cried out as before, saying, We know the man sufficiently away with him to the cross! crucify him, crucify him!-and immediately order the wretch to be executed. Pilate on this said to them, If ye are thus resolute and inexorable, I leave him in your hands, to dispose of him as you think fit; take ye him therefore, if it must be so, and crucify him yourselves; but I desire to discharge myself from having any thing to do in it, either by myself or by my Roman guards; for as I have told you again and again, I find no fault in him worthy of any such punishment.

"The Jews then answered him, There is no room to represent him as a faultless person; nor any reason to be backward to condemn him; but these objections you have made oblige us to mention one circumstance, which for the horror of it we would willingly have concealed: we have a divine law which we received from heaven, by which blasphemy is forbidden on the highest penalties; and by this our law he ought to die, though He were not chargeable with sedition and treason, because He has made himself the Son of the most high God, in such a sense as no creature can be; and this He declared but this morning in open court.

"When Pilate therefore heard this expression, he was still more afraid than before;* for the Romans

'*" (He was still more afraid than before.) Though I think with Mr. Cradock and several others, the interpretation given in the paraphrase is the most natural; yet, I cannot forbear mentioning that of Dr. Lardner, who thinks he was afraid of a sedition among the Jews, from his knowledge of their great ob

VOL. III.

E

believed many poetical stories of men begotten by their deities, and thought them a kind of demigods, who could not be injured without engaging their divine parents in the quarrel; and therefore apprehending that his wife's dream might also take its rise from such a cause, he entered again into the palace, and taking him aside, he said to Jesus, Tell me plainly from whence thou camest, and from whom art thou descended, and what is this divine original which thou art charged with claiming? * But Jesus knowing that his innocence was already apparent, even to the conviction of Pilate's conscience, gave him no answer to that question.

"Then Pilate in surprise, said to him, What, dost thou make me no reply, and not so much as speak to me in such a circumstance as this,

stinacy in any thing in which religion might seem to be concerned. And he adds, he might be the more reasonably alarmed on this head, as since the beginning of his government, he had met with two remarkable instances of their stiffness; one, in an attempt he made to bring the image of Cæsar into Jerusalem; the other, in a design he had formed of supplying the city with water, at the expense of the sacred treasury of the Temple."-See Lardner.

* "(Whence art thou ?) It is strange Mr. Locke should think, as he does in his Reasonableness of Christianity, vol. i. p. 133, that Christ declined giving him an answer, lest when he heard He was born at Bethlehem, he should have any such apprehensions as Herod had entertained. Pilate probably knew nothing at all of that prophecy; as Herod himself indeed did not, until he had learned it from the Jewish scribes, whom he consulted on Christ's birth. (Matt. ii. 4-6.) The answer which our Lord hath made to his former inquiries, showed how far He was from declining any danger; and the true reason of his present silence was, that Pilate's unsteady conduct, rendered him unworthy of any farther information."

in which thy life is so evidently concerned? Dost thou not know, that I have power and authority to crucify thee, and have power to release thee if I please, notwithstanding all the clamorous demands of thine enemies?* Jesus calmly replied, Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above" -that is, from my heavenly Father, who has delivered up this hour unto the power of darkness, and their agent's wicked men; and who, it was foreknown by him, whose omnipresent grasp includes the knowledge of past, present, and to come, would, by being allowed to pursue the natural inclination of their uncontrouled, malignant wills, accomplish the infliction of all the

* "(Dost thou not know, that I have power to crucify thee? &c.) Even they who maintain that the Jews had a power of executing capital sentences in Christ's time, acknowledge that power to have been under the control of the Roman governor; and that it was in fact so often controlled, that at last the Jewish sanhedrim removed from the chamber in which alone they could regularly pass them, that they might not have the mortification of seeing continually how little their decisions availed, when the most notorious criminal, if he had but money, could buy a pardon from their common masters. So that the dispute, after all the noise it has made in the learned world, seems at last to terminate in this nicety, whether the consent of the Roman governor were expressly asked, before the Jews proceeded to an execution, or were taken for granted, if the contrary did not appear? Or, in other words, whether the efficacy of a sentence passed by the Jews were owing to the express consent, or the connivance of the Romans? The conduct of the Jews in this case, seems to prove the former of these to have been the true state of the affair; and vindicates not only the substance of what Dr. Lardner has maintained, but the particular manner in which he expresses it."

barbarous sufferings their cruelty could devise against his beloved Son, though his foreknowledge had no influence on their apostate wills. Christ's errand on our earth was to glorify his Father, by overcoming evil by good; and in every instance of the melancholy recital now under contemplation, we find him gloriously achieving the purpose of his mission. Though He was, perhaps, more timidly averse than was ever human being to the endurance of corporeal torments-though struggling with unparalleled agonies of mind, from deprivation of his Father's consolation,-He never for a moment slunk or shrunk from sufferings or duty; nay, even (though from far different motives than those which influence a savage mind to dare an increase of torture) with unheard-of magnanimity, continued to avow the truth of those assertions which first caused his persecution, and which were certain to occasion to the uttermost, a continuation and savage augmentation of the cruel torments his barbarous foes were now inflicting on him.

At the commencement of this tragic scene, the noble Sufferer declared, it was an hour resigned by the Father unto the power of darkness; an hour wherein his almighty Son would openly display their impotence, by an opposition to all their machinations, delineating full perfection; He therefore calmly replied uuto the Roman governor's interrogatory-Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore, "He that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. And thou thyself

canst not but know, that on the principles of natural equity, an innocent person ought not to be given up to popular fury.

"And from this time, Pilate was so far satisfied of the injustice of the prosecution, and of the innocence of Jesus, that he endeavoured the more earnestly to release him. But the Jews still insisted on his passing sentence on him to be crucified: and apprehensive of the governor's design, that they might effectually put a stop to his intention of discharging him, they eagerly cried out, saying, If thou let this man go off with his life, thou art not Cæsar's friend, though thou bearest his commission, and representest his person; for every one that maketh himself a king of Judea, speaks against Cæsar our emperor, and in effect arraigns the legality of his government here.

When Pilate, therefore, heard that speech, he was very much alarmed, as he well knew how suspicious a prince Tiberius was, and how many spies he kept on all his officers, that nothing might be done or permitted by them in any of the provinces, which could at all interfere with his authority; and that he might not then be charged with any want of zeal for Cæsar's interest, he brought Jesus out of the palace again, and once more sat down on the tribunal which was then erected without the palace, in a place called in Greek, Lithostratan, or the Pavement, on ac

*

* "(As he well knew how suspicious a prince Tiberius was, &c.) Every body who knows the character of Tiberius, especially as illustrated by Suetonius, in his excellent history, will see how naturally Pilate might be apprehensive on this head."