CHAPTER XII.

IF NON-TOLERATION WAS PART OF THE DIVINE LAW AMONG THE JEWS, AND WHETHER IT WAS ALWAYS PUT IN PRACTICE.

By the divine law, I take to be understood those rules and precepts which have been given to us by God Himself. For example, he ordained that the Jews should eat a lamb dressed with bitter herbs, and standing with a staff in their hand, in remembrance of the Passover; that the consecration of the high-priest should be performed by touching the tip of his right ear, his right hand, and his right foot with blood; that the scapegoat should be charged with the sins of the people: he also forbade the eating of all shellfish, swine, hares, hedgehogs, owls, the heron, and the lapwing.[33]

He also instituted their several feasts and ceremonies; and all those things which appeared arbitrary to other nations, and subjected to positive law and custom, when commanded by God Himself, became a divine law to the Jews, in like manner as whatever Jesus Christ the Son of Mary and the Son of God has commanded us is to us a divine law.

But here let us not presume to inquire wherefore it has pleased God to substitute a new law in the room of that given to Moses, and wherefore He commanded Moses more things than he did the patriarch Abraham, and Abraham more than Noah.[34] In this he seems, with infinite condescension, to have accommodated himself to times and the state of population amongst the inhabitants of the earth; and in this gradation, to have shown his paternal love: but these are depths too profound for our weak faculties to measure; I shall therefore confine myself to my subject, and proceed to examine the state of non-toleration among the Jews.

It is certain, that in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy we find several very rigorous laws and severe punishments in relation to religious worship. Several able commentators have been greatly puzzled to reconcile these books of Moses with several passages in the prophets Jeremiah and Amos, and with the famous discourse of St. Stephen, as related in the Acts of the Apostles. Amos says that the Jews constantly worshipped in the wilderness, Moloch and Chiun, gods whom they had made to themselves.[35] And Jeremiah expressly says, that God commanded not their fathers concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices in the day that he brought them out of the land of Egypt.[36] And St. Stephen, in his discourse to the Jews previously mentioned, says: “They worshipped the host of heaven, and that they neither offered sacrifices nor slew beasts, for the space of forty years in the wilderness, but took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of their god Remphan.”[37]

Other critics again infer from the worship of so many strange gods here mentioned, that the Israelites were indulged with having these gods by Moses; and in support of their opinion they quote the following words in Deuteronomy: “When ye shall enter into the land of Canaan, ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.”[38][39]

And as a further proof, they say that there is no mention made of any religious act of the people of Israel while in the wilderness; neither the celebration of the Passover, nor of the Feast of the Tabernacles, nor of any public form of worship being established, nor even the practice of circumcision, the seal of the covenant made by God with Abraham.

They likewise refer to the history of Joshua, where this great conqueror thus addresses the Jews: “If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served in Mesopotamia or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell:” and the people said, “Nay, but we will serve the Lord our God (Adonai).” And Joshua said unto the people, “Ye have chosen, now therefore put away the strange gods which are among you.” Hence, say they, it is evident that the Israelites had other gods besides the Lord (Adonai) under Moses.

It is altogether needless to take up the reader’s time with an attempt to refute the opinions of those critics who think that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses. This subject has been sufficiently discussed long ago; and, even admitting that some few parts of it were written in the times of the Judges, the Kings, or the Prophets, it would not make the whole less inspired or divine. It is sufficient, in my opinion, if the Holy Scripture proves to us, that, notwithstanding the extraordinary punishments which the Jews called down upon themselves by their idolatrous worship of the golden calf, they continued for a long time to enjoy perfect liberty of conscience; and it is even probable, that Moses, after having massacred the twenty-three thousand, in the first transports of his rage against his brother and them for having erected this idol, finding that nothing was to be gained by such severity in matters of religion, was glad to wink at the fondness the people expressed for strange gods.

