put Him clown, — if we only dispute and reason and argue and cavil and denounce Hiin, but let Him have His liberty, let Him go where He pleases, let Hira do what He pleases, and preach what He pleases."
" Thus " can only mean " as at present, and hitherto."
[All men will believe on him.'] This means the bulk of the population will believe that He is what He professes to be, — the promised Messiah. The number of His adhereuts will increase, and faith in His Messiahship will become contagious, and spread all over Palestine.
The word " all," in this sentence, must evidently not be taken literally. It only means " the great mass of the people." It is like " all men come unto Him," said by the angry disciples of John the Baptist about Christ. (John iii. 36.) When men lose their tempers, and talk in passion, they are very apt to use exaggerated expressions.
[The Bomans come. ..take away... place... nation.'] The process of reasoning by which the Pharisees arrived at this conclusion was probably something of this kind. " This man, if let alone, will gather round Him a crowd of adherents, who will proclaim Him a Leader and King. This our governors, the Romans, will hear, and consider it a rebellion against their authority. Then they will send an army, deal with us as rebels, destroy Jerusa- lem and the temple, and carry away the whole Jewish nation, as the Babylonians did, into captivity."
In this wretched argument it is difficult to say which appears most prominent, ignorance or unbelief.
It was an ignorant argument. The Pharisees ought to have known well that nothing was further from our Lord's teaching than the idea of an earthly kingdom, supported by an armed force. He always proclaimed that His kingdom was not of this world, and not temporal, like Solomon's or David's. He had never hinted at any deliverance from Roman authority. He distinctly taught men to render to Caesar the things that were Caesar's, and had distinctly refused, when appealed to, to be "a Judge or divider " among the Jews. Such a person, therefore, was not the least likely to excite the jealousy of the Ro- mans.
It was an unbelieving argument. The Pharisees ought to have believed that the Romans could never have conquered and put down our Lord and His adherents, if He really was the Messiah, and could work miracles at His will. The Philistines could not overcome David, and the Romans could not have overcome David's greater Son. By their own showing, the Jewish nation would have had protection enough in the miracle-working power of our Lord.
That there was an expectation 1 1 iroughout the East, at the time of our Lord's ministry, that some remarkable person was