serving, officer, who probably had not accustomed himself to distinguish the different degrees of respect that are due to good and bad magistrates, "gave Jesus a blow, or rap with a rod," (εωκε ραπισμα τω Ιησον) saying, "Answerest thou the high priest so?" (v. 22,) which open injustice, to a person uncondemned, (even while he stood in the presence of the magistrate, who ought to have protected him,) drew a farther remonstrance, even from the meekest and humblest man that ever was on earth, though the same divine person afterwards suffered much greater indignities in silence! For, "Jesus answered him,"—" If I have spoken evil," said he, "bear witness of the evil: but, if well, why smitest thou me?" (v. 23.)
This showed that the reprehension of magistrates and and their officers, for injustice and abuse of power, is not inconsistent with the strictest rules of Christian passive obedience; and, though the apostle Paul, in a similar case, used much harsher language, yet his censure was undoubtedly just and true, and the severity of his expressions was plainly justified (as I have already shown) by the event! i. e. by the fatal catastrophe of Ananias. The law, therefore, which forbids the speaking evil of the ruler of the people, is certainly to be understood with proper exceptions, so as not to exclude any just censure of rulers, when their abuse of office, and the cause of truth and justice, may render such censure expedient and seasonable. That the apostle Paul thus understood the text in question, is manifest from his manner of quoting it, when he was charged with reviling God's high priest, if the severity of his censure be compared with the indifference which he showed, immediately afterwards, towards the offended Sadducee, by openly professing himself to he of an opposite party, and by throwing an oblique charge against the whole body of Sadducees, as the principal authors of the unjust persecution against himself,—"I am a Pharisee," (said he,) "the son of a Phasieee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead am I called in question." (Acts xxiii. G. ) Thus he manifestly threw the whole blame upon the
