But had He made an immediate answer to Pilate's question. His reply would have appeared to refer to the Gentiles only, without including the Jews, as entertaining such an opinion regarding Him. But now when Pilate replied, "Am I a Jew? Thin^ own nation, and the chief priests, have delivered thee to me; " he removed from himself the suspicion of being possibly supposed to have spoken of his own accord, in saying that Jesus was the king of the Jews, by showing that such a statement had been communicated to him by the Jews. And then by saying, " What hast thou done?'' he made it sufficiently clear that this was charged against Him as a crime: as if he had said, If thou deniest such kingly claims, what hast thou done to cause th)^ being delivered unto me? As if there would be no ground for wonder that one should be delivered up to a judge for punishment, who proclaimed himself a king; but if no such assertion were made, it became needful to inquire of Him, what else, if anything. He had done, that He should thus deserve to be delivered unto the judge.
2. Hear then, ye Jews and Gentiles; hear, 0 circumcision; hear, O uncircumcision; hear, all ye kingdoms of the earth: I interfere not with your government in this world, " My kingdom is not of this world." Cherish ye not the utterly vain terror that threw Herod the elder into consternation when the birth of Christ was announced, and led him to the murder of so many infants in the hope of including Christ in the fatal number, -made more cruel by his fear than by his anger: " My kingdom," He said, " is not of this world." What would you more? Come to the kingdom that is not of this world; come, believing, and fall not into the madness of anger through fear. He says, indeed, prophetically of God the Father, " Vet have 1 been appointed king by Him upon His holy hill of Zion;''3 but that hill of Zion is not of this world. For what is His kingdom, save tliose who believe in Him, to whom He says, *' Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world "? And yet He wis-hed them to be in the world: on that very account saying of them-to the Father, " I pray not that Tiiou shouldest take them out of the world, but that ' Ps. xciv. II.
3 Matt. ii. 3, 16.
3 Ps. ii. 6.
[Tractate CXV.
Thou shouldest keep them from the evil,"' Hence also He says not here, " My kingdom is not" in this world; but, "is not of this world." And when He proved this by saying, " If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews," He saith not, "But now is my kingdom not" here, but, "is not from hence." For His kingdom is here until the end of the world, having tares intermingled therewith until the harvest; for the harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers, that is to say, the angels, shall come and gather out of His kingdom everything that offendeth;^ which certainly would not be done, were it not that His kingdom is here. But still it is not from hence; for it only sojourns as a stranger in the world: because He says to His kingdom, " Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. "^ They were therefore of the world, so long as they were not His kingdom, but belonged to the prince of this world. Of the world therefore are all mankind, created indeed by the true God, but generated from Adam as a vitiated and condemned stock; and there are made into a kingdom no longer of the world, all from thence that have been regenerated in Christ. For so did God rescue us from the power of darkness, and translate us into the kingdom of the Son of His love: '^ and of this kingdom it is that He saith, " My kingdom is not of this world; " or, " My kingdom is not from hence."
3. " Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered. Thou sayest that I am a king.^' Not that He was afraid to confess Himself a king, but " Thou sayest " has been so balanced that He neither denies Himself to be a king (for He is a king whose kingdom is not of this world), nor does He confess that He is such a king as to warrant the supposition that His kingdom is of this world. For as this was the very idea in Pilate's mind when he said, '"Art thou a king then? " so the answer he got was, " Thou sayest that I am a king. " For it was said, " Thou sayest," as if it had been said. Carnal thyself, thou sayest it carnally.