And indeed he himself appears soon after to have transgressed the very law which he had given:[40] for, notwithstanding his having forbidden all molten or graven images, we find him erecting the brazen serpent. And this law was again dispensed with by Solomon in the building of his temple; where that prince caused twelve brazen bulls to be placed as supporters to the great Laver; as also cherubim in the ark, which had two heads, one of an eagle and the other of a calf; and it was probable from this latter head, badly made, and found in the temple by the Roman soldiers at the time of their plundering of it, that the Jews were so long reported to have worshipped an ass. Moreover, notwithstanding the repeated prohibitions against the worship of false gods, Solomon, though giving way to the grossest idolatry, lived and died in peace. Jeroboam, to whom God himself gave ten parts out of twelve of the kingdom, set up two golden calves, and yet reigned two and twenty years, having united in his person the twofold dignity of monarch and of high-priest. The petty people of Judæa erected altars and images to strange gods under Rehoboam. Pious King Aza suffered the high places to remain undemolished. And lastly, Uriah, the high-priest, erected a brazen altar, which had been sent to him by the king of Syria, in the temple, in the place of the altar of burnt-offerings. In a word, we do not anywhere find the least constraint in point of religion among the Jews; it is true, indeed, that they frequently destroyed and murdered one another; but that was from motives of political concern, and not about the modes of belief. It is true, that among the prophets we find some making heaven a party in their vengeance. Elias, for instance, calls down fire from heaven to consume the priests of Baal. And Elisha sent bears to devour two and forty little children for calling him baldhead. But these miracles are very rare in their kind, and it would moreover be somewhat inhuman to desire to imitate them. We are also told that the Jews were a most ignorant and cruel people; and that in their war with the Midianites[41] they were commanded by Moses to kill all the male children and all the child-bearing women, and to divide the spoil.[42] They found in the enemy’s camp 675,000 sheep, 72,000 oxen, 61,000 asses, and 32,000 young maidens, and they took all the spoil and slew the captives. Several commentators will have it, that thirty-two of the young women were sacrificed to the Lord. “The Lord’s tribute was thirty and two persons.”[43]

It is evident that the Jews offered human sacrifices to God; witness that of Jephthah’s daughter,[44] and of King Agag hewed in pieces by the prophet Samuel.[45] And we find the prophet Ezekiel promising them, by way of encouragement, that they should feast upon human flesh: “Ye shall eat of the flesh of the horse, and of his rider, and ye shall drink the blood of the princes of the earth.”[46] But although the history of this people does not furnish us with one single act of generosity, magnanimity, or humanity, yet amidst so long and dismal a night of barbarism, there is continually breaking forth a cheering ray of universal toleration.

Jephthah, who was inspired of God, and who sacrificed to him his daughter, says to the chief of the Amorites, “Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? so whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive from before us, them will we possess.”[47] This declaration is express, and might be carried to a great length; however, it is at least an evident proof that God permitted the worship of Chemosh. For the words of the Holy Scripture are not “_Thou thinkest_ thou hast a right to possess that which thy god Chemosh giveth thee to possess,” but expressly, “_Thou hast_ a right to possess,” etc., for that is the true interpretation of the Hebrew words _Otho thirasch_.

The story of Micah and the Levite, related in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the Book of Judges, is a still more incontestable proof of this extensive toleration and liberty of conscience allowed among the Jews. The mother of Micah having lost eleven hundred shekels of silver, and her son having restored them to her, she dedicated or vowed them unto the Lord, and made images with them, and she built a small chapel and hired a Levite to officiate therein for ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel and his victuals. Then said Micah: “Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing that I have a Levite to be my priest.”[48]

In a short time after, six hundred men of the tribe of Dan, who were in search of some town which they might seize upon as an inheritance to dwell in, came to the house of Micah, where they found the Levite officiating; and having no priest of their own with them, and thinking that on that account God would not prosper their undertaking, they seized upon the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim belonging to Micah, and also the Levite, whom they took with them in spite of all the remonstrances of the latter, and the outcries of Micah and his mother. After this, full of assurance of success, they went and fell upon the city of Laish, and smote all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city to the ground, as was their usual custom; they then built them another city, and called its name Dan,[49] in remembrance of their victory; and they set up Micah’s graven image; and what is more remarkable, Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, was a priest of the temple, wherein the God of Israel and the idol of Micah were both worshipped at the same time.[50]

After the death of Gideon, the Israelites worshipped Baal-Perith for upwards of twenty years, and abandoned the worship of the true God, without any punishment being inflicted upon them for it, either by their chiefs, their judges, or their priests. This, I must confess, was a very heinous crime; but then, if even this idolatry was tolerated, how great must have been the differences of the true worship?

