VII.

CHAP. all religion, and infringing on one of the positive commandments of their law, by persecuting to death an innocent man, they were withholden by religious scruple from entering the dwelling of Pilate; they were endangering the success of their cause, lest this intercourse with the unclean stranger should exclude them from the worship of their God — a worship for which they contracted no disqualifying defilement by this deed of blood. The deputation stood without the hall of Pilate*; and not even their animosity against Jesus could induce them to depart from that superstitious usage, to lend the weight of their personal appearance to the solemn accusation, or, at all events, to deprive the hated object of their persecution of any advantage which he might receive from undergoing his examination without being confronted with his accusers. Pilate seems to have paid so much respect to their usages, that he went out to receive their charge, and to inquire the nature of the crime for which Jesus was denounced.

tion before

Pilate.

The simple question put to Jesus, on his first interrogatory before Pilate, was whether he claimed the title of King of the Jews. The answer of Jesus may be considered as an appeal to the justice and Examina- right feeling of the governor. "As Roman prefect, have you any cause for suspecting me of ambitious or insurrectionary designs; do you entertain the least apprehension of my seditious demeanour; or are you not rather adopting the suggestions of my enemies, and lending yourself to their unwarranted animosity?" Pilate disclaims all commu+ John, xviii. 33-37.

* John, xviii. 28.

of the CHAP.

nion with the passions or the prejudices of the
Jewish rulers; but Jesus had been brought before
him, denounced as a dangerous disturber of the pub-
lic peace, and he was officially bound to take cogni-
sance of such a charge. In the rest of the defence
of Christ, the only part intelligible to Pilate would
be the unanswerable appeal to the peaceful con-
duct of his followers. When Jesus asserted that
he was a king, yet evidently implied a moral or
religious sense in his use of the term, Pilate might
attribute a vague meaning to his language, from
the Stoic axiom, I am a king when I rule myself *;
and thus give a sense to that which otherwise would
have sounded in his ears like unintelligible mysti-
cism. His perplexity, however, must have been
greatly increased when Jesus, in this perilous hour,
when his life trembled, at it were, on the balance,
declared that the object of his birth and of his life
was the establishment of "the truth." "To this
end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every
one that is of the truth heareth my voice." That
the peace of a nation or the life of an individual
should be endangered on account of the truth or
falsehood of any system of speculative opinions, was
so diametrically opposite to the general opinion and
feeling of the Roman world, that Pilate, either in
contemptuous mockery, or with the merciful de-
sign of showing the utter harmlessness and insig-

* Ad summum sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives
Liber, honoratus, pulcher. Rex denique regum.

Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 106. Comp. Sat. i. 3. 125.

At pueri ludentes, rex eris, inquit,

VII.

Si recte facies. Epist. i. 1. 59.

VII.

CHAP. nificance of such points, inquired what he meant by truth, what truth had to do with the present question, with a question of life and death, with a capital charge brought by the national council before the supreme tribunal. Apparently despairing, on one side, of bringing him, whom he seems to have considered a blameless enthusiast, to his senses; on the other, unwilling to attach so much importance to what appeared to him in so different a light, he wished at once to put an end to the whole affair. He abruptly left Jesus, and went out again to the Jewish deputation at the gate, (now perhaps increased by a greater number of the Sanhedrin,) and declared his conviction of the innocence of Jesus.

Pilate endeavours to save Jesus.

Clamours

of the accusers.

At this unexpected turn, the Sanhedrin burst into a furious clamour, reiterated their vague, perhaps contradictory, and to the ears of Pilate unintelligible or insignificant charges, and seemed determined to press the conviction with implacable animosity. Pilate turned to Jesus, who had been led out, to demand his answer to these charges. Jesus stood collected, but silent, and the astonishment of Pilate was still further heightened. The only accusation which seemed to bear any meaning, imputed to Jesus the raising tumultuous meetings of the people throughout the country, from Judæa to Galilee.* This incidental mention of Galilee, made perhaps with an invidious design of awakening in the mind of the governor the remembrance of the turbulent character of that people, suggested to Pilate a course by which he *Luke, xxiii. 5.

VII.

might rid himself of the embarrassment and re- CHAP. sponsibility of this strange transaction. It has been conjectured, not without probability, that the massacre of Herod's subjects was the cause of the enmity that existed between the tetrarch and the Roman governor. Pilate had now an opportunity at once to avoid an occurrence of the same nature, in which he had no desire to be implicated, and to make overtures of reconciliation to the native so. vereign. He was indifferent about the fate of Jesus, provided he could shake off all actual concern in his death; or he might suppose that Herod, uninfected with the inexplicable enmity of the chief priests, might be inclined to protect his innocent subject.

to Herod.

The fame of Jesus had already excited the cu- Jesus sent riosity of Herod, but his curiosity was rather that which sought amusement or excitement from the powers of an extraordinary wonder-worker, than that which looked for information or improvement from a wise moral, or a divinely-commissioned religious, teacher. The circumstances of the interview, which probably took place in the presence of the tetrarch and his courtiers, and into which none of the disciples of Jesus could find their way, are not related. The investigation was long; but Jesus maintained his usual unruffled silence, and at the close of the examination, he was sent back to Pilate. By the murder of John, Herod had incurred deep and lasting unpopularity; he might be unwilling to increase his character for cruelty by the same

*Luke, xxiii. 5-12.

Jesus sent

back with

insult.

VII.

CHAP. conduct towards Jesus, against whom, as he had not the same private reasons for requiring his support, he had not the same bitterness of personal animosity; nor was his sovereignty, as has before been observed, endangered in the same manner as that of the chief priests, by the progress of Jesus. Herod therefore might treat with derision what appeared to him an harmless assumption of royalty, and determine to effect, by contempt and contumely, that degradation of Jesus in the estimation of the people which his more cruel measures in the case of John had failed to accomplish. With his connivance, therefore, if not under his instructions, his soldiers (perhaps some of them, as those of his father had been, foreigners, Gaulish or Thracian barbarians) were permitted or encouraged in every kind of cruel and wanton insult. They clothed him, in mockery of his royal title, in a purple robe, and so escorted him back to Pilate, who, if he occupied part of the Herodion, not the Antonia, was close at hand, only in a different quarter of the same extensive palace.

The refusal of Herod to take cognisance of the charge renewed the embarrassment of Pilate, but a way yet seemed open to extricate himself from his difficulty. There was a custom, that in honour of the great festival, the Passover, a prisoner should be set at liberty at the request of the people.* The multitude had already become clamorous for their annual privilege. Among the half-robbers, half

* Matt. xxvii. 15—20.; Mark, xv. 6—11.; Luke, xxiii. 13—19.; John, xviii. 39.