine nature in him, at least as much as the human. And third, such interpretations, implying some degree of dissent between the two natures, are perilous, in that they obscure that vital truth, Christ the manifestation to us of the divine nature. “He is the image of the invisible God;” “He is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person;” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (Col. i. 15; Heb. i. 3; John xiv. 9.) It is our happiness to believe that when we see Jesus weeping over lost Jerusalem, we “have seen the Father,” we have received an insight into the divine benevolence and pity. And therefore this wondrous incident been so clear to the hearts of God’s people in all ages. The church has justly condemned Monothelism more than a thousand years ago. Yet, while we are none of us Monothelites, we cannot admit any defect of concert and symphony between the will of the perfect humanity and that of the divinity. It is, indeed, in this harmony of will that the hypostatic union most essentially effectuates itself, “yet without conversion, composition or confusion.” For it is in the will of a rational essence that its unity consummates itself, as the combination and resultant of its prevalent states of intelligence and of activity. The divine and human will was, so to speak, the very meeting-place at which the personal unity of the two complete natures was effected in the God-man.

Some better blessed paradox, then, of this wondrous and blessed paradox of, omnipotent love lamenting those whom yet it did not save. Shall we resort to the Pelagian solution, and so exalt the prerogatives of a fancied “free-will” as to strip God of his omnipotence over sinful free agents? That resort is absolutely shut; for knowing assuredly that man is originally depraved and in bondage to sin, we see that the adoption of that theory undermines the hope of every sinner in the world for redemption, and spreads a pall of uncertainty and fear over heaven itself. The plain and obvious meaning of the history gives us the best solution; that God does have compassion for the reprobate, but not express volition² to save them, because his infinite wisdom regulates his whole will and guides and harmonizes (not suppresses) all its active principles.

R.L. Dabney, “God’s Indiscriminate Proposals of Mercy,” in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1982), 1:308-9.

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¹The nearest candidate for this remark seems to be his reference to the “supralapsarian perversion” (302). He refers to the “tortuous exgesis” of this wing (311). However, earlier he does refer to the unsatisfactory “school of Turretin” (283).
²By volition, Dabney means positive intention as such.