There are some persons, who, in support of non-toleration, bring us the authority of God Himself; who, having suffered His ark to fall into the hands of the Philistines in the day of battle, punished them only by afflicting them with an inward distemper, resembling the hæmorrhoids or piles, by breaking in pieces the statue of their god Dagon, and by sending a number of rats to devour the fruits of their lands. But when the Philistines, in order to appease his wrath, sent back the ark drawn by two cows that gave milk to their calves, and made an offering to the Lord of five golden rats, and the like number of golden hæmorrhoids, the Lord smote seventy of the Elders of Israel, and fifty thousand of the people, for having looked upon the ark. To this it may be answered, that the judgment of God was not, on this occasion, directed against any particular belief, any difference in worship, or idolatry.

If God had meant to punish idolatry, He would have destroyed all the Philistines who had attempted to seize upon His ark, and who were worshippers of the idol Dagon; whereas, we find Him smiting with death fifty thousand and seventy of His own people, for having looked upon His ark, which they ought not to have looked upon. So much did the laws and manners of those times and the Jewish dispensation differ from everything that we know, and so inscrutable are the ways of God to us! “The rigorous punishment,” says the learned Doctor Calmet, “inflicted on such a multitude of persons on this occasion, will appear excessive only to those who do not comprehend how greatly God would have Himself feared and respected among His chosen people, and who judge of the ways and designs of Providence only by the weak lights of their own reason.”

Here then God punished the Israelites, not for any strange worship, but for a profanation of His own; an indiscreet curiosity, a disobedience of His precepts, and perhaps an inward rebellious spirit. It is true, that such punishments appertain alone to the God of the Hebrews, and we cannot too often repeat, that those times and manners were altogether different from ours.

Again, we find, some ages after, when the idolatrous Naaman asked of Elijah if he might be allowed to follow his king up to the temple of Rimmon, and bow down himself there with him; this very Elijah,[51] who had before caused the little children to be devoured by bears only for mocking him, answered this idolater, “Go in peace.”

But this is not all; we find the Lord commanding Jeremiah to make him bonds and yokes, saying: “Put them upon thy neck,[52] and send them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon,” and he did so, bidding the messenger say to them in the name of the Lord: “I have given all your lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant.”[53] Here then we have God declaring an idolatrous prince his servant and favorite.

The same prophet having been cast into the dungeon by order of the Jewish king Zedekiah, and afterwards released by him, advises him in the name of God to submit himself to the king of Babylon, saying: “If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon’s princes, thy soul shall live.” God therefore takes part with an idolatrous king, and delivers into his hands His holy ark, the looking upon which only had cost the lives of fifty thousand and seventy Jews; and not only so, but also delivers up to him the Holy of Holies, together with the rest of the temple, the building of which had cost a hundred and eight thousand talents of gold, one million seventeen thousand talents of silver, and ten thousand drachmas of gold, that had been left by David and his great officers for building the house of the Lord; which, exclusive of the sums expended for that purpose by King Solomon, amounts to the sum of nineteen milliards, sixty-two millions, or thereabouts, of the present currency. Never, surely, was idolatry so nobly rewarded. I am sensible that this account is exaggerated, and that it seems to be an error of the copyist. But if we reduce the sum to one half, to a fourth, or even to an eighth part, it will still be amazing. But Herodotus’s account of the treasures which he himself saw in the temple of Ephesus is not less surprising. In fine, all the riches of the earth are as nothing in the sight of God; and the title of _my servant_, with which he dignified Nebuchadnezzar, is the true and invaluable treasure.

Nor does God show less favor to Kir, or Koresh whom we call Cyrus, and whom He calls His _Christ_, His _anointed_, though he never was anointed according to the general acceptation of that word, and was moreover a follower of the religion of Zoroaster, and a usurper in the opinion of the rest of mankind; yet him He calls His _shepherd_;[54] and we have not in the whole sacred writings so great an instance of divine predilection.

We are told by the prophet Malachi, that, “from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, the name of God shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place a pure offering shall be offered unto his name.”[55] God takes as much care of the idolatrous Ninevites as of His chosen Jews. Melchizedek, though no Jew, was the high-priest of the living God. Balaam, though an idolater, was His prophet. The Holy Scripture then teaches us, that God not only tolerated every other religion, but also extended His fatherly care to them all. And shall we, after this, dare to be persecutors?