4. Thereafter He adds, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." **5 Whence it is evident that He 5 The verse quoted reads in Latin, Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni" etc.; and in reference to the words, in hoc, Augustin goes on to say, in the passage marked * *. " We are not to lengthen the syllable [vowel] of this pronoun when He says, /n hoc natus sum, as if He meant to say. In this thing was I born; but to shorten it, as if He had said. Ad hanc rem natus sum, vel ad hoc natus sum (for this thing was I born), just as He says, Ad here referred to His own temporal nativity, when by becoming incarnate He came into the world, and not to that which had no beginning, whereby He was God through whom the Father created the world. For this, then, that is, on this account. He declared that He was born, and to this end He came into the world, to wit, by being born of the Virgin, that He might bear witness unto the truth. But because all men have not faith,*^ He still further said, " Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." He heareth, that is to say, with the ears of the inward man, or, in other words, He obeyeth my voice, which is equivalent to saying. He believeth me. When Christ, therefore, beareth witness unto the truth, He beareth witness, of course, unto Himself; for from His own lips are the v/ords, "I am the truth;"'' as He said also in another place, " I bear witness of myself."^ But when He said, " Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice," He commendeth the grace whereby He calleth according to His own purpose. Of which purpose the apostle says, " We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to the purpose of God,"' to wit, the purpose of Him that calleth, not of those who are called; which is put still more clearly in another place in this way, " Labor together in the gospel according to the power of God, who saveth us and calleth us with His holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace."'" For if our thoughts turn to the nature wherein we have been created, inasmuch as we were all created by the Truth, who is there that is not of the truth? But it is not all to whom it is given of the truth to hear, that is, to obey the truth, and to believe in the truth; while in no case certainly is there any preceding of merit, lest grace should cease to be grace. For had He said. Every one that heareth my voice is of the truth, then it would be supposed that he was declared to be of the truth because he conforms to the truth; it is not this, however, that He says, but, "Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." And in this way he is not of the truth simply because he heareth His voice; but only on this account he heareth, because he is of the truth, that is, because this is a gift bestowed on him of the truth. And what else is this, but that by hoc vetii in mundum (for this came I into the world). For in the Greek Gospel there is no ambiguity m this expression," the Greek having ei; toOto. This passage is interesting only to Latin scholars, as showing that in ordinary /ur/rtwre" they marked, in Augustin's time, the distinction between hoc of the abl. and Iioc of the nom. or ace. — Tk.
62 Thess. iii. 2. 7 Chap. xiv. 6. * Chap. viii. 18.
Tractate CXVI.]
Christ's gracious bestowal he believeth on Christ?
5. " Pilate said unto Him, What is truth? " Nor did he wait to hear the answer; but "when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault. But ye have a custom that I should release unto you one at the passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" I believe when Pilate said, "What is truth?" there immediately occurred to his mind the custom of the Jews, according to which he was wont to release unto them one at the passover; and therefore he did not wait to hear Jesus' answer to his question, What is truth? to avoid delay on recollecting the custom whereby He might be released unto them during the passover — a thing which it is clear he greatly desired. It could not, however, be torn from his heart that Jesus was the King of the Jews, but was fixed there, as in the superscription, by the truth itself, whereof he had just inquired what it was. " But on hearing this, they all cried again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." We blame you not, O Jews, for liberating the guilty during the passover, but for slaying the innocent; and yet unless that were done, the true passover would not take place. But a shadotv of the truth was retained by the erring Jews, and by a marvellous dispensation of divine wisdom the truth of that same shadow was fulfilled by deluded men; because in order that the true passover might be kept, Christ was led as a sheep to the sacrificial slaughter. Hence there follows the account of the injurious treatment received by Christ at the hands of Pilate and his cohort; but this must be taken up in another discourse.
TRACTATE CXVI.
Chapter XIX. 1-16.
I. On the Jews crying out that they did not wish Jesus to be released unto them at the passover, but Barabbas the robber; not the Saviour, but the murderer; not the Giver of life, but the destroyer, — " then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him." We must believe that Pilate acted thus for no other reason than that the Jews, glutted with the injuries done to Plim, might consider themselves satisfied, and desist from madly pursuing Him even unto death. With a similar intention was it that, as governor, he also permitted his cohort to do what follows, or even perhaps ordered them, although the evangelist is silent on the subject. For he tells us what the soldiers did thereafter, but not that Pilate ordered it. "And the soldiers," he says, " platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they clothed Him with a purple robe. And they came to Him and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote Him with tiieir hands." Tlius were fulfilled tlie very things which Christ liad foretold of Himself; thus were the martyrs mouidetl for the endurance of all that their persecutors should be pleased to inllict; thus, l)y concealing for a time the terror of His power, He commended to us the prior imitation of His patience; thus the kingdom whicli was not of this world overcame that [iroud work), not by the ferocity of fighting, but by the humility of suffering; and thus the grain of corn that was yet to be multiplied was sown amid the horrors of shame, that it might come to fruition amid the wonders of glory.
