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age people will think for themselves, when God's truth comes into a land. Prisons and threats and penalties cannot prevent men thinking. Mind and thought cannot be chained. When ecclesiastical tyrants burn martyrs, aud destroy Bibles, and si- lence preachers, they forget there is one thing they cannot do. They cannot stop the inward machinery of people's thoughts.
The expression, " went away," will hardly bear the sense put on it by Pearce, of " withdrawing themselves from the service of the synagogue." It probably only means " went to Bethany." Bloomfield says, " it denotes their ceasing to pay that regard to the teaching of the Scribes, which they formerly had done."
[And believed in Jesus.~\ I dare not think that this " believing " means more than intellectual conviction that Jesus must be the Messiah. I see no evidence that it means the faith of the heart. Yet it is probable this was exactly the state of mind in which many hundreds or thousands of Jews were before the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the day of Pentecost, convinced but not converted, persuaded that Jesus was the Christ of God, but afraid to confess Him. Hence on the day of Pentecost we can- not doubt that many hundreds of Peter's hearers were prepared to believe. The stony ground of prejudice and ignorant adhe- sion to Judaism had been broken to pieces, and the seed fell in- to soil prepared for it.
Poole thinks that Lazarus after his marvellous resurrection, "possibly spake of it, to the honour and glory of God," and that this excited the special anger of the priests.