The history of our Lord is but too just a comment on this prophecy : for surely there never was a per- son treated with such flagrant injustice as he. His enemies, unable to lay any thing to his charge, suborned false witnesses, that they might take away his life by perjury : and when these agreed not in their testimony, they laid hold of an expression used by him some years before, and put a different con- struction upon it from what he ever intended, in order to found on that a ground of accusation against him. They dragged him from one tribunal to ano- ther in hopes of obtaining sentence against him : and when the governor, after repeated examinations, de- clared that he could find no fault in him, they would not suffer him to pass such a sentence as law and equity demanded, but in a tumultuous and threatening manner, compelled him to deliver him up into their hands, and to sanction their cruelties by his official mandate. The particular injustice, which we are more immediately called to notice, was, that they never' once summoned any witnesses to speak on his behalf. If they had permitted the herald, as on other occasions, to invite all who knew the prisoner to give testimony to his character, how many thousands could have disproved the accusations of his enemies, and established his reputation on the firmest basis ! What multitudes could have affirmed, that, instead
e Acts xxvi. 4, 5. f Acts viii. 33.