2. " Pilate went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And he saith unto them. Behold the man! " Hence it is apparent that these things were done by the soldiers not without Pilate's knowledge, whether it was that he ordered them or only permitted them, namely, for the reason we have stated above, that His enemies might all the more willingly drink in the sight of such derisive treatment, and cease to thirst further for His blood. Jesus goes forth to them wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, not resplendent in kingly power, but laden with reproach; and the words are addressed to them, IJehold the man! If you hate your king, spare him now when you see hini sunk so low; he has been scourged, crownetl with thorns, clothed with the garments of derision, jeered at with the bitterest insults, struck with tiie open hand; his ignominy is at the boiling point, let your ill-will sink to zero. But tliere is no such cooling on the part of the latter, but rather a furtlier increase of heat antl veliemence.
J. " When the chief priests, therefore, and [Tractate CXVI.
attendants saw Him, they cried out. saying, Crucify, crucify him. Pilate saith unto tnem, Take ye him and crucify him; for I find no fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." Behold another and still greater ground of hatred. The former, indeed, seemed but a small matter, as that shown towards the usurpation, by an unlawful act of daring, of the royal power; and yet of neither did Jesus falsely claim possession, but each of them is truly His as both the only-begotten Son of God, and by Him appointed King upon His holy hill of Zion; and both might He now have shown to be His, were it not that in proportion to the greatness of His power. He preferred to manifest the corresponding greatness of His patience.
4. "When Pilate, therefore, heard that saying, he was the more afraid; and entered again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer." It is found, in comparing the narratives of all the evangelists, that this silence on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ took place more than once, both before the chief priests and before Herod, to whom, as Luke intimates, Pilate had sent Him for a hearing, and before Pilate himself; ' so that it was not in vain that the prophecy regarding Him had preceded, "As the lamb before its shearer was dumb, so He opened not His mouth,^' - especially on those occasions when He answered not His questioners. For although He frequently replied to questions addressed to Him, yet because of those in regard to which He declined making any reply, the metaphor of the lamb is supplied, in order that in His silence He might be accounted not as guilty, but innocent. When, therefore. He was passing through the process of judgment, wherever He opened not His mouth it was in the character of a lamb that He did so; that is, not as one with an evil conscience who was convicted of his sins, but as one who in His meekness was sacrificed for the sins of others.
5. " Then saith Pilate unto Him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered: Thou wouldest have no power against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." Here, you see. He replied; and yet wherever He replied not, it is not as one who is criminal or cunning, but as a lamb; that is, in simplicity and innocence He opened not His mouth. Accordingly, where He made no answer. He was silent as a sheep; where He answered. He taught as the Shepherd. Let us therefore set ourselves to learn what He said, what He taught also by the apostle, that " there is no power but of God; "'-• and that he is a greater sinner who maliciously delivereth up to the power the innocent to be slain, than the power itself, if it slay him through fear of another power that is greater still. Of such a sort, indeed, was the power which God had given to Pilate, that he should also be under the power of Caesar. Wherefore "thou wouldest have," He says, "no power against me," that is, even the little measure thou really hast, " except " this very measure, whatever its amount, "were given thee: from above." But knowing as I do its amount, for it is not so great as to render thee altogether independent, " therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." He, indeed, delivered me to thy power at the bidding of envy, whilst thou art to exercise thy power upon me through the impulse of fear. And yet not even through the impulse of fear ought one man to slay another, especially the innocent; nevertheless to do so by an officious zeal is a much greater evil than under the constraint of fear. And therefore the truth-speaking Teacher saith not, " He that delivered me to thee," he only hath sin, as if the other had none; but He saith, "hath the greater sin," letting him understand that he himself was not exempt from blame. For that of the latter is not reduced to nothing because the other is greater.
6. " Hence Pilate sought to release Him." What is to be understood by the word here used, " hence," ■* as if he had n^ been seeking to do so before? Read what precedes, and thou wilt find that he had already for some time been seeking to release Jesus. By the original word,"* therefore, we are to understand, on this account, that is, for this rcasony that he might not contract sin by slaying an innocent man who had been delivered into his hands, even though his sin would be less than that of the Jews, who delivered Him to him to be put to death. "From thence,"* therefore, that is, for this reason, that he might not commit such a sin, "he sought" not now for the first time, but from ths beginning, ■' 7thou " to release Him." cried " But the Jews let this man go.
out, saying. If thou art not Caesar's 3 Rom. xiii. i.
