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CHAP. LVL

1 Matt. 22.

15-22. Mark

13-17.

12th Nisan,

sunset to Tues

(2-3 April).

IT

CHAPTER LVI.

JERUSALEM.

was still Tuesday, and Jesus still remained in the Temple courts. The deputation from the Temple authorities Luke 20.20-26. had come to Him in the early morning, only to retire Monday at mortified and silenced, but the heads of all parties were day at sunset threatened by One who demanded changes so fundamental. All alike, therefore, however hostile at other times, made common cause in trying to get the hated Reformer into their power. It was the same spirit, as, in after ages, when far less fiercely roused, burned Arnold of Brescia, and John Huss, and strangled and burnt Savonarola, and slew the thousands of victims of the Inquisition:-the non possumus of a corrupt ecclesiastical corporation, which would murder in the name of God, because that could be called orthodoxy; but would not reform, because to do so would touch their interests and their order.

Plot, therefore, thickened on plot. Having themselves failed, the authorities sent some of the Pharisees in company with some Herodians, otherwise their deadly enemies, to try to commit Him by the answers He might give to treacherous questions. Obscure men were chosen, men unknown to Jesus. They were to pretend themselves anxious, as sincere Jews, scrupulous in all duties, to get His counsel on a point much disputed. The snare was no longer laid in the sphere of Rabbinical law, but in the more dangerous one of political obligation, that an ambiguous answer might compromise Him before the Roman procurator. If they succeeded, it would at once transfer the odium of His arrest from themselves: ensure His not being

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