but had been sometime sitting, pro tribunali, when he received it and the final end of mentioning the fact at all seems to have been the desire of specifying one more, among the other reasons which would have prevailed with Pilate to release our Saviour, if the people could have been persuaded to relent.

This point then being presumptively established, we may arrange the order of events from that time forward, in conformity to it, as follows:

I. Pilate being seated pro tribunali, and Jesus officially arraigned before him, the accusation of the chief priests and of the rest of the Sanhedrim, as recorded by St. Luke: the nature of which was such as evidently to concern the jurisdiction of the lieutenant of Cæsar.

II. The question of Pilate addressed to Jesus, founded upon the previous accusation, and explained antecedently by it; Art thou the King of the Jews? with the answer of Jesus in the affirmative, (which is that good confession, witnessed before Pontius Pilate, referred to by St. Paul, 1 Tim. vi. 13,) recorded alike by all the three Evangelists.

III. The continuance, in the next place, of what may be considered the reiterated accusations of the Scribes and Pharisees, as attested by St. Matthew and St. Mark-and the silence of Jesus against them all; a silence which excited the surprise of Pilate, and, to express that surprise, produced the repetition of his question to him.

IV. The address of Pilate to the leading men and to the multitude present, according to St. Luke—declaring his conviction of the innocence of Jesus, as founded upon the preceding examination; which, if it was an attempt to procure his liberation, was the first such attempt in the course of this examination, but the

fourth which had occurred in all: then, their renewed accusations, denying his innocence; and from the mention of Galilee, arising out of those accusations, Pilate's inquiry if Jesus were a Galilean; and, upon finding that to be the case, (according to the common opinion that our Lord was born at Nazareth,) his sending him forthwith to Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, (who was present himself in Jerusalem at the same occasion of the Passover,) as to his proper master.

This mission we may presume would take place about the end of the first hour of the day; or our seven in the morning; but not later. Of its probable motive of the quarrel preexisting between Herod and Pilate-and of the reconciliation between them, effected this day, and in consequence, as it would seem, of this very act, something has been said in Dissertation xxxv. of the present work, to which I refer the reader. For the mention however of the fact, and for the account of what passed before Herod, to whom our Lord's accusers were sent as well as himself, similar altogether to what had just passed before Pilate, we are indebted solely to St. Luke. The going and the returning, with the transaction of the proceedings between, would necessarily take up some time; yet not so much but that Pilate might still wait in his seat upon the tribunal for the return of the prisoner, and of his accusers. His object in sending them to Herod might be not only to pay a compliment to that prince, but also to strengthen the argument for the release of Jesus; if it should appear that Herod likewise, as well as himself, had found no fault in him.

V. During this interval therefore, and while he was still sitting pro tribunali, I would place the message of his wife.

VI. Upon the reappearance of Jesus, whom Herod

sent back, clothed in the mockery of a royal dress, as he had been by Pilate, and with the same view in this instance also, viz. to express his contempt of the charge brought against him; I suppose those words to have immediately ensued, which conclude the account of St. John, xix. 14. from kai Xéyei Tois 'Iovdaíois, to 15. inclusive, prior to the delivery of Jesus up to be crucified. In calling him their King it is manifest that Pilate was speaking ironically; and even the irony is naturally accounted for by the return and production of Jesus, still wearing the purple robe, which Herod had put upon him.

VII. The chief priests therefore as our Lord's accusers, and the rest of the multitude, being again assembled before Pilate sitting pro tribunali in his former attitude, and Jesus also being present in public, the language of irony is dropped, and the people are addressed in the serious manner recorded by St. Luke, xxiii. 13-16, concluding with a proposal to inflict a moderate chastisement on the accused party, such as might seem to be due for aspiring, however innocently, at the name of King; and so to let him go: the fact of which proposal, under such circumstances, is substantially confirmed by St. Matthew and by St. Mark; and makes the second instance of the kind since the commencement of this examination, but the fifth which had occurred upon the whole.

VIII. Though the proposal was rejected-yet was it renewed once and again; making together the third and the fourth instance respectively, since the beginning of this trial in public, but the sixth and the seventh in all: and these are instances recorded by each of the three Evangelists, and in terms, especially as concerns the second of them, very much the same.

IX. The obstinacy of the Jews remaining invincible,

Pilate now takes water; and to attest his own innocency in consenting to the death of Jesus out of deference to their importunity, performs before the eyes of the people the symbolical action recorded by St. Matthew alone.

X. This being done, and the sacrifice of Jesus to the will of the people being now resolved upon-as a necessary preliminary to the execution of his sentence, according to the custom of the Roman law *, he is first scourged with rods, and then given up to the insults of the soldiers, assembled together for that purpose †. The scourging took place in public, and was the second instance of the infliction of such violence upon our Saviour this morning; but the mockery was confined to the Prætorium, where the robe and the crown of thorns, spoken of here by St. Matthew and St. Mark, had been employed, as we learned from St. John, for a like purpose not long before; and would consequently be ready for the same use now. The purple robe, in which Jesus returned from Herod, either had been taken off from him before the address of Pilate recorded under Article VII. or would necessarily be removed from his person previous to the infliction of the scourging and that putting of such a robe on again, which is here ascribed to the soldiers, might literally take place. Upon the detail of these particulars, both as something minutely related by his predecessors, and, as part of the history of our Lord's contumelious treat

* Thus it is that Josephus, in a like case, specifies the conduct of Gessius Florus, as scourging certain Jewish knights before he crucified them: οὓς, μάστιξι προαικισάμενος, ἀνεσταύρωσεν. Bell. Jud. ii. xiv. 9.

+ Compare with this account

of the honours paid in mockery to our Saviour, the description of the affronts put upon Herod Agrippa by the Alexandrian mob, as recorded by Philo Judæus, ii. 522. 1. 26. et seqq. Adversus Flaccum.

ment in general, because they bore no indefinite resemblance to what had been experienced by him from the Sanhedrim before; St. Luke, with his usual regard to conciseness, is silent.

XI. The insults of the band being concluded, and Jesus being again clothed in his own raiment, he is finally consigned to the four soldiers who were to accomplish his execution; and led away from the Prætorium to be crucified. This fact is specified by all the Evangelists; and with it the third of our divisions expires. Before however we proceed to the fourth, it may be necessary to pause for the sake of one or two observations on the preceding account.

First; if upon its own grounds of probability, the position, that the detail of proceedings before Pilate, in the first three Evangelists, belongs to a different point of time from the detail of the same proceedings in the fourth, can be satisfactorily established; we are not called upon, and perhaps it may not be easy for us, to assign the reasons why this was the case. The former Evangelists had doubtless their motives for what they have done both in this instance, and in every similar instance, besides this. Among the presumptive causes, however, which may be supposed to have produced this effect, I would enumerate the following.

I. The course of proceedings before Pilate, from the time when he assumed the tribunal, acquired the appearance of a regular trial, conducted with the usual forms and solemnities of the Roman law; which it had not acquired until then. This point of time, therefore, constituted a new apx", a determinate period both before and after, from which, and with which, an historical account of the whole transaction might properly begin.

II. The train of events from this time forward tend