^ Exindc: Greek, eicTouTou; literally, "therefrom." — Tr.
Tractate CXVL] ON THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
friend: whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." They thought to inspire Pilate with greater fear by terrifying him about Ccesar, in order that he might put Christ to death, than formerly when they said, " We have the law, and by the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.'' It was not their law, indeed, that impelled him through fear to the deed of murder, but rather it was his fear of the Son of God that held him back from the crime. But now he could not set Csesar, who was the author of his own power, at nought, in the same way as the law of another nation.
8. As yet, however, the evangelist proceeds to say: "But when Pilate heard these sayings, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down before the tribunal, in a place that is called the Pavement,' but in the Hebrew, Gabbath'a. And it was the preparation - of the passover, and about the sixth hour.'' The question, at what hour the Lord was crucified, because of the testimony supplied by another evangelist, who says, "And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him,"^ we shall consider as we can, if the Lord please, when we are come to the passage itself where His crucifixion is recorded, •» When Pilate, therefore, had sat down before the tribunal, " he saith unto the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out. Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said unto them. Shall I crucify your king?" As yet he tries to overcome the terror with which they had inspired him about Cnesar, by seeking to break them from their purpose on the ground of the ignominy it brought on themselves, with the words, " Shall I crucify your king?" when he failed to soften them on the ground of the ignominy done to Christ; but by and by he is overcome by fear.
9. For "the chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified." For he would have every appearance of acting against Caesar if, on their declaration that » Lithostrotos. - Parasceve: Greek, irapao-ucu^.
3 Mark xv. 25. 4 See below, Tract. CXVII. sees. i. 2.
they had no king but Caesar, he were wishing to impose on them another king by releasing without punishment one whom for these very attempts they had delivered unto him to be put to death. " Therefore he delivered Him unto them to be crucified." But was it, then, anything different that he had previously desired when he said, " Take ye him, and crucify him;" or even earlier still, " Take ye him, and judge him according to your law? " And why did they show so great reluctance, when they said, ''It is not lawful for us ta put any man to death," s and were in every way urgent to have Him slain not by themselves, but by the governor, and therefore refused to receive Him for the purpose of putting Him to death, if now for the same purpose they actually do receive Him? Or if such be not the case, why was it said, "Then delivered he Him therefore unto them to be crucified? " Or is it of any importance? Plainly it is. For it was not said, "Then delivered he Him therefore unta them" that they might crucify Him, but "that He might be crucified," that is, that He might be crucified by the judicial sentence and power of the governor. But it is for this reason that the evangelist has said that He was delivered to them, that he might show that they were implicated in the crime from which they tried to hold themselves aloof; for Pilate would have done no such thing, save to implement what he perceived to be their fixed desire. The words, however, that follow, "And they took Jesus, and led Him away," may now refer to the soldiers, the attendants of the governor. For it is more clearly stated afterwards, " When the soldiers therefore had crucified Him,"* although the evangelist properly does so even when he attributes the whole to the Jews, for they it was that received what they had with the utmost greediness demanded, and they it was that did all that they compelled to be done. l^ut the events that follow must be made the subject of consideration in another discourse.
5 Chap, xviii. 31.
6 Chap. xix. -.'J.
[Tractate CXVII.
TRACTATE CXVII.
Chapter XIX.
17-22.
1. On Pilate's judgment and condemnation before the tribunal, they took the Lord Jesus Christ, about the sixth hour, and led Him away. "And He, bearing His cross, went forth into the place that is called Calvary, but in Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him." What else, then, is the meaning of the evangelist Mark saying, "And it was the third hour, and they crucified Him,"' but this, that the Lord was crucified at the third hour by the tongues of the Jews, at the sixth hour by the hands of the soldiers? That we may understand that the fifth hour was now completed, and there was some beginning made of the sixth, when Pilate took his seat before the tribunal, which is expressed by John as " about ^ the sixth hour;" and when He was led forth, and nailed to the tree with the two robbers, and the events recorded were enacted beside His cross, the completion of the sixth hour was fully reached, being the hour from which, on to the ninth, the sun was obscured, and the darkness took place, we have it jointly attested on the authority of the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.^ But as the Jews attempted to transfer the crime of slaying Christ from themselves to the Romans, that is to say, to Pilate and his soldiers, therefore Mark suppresses the hour at which Christ was crucified by the soldiers, and which then began to enter upon the sixth, and remembers rather to give an express place to the third hour, at which they are understood to have cried out before Pilate, "Crucify, crucify him" (verse 6), that it not only may be seen that the former crucified Jesus, namely, the soldiers who hung Him on the tree at the sixth hour, but the Jews also, who at the third hour cried out to have Him crucified.