Thus, then, under Moses, the Judges, and the Kings, we find numberless instances of toleration. Moreover, we are told by Moses, that “God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation.” This threat was necessary to a people to whom God had not revealed the immortality of the soul, and the rewards and punishment of a future state. These truths are not to be found in any part of the decalogue, nor in the Levitic or Deuteronomic law. They were the tenets of the Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Cretans, but made no part of the Jewish religion. Moses does not say, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest inherit _eternal_ life,” but “that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee”; that is, in this life; and the punishments with which he threatens them regard only the present mortal state; such as being smitten with the scab and with the itch, with blasting and with mildew; that they shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her; that they shall build houses, and others shall dwell therein; that they shall plant vineyards, and shall not gather the grapes thereof; that they shall eat the fruit of their own bodies, the flesh of their sons and of their daughters, and be obliged to bow down before the stranger that is within their gates;[56] but he never tells them that their souls are immortal, and shall taste of felicity or punishment after death. God, who conducted His people Himself, punished or rewarded them immediately according to their good or evil deeds. Everything relating to them was temporal, and this the learned Bishop Warburton brings as a proof of the divine origin of the Jewish law;[57] “inasmuch,” says he, “as God being their King, and exercising justice immediately upon them, according to their transgression or obedience, found it not necessary to reveal to them a doctrine which He reserved for after-times, when He should no longer so directly govern His people.” Those who through ignorance pretend that Moses taught the immortality of the soul, deprive the New Testament of one of its principal advantages over the Old. It is certain that the law of Moses taught only temporal punishments, extending to the fourth generation; and yet, notwithstanding the positive declaration of God delivered in this law, Ezekiel preached the very contrary to the Jews, telling them, “The son shall not bear the iniquities of the father;”[58][59] and in another place he goes so far as to make God say that “He had given them statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live.”[60]

Notwithstanding these contradictions, the book of Ezekiel was not the less admitted into the number of those inspired writers: It is true, that according to St. Jerome, the synagogue did not permit the reading of it till after thirteen years of age; but that was for fear their youth should make a bad use of the too lively description, in the sixteenth and twenty-third chapters, of the whoredoms of Aholah and Aholibah.

But when the immortality of the soul came to be a received doctrine,[61] which was probably about the beginning of the Babylonish captivity, the sect of Sadducees still continued to believe that there were no rewards or punishments after death, and that the faculties of the soul perished with us in like manner as those of the body. They also denied the existence of angels. In a word, they differed much more from the other Jews than the Protestants do from the Catholics; nevertheless, they lived in peaceable communion with their brethren; and some of their sect were admitted to the high-priesthood.

The Pharisees held fatality or predestination,[62] and believed in the Metempsychosis;[63] the Essenians thought that the souls of the just went into some happy islands,[64] and those of the wicked into a kind of Tartarus, or hell. They offered no sacrifices, and assembled together in particular synagogues of their own. In a word, if we examine closely into the Jewish economy, we shall be surprised to find the most extensive toleration prevailing amidst the most shocking barbarities. This is indeed a contradiction, but almost all people have been governed by contradictions. Happy are those whose manners are mild, while their laws are bloody!

Let us now see whether Christ established sanguinary laws, whether He enjoined non-toleration, instituted the horrors of the inquisition, or the butchery of an _auto da fé_.

There are, unless I am much mistaken, very few passages in the New Testament from which the spirit of persecution can have inferred that tyranny and constraint in religious matters are permitted: one is the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king who made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to invite guests to the wedding, saying, “Tell them which were bidden, my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready; come unto the marriage.”[65] But those who were bidden made light of the invitation, one going to his farm and another to his business, and the rest of them took the king’s servants and slew them. Upon which he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burnt up their city. After this he sent out into the highways to invite all that could be found to come to the marriage; but one of the guests happening to sit down to table without a wedding garment, the king ordered him to be bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.

But it is clear that this allegory relates only to the kingdom of heaven; therefore, assuredly no man can assume a right from thence to fetter or imprison his neighbor who should come to dine with him without being properly dressed; nor do I believe that history furnishes us with any instance of a prince causing one of his courtiers to be hanged upon such an occasion; and there is little reason to apprehend that when the emperor sent his pages to any of the princes of the empire to invite them to an entertainment those princes would fall upon the pages and kill them.

