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The Green Bag,
the Jews. Obeying, as a coward, Pilate sunk himself below the level of the Jews; afraid of complaints to Caesar, by which he might be deposed from his place, he consented to murder; and bringing forth Jesus, he said, "Behold your king! ... Shall I crucify your king?" And m the true spirit of success ful, infinite meanness, as it is ever exhibited, the Jews swallowed their hatred of Rome, and with servile truckling the Chief Priests answered, " We have no king but Caesar." Jesus was then delivered to be, and was, crucified; and they wrote upon the Cross, as was the Roman custom, the accusation, the crime for which he died : " This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." If he had been executed for blasphemy, he should have been stoned. We may now draw our conclusions. (1) There was by the Mosaic law the crime of blasphemy, the punishment for which was death, not by crucifixion, but by stoning. (2) Stripped of all attributes of divinity, Jesus offended against this law. (3) While in form he had a trial, yet the
law was violated, and the court existed as an organized conspiracy to condemn him. (4) He was convicted of blasphemy, and sentenced in violation of law. The offence was not proved, and the court had no juris diction to sit or pronounce sentence. (5) He was charged before the Roman Procurator, Pilate, who sat in revision of the sentence, with the crime of treason against Roman authority, and was acquitted. (6) He was acquitted, according to Pilate, by Herod upon a like charge. (7) He was again acquitted by Pilate of the crime of blasphemy. (8) And was finally delivered by Pilate to be crucified, and was crucified, for the crime of treason, in claiming to be a temporal king. Thus we see that if every act of the Jews had been regular, in the arrest, trial, and sen tence, they were still guilty of homicide by inducing Pilate to execute Jesus for a crime of which they had not convicted him, and of which they knew he was innocent.