2. There is also another solution of this question, that we should not here understand the sixth hour of the day, because John says not, And it was about the sixth hour of the day, or about the sixth hour, but says, "And it was the parasceve of the passover, about the sixth hour" (ver. 14). And parasceve\% in Latin prceparaiio (preparation); but the Jews are fonder of using the Greek words in observances of this sort, even those of them who speak Latin rather than Greek. It was I Mark xv. 25. 2 Quasi.
3 Matt, xxvii. 45; Mark xv. 33; and Luke xxiii. 44.
therefore the preparation of thp passover. But "our passover, Christ," as the apostle says, "has been sacrificed;" ■• and if we reckon the preparation of tiiis passover from the ninth hour of the night (for then the chief priests seem to have given their verdict for the sacrifice of the Lord, when they said, " He is guilty of death," ^ and when the hearing of His case was still proceeding in the high priest's house: whence there is a kind of harmony in understanding that therewith began the preparation of the true passover, whose shadow was the passover of the Jews, that is, of the sacrificing of Christ, when the priests gave their sentence that He was to be sacrificed), certainly from that hour of the night, which is conjectured to have been then the ninth, on to the third hour of the day, when the evangelist Mark testifies that Christ was crucified, there are six hours, three of the night, and three of the day. Hence in the case of this parasceve of the passover, that is, the preparation of the sacrifice of Christ, which began with the ninth hour of the night, it was about the sixth hour; that is to say, the fifth hour was completed, and the sixth had already begun to run, when Pilate ascended the tribunal: for that same preparation, which had begun with the ninth hour of the night, still continued till the sacrifice of Christ, which was the event in course of preparation, was completed, which took place at the third hour, according to Mark, not of the preparation, but of the day; while it was also the sixth hour, not of the day, but of the preparation, by reckoning, of course, six Irours from the ninth hour of the night to the third of the day. Of these two solutions of this difficult question let each choose the one that pleases him. But one will judge better what to choose who reads the very elaborate discussions on "The Harmony of the Evangelists."^ And if other solutions of it can also be found, the stability of gospel truth will have a more cumulative defense against the calumnies of unbelieving and profane vanity. And now, after these brief discussions, let us return to the narrative of the evangelist John.
3. "And they took Jesus," he says, "and 6 " On the Harmony of the Evangelists," Book iii. chap. xiii. sees. 40-50.
Tractate CXVII.]
led Him away; and He, bearing His cross, went forth unto the place that is called Calvary, in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him." Jesus, therefore, went to the place where He was to be crucified, bearing His cross. A grand spectacle! but if it be impiety that is the onlooker, a grand laughing-stock; if piety, a grand mystery: if impiety be the onlooker, a grand demonstration of ignominy; if piety, a grand bulwark of faith: if it is impiety that looketh on, it laughs at the King bearing, in place of His kingly rod, the tree of His punishment; if it is piety, it sees the King bearing the tree for His own crucifixion, which He was yet to affix even on the foreheads of kings, exposed to the contemptuous glances of the impious in connection with that wherein the hearts of saints were thereafter to glory. For to Paul, who was yet to say, " But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,"' He was commending that same cross of His by carrying it on His own shoulders, and bearing the candelabrum of that light that was yet to burn, and not to be placed under a bushel. = "Bearing," therefore, " His cross. He went forth into the place that is called Calvary, in the Hebrew, Golgotha; where they crucified Him, and two others with Him on either side one, and Jesus in the midst." These two, as we have learned in the narrative of the other evangelists, were thieves with whom He was crucified, and between whom He was fixed, ^ whereof the prophecy sent before had declared, "And He was