The invitation to the marriage feast is a type of the preaching of the gospel, and the murder of the king’s servants is figurative of the persecution of those who preach wisdom and virtue.

The other parable is that of a private person who made a great supper, to which he invited many of his friends,[66] and when he was ready to sit down to table sent his servants to tell them that all things were ready; but one excused himself by saying that he had bought a piece of ground and must needs go and see it, an excuse which was not admissible, as no one goes to visit their lands in the night-time; another said he had bought five yoke of oxen and was going to prove them; he was as much to blame as the other, since no one would go to prove oxen at supper-time; the third said he had married a wife and could not come; this last was certainly a very good excuse. The master of the house being very angry at this disappointment, told his servants to go into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in the poor, and the maimed, the halt and the blind; this being done, and finding that there was yet room, he said unto his servant, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them (that you find) to come in.”

It is true that we are not expressly told that this parable is a type of the kingdom of heaven, and the words “compel them to come in” have been perverted to very bad purposes; but it is very evident that one single servant could not _forcibly_ compel every person he met to come and sup with his master; besides, the company of people so compelled would not have made the supper very agreeable. “Compel them to come in,” therefore, means nothing more, according to commentators of the best reputation, than pray, desire, press them to come in; therefore, what connection, for heaven’s sake, can prayers and invitations have with persecution?

But to take things in a literal sense, is it necessary to be maimed, halt, and blind, or to be compelled by force to enter into the bosom of the Church? Christ says in the same parable: “When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy rich kinsmen”; but did any one ever infer from this that we should never dine or sup with our friends or kinsmen if they happen to be worth money?

Our Saviour, after this parable of the feast, says: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, his wife and children, his brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple,” etc. But is there any person living so unnatural as to conclude from this that he ought to hate his father and mother and his nearest relations? And is it not evident to one of the meanest capacity that the true interpretation of these words is: hesitate not between me and your dearest affections?

The following passage in the eighth chapter of St. Matthew is also quoted: “Whosoever heareth not the word of God shall be like to an heathen, and like one who sitteth at the receipt of custom”; but certainly this is not saying that we ought to persecute all unbelievers and custom-house officers; they are frequently cursed indeed, but they are not delivered up to the arm of secular power. And so far from depriving the latter of any part of the prerogatives of citizens, they are indulged with the greatest privileges; and though their profession is the only one condemned in Scripture, it is of all others the most protected and favored by every government. Why then should we not show some indulgence to our brethren who are unbelievers, while we load with benefits our brethren the tax-gatherers?

Another passage which has been grossly abused is that in St. Matthew and St. Mark, where we are told that Jesus being hungry in the morning, and coming to a fig tree which had no leaves—for it was not the time of figs—Jesus cursed the tree and it immediately dried up.

This miracle has been explained in several different ways, but not one of them appears to authorize persecution. Though a fig tree could not be expected to bear fruit in the beginning of March, yet we find it blasted; but is that a reason why we should blast our brethren with affliction in all seasons of the year? When we meet with anything in holy writing that may occasion doubts in our vain and inquisitive minds, we should pay it all due reverence, but let us not make use of it to countenance cruelty and persecution.

The spirit of persecution which perverts everything has also strained in its own vindication the story of Christ driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and that of his sending a legion of devils out of the body of the man possessed with an evil spirit into two thousand unclean animals; but cannot any one perceive that these two instances were no other than acts of justice, which God Himself deigned to execute for a contravention of His law? It was a disrespect shown to the house of the Lord to change His dwelling into a market for buyers and sellers. And although the Sanhedrim and its priests might permit this traffic for the greater convenience of their sacrifices, yet the God to whom these sacrifices were offered might, doubtless, though under a human shape, overturn this profane practice. In the same manner might He punish those who brought into the country whole troops of those animals which were prohibited by the law of which He Himself deigned to be an observer. These two examples, then, have not the least connection with persecution for religion’s sake; and the spirit of non-toleration must certainly be founded upon very false principles when it everywhere seeks such idle pretexts.

