what more, would be abundantly sufficient for that purpose.

Of this examination, if it was really followed by another, no more, for an obvious reason, might be recorded by St. Luke than the fact of the injurious and insulting usage, which was heaped upon our Lord at its close. No such usage followed after the next; and it was too important a part of our Lord's humiliation, and too essential to the fulfilment of prophecy, to be lightly passed over. One article of these indignities themselves, such as is specified Luke xxii. 64, is a critical proof that Jesus was now, and had been before, formally put upon his trial. To have endured this particular kind of affront, he must have been bareheaded; and that to remove the covering of the head from an accused person, when brought to trial, especially in cases of a more aggravated description, was a practice among the Jews may be collected from Philo; ἵν ̓ ἐπικρίνηται γεγυμνωμένῃ τῇ κεφαλῇ, τὸ τῆς αἰδοῦς περιῃρημένη σύμβολον, ᾧ ταῖς εἰς ἅπαν ἀναιτίαις ἔθος χρῆσθαι κ.

III. An examination, also before the Sanhedrim, but omitted by the two former Evangelists, and therefore recorded by St. Luke; the fact of which I infer for the following reasons.

Because even in St. Matthew and St. Mark there is ground of presumption enough to authorize the belief of it; for they each say that, πρωΐας γενομένης, οι ἐπὶ τὸ πρωΐ, the whole council consulted together, expressly upon the topic how they might put Jesus to death. Notwithstanding then the result of the previous deliberation, they were still at a loss about that point; and in order to remove this difficulty, they might call in our Lord before them again.

Because this examination in St. Luke is affirmed to

* Operum ii. 309. l. 15—17. De Specialibus Legibus. Vide also Numb. v. 18.

have taken place ὡς ἐγένετο ἡμέρα ; which denotes the same time of the morning as πρωΐας γενομένης, οι ἐπὶ τὸ

pw. It took place, then, after the examination on the one hand, and at the time of the consultation on the other, spoken of in St. Matthew and in St. Mark respectively.

Because the former examination clearly took place in the palace of the high priest, but this, as we may infer from verse 66, in the usual council-chamber of the Sanhedrim; which, according to the rabbinical writers, was not in the palace of the high priest, but in the temple. In conclavi cæsi lapidis consessus magnus Israelis sedebat, ac etiam judicabat sacerdotes1. This conclave was situated partim in sancto, and partim in profano; that is, it stood upon the confines of the priests' court and of the men's. At the time of the former examination, so early in the morning, the temple would be shut up; but at the time of the latter, viz. after the dawn of day, it would be open: and there is reason to conclude from Matt. xxvii. 1. 5, that the very consultation there spoken of was held in the temple.

Because by the use of the term àvýyayov, prior to this examination, St. Luke may be thought to imply that this was a second instance of our Lord's being brought before the Sanhedrim.

Because he clearly makes this examination a later event than the injurious usage, which St. Matthew and St. Mark both specified as the direct and immediate result of the former.

Because the circumstances of the two examinations were materially different: in proof of which assertion it is sufficient to mention first, that two distinct questions, designed to make our Lord criminate himself,

1 Mishna, v. 378. 3. iv. 255. 2. Vide also Maimonides, De Synedrio, et De Apparatu Templi, v. 17.

were now put; one, Art thou the Christ? the other, Art thou the Son of God? which before were put both at once: secondly, that they were put by all the Sanhedrim now, but by the high priest alone before: thirdly, that the answers returned by our Lord now were not the same with those returned by him before. Because St. Luke may be supposed to refer to the preceding examination, as recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, at verse 71, where he alludes to the same want of testimony, which had been the great difficulty before, as continuing still: yet of this want of testimony, and consequently of the meaning of the allusion couched beneath those words, it would not be possible, from the information which he supplies himself, even to form an idea. The chief motive to a second examination by the Sanhedrim was therefore still this difficulty; in order to remove which, they judged it most expedient to make our Lord furnish matter of accusation against himself, by his answers to such questions as, with that view, were purposely put unto him. Accordingly, the legal charge, on which they subsequently denounced him to Pilate, and demanded his death, the charge of blasphemy, was the very charge so elicited in his professing himself the Son of God. Not but that other reasons might cooperate to the same effect; such as a fuller attendance of the Sanhedrim at this time than before, the satisfaction of every remaining scruple, a determination to have positive and irrefragable proof of what they considered our Saviour's guilt; but principally perhaps the informality of the season when the former examination had been held; since, according to Maimonides, Judicia neque noctu, neque sabbatho, peragere licitum eratNon inchoant judicia noctu: for this consideration

m De Jurejurando, vi. 7. Dithmari Annott.

alone might require a renewal of the trial in the morning, even though their minds had been satisfied withthe result of the examination during the night.

That they were scrupulously observant of the forms of their law at least appears, first, from the pains which they took to procure the legal number of witnesses ", whose testimony, though false, might agree together; and secondly, from their condemning our Lord at last upon a legal charge, which required instantaneous death, the charge of blasphemy; and their taking him immediately to Pilate, as to the executioner of their sentence; which was all that they could do. The remarkable coincidence by which the Gospel of St. John, in his account of the cleansing of the temple at the first Passover, proleptically illustrates and confirms the truth of the material fact now alleged against our Lord by these two witnesses, three years after it happened; and with so much of misrepresentation as, while it justifies its being called a false witness, was yet possible and probable at that distance of time subsequently has often been pointed out, and need not now be insisted on. All which I shall say about it is, that nothing can prove more distinctly the difference of the cleansing in St. Matthew or St. Mark from this in St. John, than the consideration that while each relates the fact of the cleansing only three days before, and the fact of the false allegation founded upon it, three days afterward, they are totally silent upon the matter of fact which gave occasion to the allegation itself. No such matter of fact occurred at the time of the cleansing which they record; and, therefore, if any such occurred at the time of the cleansing recorded by St. John, that cleansing must have been totally dif ferent from their's.

n Numb. xxxv. 30. Deut. xvii. 6. xix. 15.

With regard to the times of the denials of Peter, they synchronized with the first and the second of the above examinations of our Lord; that is, the first denial happened a little before the first examination, and the third a little before the close of the second. The second, therefore, came between the two.

For St. John informs us that when Jesus was first conducted to the hall of the high priest, which must have been from the house of Annas, Peter and himself followed him thither; and the other Evangelists, so far as regards the attendance of Peter, unanimously confirm St. John. He informs us also that being personally known to the high priest, and consequently to the keeper of his door, in this instance one of his female servants; (nor was the practice of having female doorkeepers unusual among the Jews, but on the contrary of great antiquity, μήτε τὴν θυρωρὸν ἐγρηγορυίαν being a statement of Josephus' with reference to the time of David ;) he spoke to her in behalf of Peter, who had not yet ventured to come in; and so brought him into the palace also. At this time, as each of the accounts attests, it was early in the morning; and it being likewise the spring-time of the year, the night, always cold in Judæa, was perhaps more so than usual and consequently a fire had been lighted in the lower part of the hall to warm the parties present; down by which Peter sat with the rest, to observe, as we are told, the event.

Hereupon, as we are informed by St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, (and it is by no means inconsistent with the account of the same thing by St. John,) the female who kept the door, and had recently let him in, and whose suspicions of the fact had probably been raised by the very circumstance of John's speak

o Ant. Jud. vii. ii. 1.