Immediately after this kind of sacerdotal verdict rendered against Jesus,
the acts of violence and insults recommenced with increased strength; the
fury of the judge must have communicated itself to the bystanders. St.
Matthew says: “Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and
others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us,
thou Christ; who is he that smote thee?” Matt. xxvi. 67, 68.
Mr. Salvador does not contest the truth of this ill treatment. In page 88
he says, “It was contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew law, and that it was
not according to the order of nature, that a senate composed of the most
respectable men of a nation,—that a senate, which might perhaps be
mistaken, but which thought it was acting mildly, should have permitted
such outrages against him whose life it held in its own hands. The writers
who have transmitted these details to us, not having been present
themselves at the trial, were disposed to overcharge the picture, either
on account of their own feelings, or to throw upon their judges a greater
odium.”
I repeat; this ill treatment was entirely contrary to the spirit of the
law. And what do I want more, since my object is to make prominent _all
the violations of law_.
“It is not in nature to see a body, which respects itself, authorize such
attempts.” But of what consequence is that, when the fact is established?
“The historians, it is said, were not present at the trial.” But was Mr.
Salvador there present himself, so that he could give a flat denial of
their statements? And when even an able writer, who was not an
eye-witness, relates the same events after the lapse of more than eighteen
centuries, he ought at least to bring opposing evidence, if he would
impeach that of contemporaries; who, if they were not in the very hall of
the council, were certainly on the spot, in the vicinity, perhaps in the
court yard, inquiring anxiously of every thing that was happening to the
man whose disciples they were.(409) Besides, the learned author whom I am
combating says, in the outset (p. 81), “it is from the Gospels themselves
that he will take all his facts.” He must then take the whole together, as
well those which go to condemn, as those which are in palliation or
excuse.
Those gross insults, those inhuman acts of violence, even if they are to
be cast upon the servants of the high priest and the persons in his train,
do not excuse those individuals, who, when they took upon themselves the
authority of judges, were bound at the same time to throw around him all
the protection of the law. Caiaphas, too, was culpable as the master of
the house (for every thing took place in his house), even if he should not
be responsible as high priest and president of the council for having
permitted excesses, which, indeed were but too much in accordance with the
rage he had himself displayed upon the bench.
These outrages, which would be inexcusable even towards a man irrevocably
condemned to punishment, were the more criminal towards Jesus, because,
legally and judicially speaking, there had not yet been any sentence
properly passed against him according to the public law of the country; as
we shall see in the following section, which will deserve the undivided
attention of the reader.