Matthew 27:32 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And as they came out, &c.— We learn from the other Evangelists, that our blessed Lord had borne his cross agreeable to the custom in executions, at his first setting out. It was not indeed the whole cross which criminals carried, but only that transverse piece of wood to which the arms were fastened, and which was called antennae, or furca, going cross the stipes, or upright beam, which was fixed in the earth; the criminal, from carrying this, was called furcifer. Our blessed Lord, through the fatigue of the preceding night, spent wholly without sleep, the agony that he had undergone in the garden, his having been hurried from place to place, and obliged to stand the whole time of his trial, the want of food, and the loss of blood which he had sustained, was become so faint, that he sunk beneath the burden, and was not able to bear the weight of the cross. The soldiers therefore (for among the Romans the execution of criminals was performed by them) meeting with Simon of Cyrene, a town of Africa abounding with Jews, seized on him, probably bythe instigation of the Jews, and compelled himto carry the cross after Jesus. Simon's sons, Alexander and Rufus, were two noted men among the first Christians, at the time St. Mark wrote his Gospel. See Mark 15:21. The soldiers, however, did not remove the cross out of compassion to Christ; but from an apprehension of his dying by theexcessive fatigue, and thereby eluding the public punishment to which they were escorting him; or to prevent delay. See Lipsius de Cruce, and Bishop Pearson on the Creed, p. 203