Christ, in almost every other part of His gospel, both by His words and actions, preaches mildness, forbearance and indulgence. Witness the father who receives his prodigal son, and the workman who comes at the last hour and yet is paid as much as the others; witness the charitable Samaritan, and Christ Himself, who excuses His disciples for not fasting, who pardons the woman who had sinned, and only recommends fidelity for the future to the woman caught in adultery. He even condescends to partake of the innocent mirth of those who have met at the marriage feast in Cana, and who being already warmed with wine and wanting still more, Christ is pleased to perform a miracle in their favor by changing their water into wine. He is not even incensed against Judas, whom He knew to be about to betray Him; He commands Peter never to make use of the sword, and reprimands the sons of Zebedee, who, after the example of Elias, wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume a town in which they had been refused a lodging. In a word, He Himself died a victim to malice and persecution; and, if one might dare to compare God with a mortal and sacred things with profane, His death, humanly speaking, had a great resemblance to that of Socrates. The Greek philosopher suffered for the hatred of the sophists, the priests and the heads of the people; the Christian Law-giver, by that of the Scribes, Pharisees and priests. Socrates might have avoided death, but would not; Christ offered Himself a voluntary sacrifice. The Greek philosopher not only pardoned his false accusers and iniquitous judges, he even desired them to treat his children as they had done himself, should they, like him, one day be happy enough to deserve their hatred. The Christian Law-giver, infinitely superior to the heathen, besought His Father to forgive His enemies. If Christ seemed to fear death, and if the agonies He was in at its approach drew from Him sweat mixed with blood, which is the most violent and rare of all symptoms, it was because He condescended to submit to every weakness of the human frame, which He had taken upon Him; His body trembled, but His soul was unshaken. By His example we may learn that true fortitude and greatness consist in supporting those evils at which our nature shrinks. It is the height of courage to meet death at the same time that we fear it.

Socrates accused the sophists of ignorance and convicted them of falsehood; Jesus, in His godlike character, accused the Scribes and Pharisees of being hypocrites, blind guides and fools, and a race of vipers and serpents.

Socrates was not accused of attempting to found a new sect, nor was Christ charged with endeavoring to introduce a new one. We are told in St. Matthew that the great men and the priests and all the council sought false witness against Jesus to put Him to death.

Now, if they were obliged to seek for false witnesses, they could not charge Him with having preached openly against the law; besides, it was evident that He complied in every respect with the Mosaic law from His birth to His death. He was circumcised the eighth day like other Jewish children; He was baptized in Jordan, agreeable to a ceremony held sacred among the Jews and among all the other people of the east. All impurities of the law were cleansed by baptism; it was in this manner their priests were consecrated at the solemn feast of the expiation, every one plunged himself in the water, and all new-made proselytes underwent the same ceremony.

Moreover, Jesus observed all the points of the law; He feasted every Sabbath day, and He abstained from forbidden meats; He kept all the festivals, and even before His death He celebrated that of the Passover; He was not accused of embracing any new opinion, nor of observing any strange rites. Born an Israelite, He always lived as an Israelite.

He was accused, indeed, by two witnesses of having said that He could destroy the Temple and build it up again in three days; a speech altogether unintelligible to the carnal Jews, but which did not amount to an accusation of seeking to found a new sect.

When He was examined before the high priest, this latter said to him: “I command you, in the name of the living God, to tell us if Thou art Christ, the Son of God.” We are not told what the high priest meant by the Son of God. This expression was sometimes made use of to signify a just or upright man,[67] in the same manner as the words son of Belial, to signify a wicked person. The carnal Jews had no idea of the sacred mystery of the Son of God, God Himself coming upon earth.

Jesus answered the high priest, “thou hast said; nevertheless, I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”[68]

This answer was looked upon by the whole assembly as a blasphemy. But the Sanhedrim having no longer the power of life and death, they falsely accused Jesus before the Roman governor of the province of being a disturber of the public peace, and one who, said they, should not pay tribute to Cæsar; and, moreover, called Himself King of the Jews. It is therefore incontestably evident that he was accused of a crime against the state.

Pilate being informed that He was a Galilean, sent Him immediately to Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee. This latter, thinking it impossible that a person of Jesus’ appearance should pretend to be the head of a party, or aspire to royalty, treated Him with great contempt, and sent Him back again to Pilate, who had the infamous weakness to condemn Him to death as the only means to appease the tumult raised against himself; more especially as he had lately experienced the revolt of the Jews, as we are told by Josephus. On this occasion Pilate did not show the same generosity which the governor Festus did afterwards.

I now desire to know whether toleration or non-toleration appears to be of divine prescription? Let those who would resemble Christ be martyrs and not executioners.