Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/119

Rh behavior had been so unjust and illegal that he did not deserve to be considered as a lawful magistrate, who had publicly demeaned himself as a tyrant, by commanding a prisoner to be beaten contrary to law, without hearing his defence! And, that this latter sense is most probable, we may learn by the following circumstance, viz: that the apostle chose to decline the dispute, and to waive the accusation about reviling the high priest, by acknowledging the principle of law on which it was manifestly founded, viz: "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." But be pleased to observe, he neither acknowledged that he himself had broken the said precept by so severely censuring the unjust ruler, nor did he acknowledge the presence of a high priest in the person of Ananias; neither did he allow the bystanders time enough to criticise upon the true literal meaning of his reply, (whereby they would probably have been led to demand some express recantation of the personal censure which he had so amply bestowed upon the high priest,) but he prudently changed the subject in debate from the person of the high priest (who was a zealous overbearing Sadducee) to an avowed censure of his whole sect, charging the Sadducees in particular with the unjust persecution, then before the assembly, and openly appealing to the opposite party, the Pharisees, in order to divide his united enemies: " I am a Pharisee," said he, "the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." Such a manifest reflection against the whole body of Sadducees cannot by any means favor the supposition of an intended apology, or recantation in the preceding sentence, to soothe the enraged leader of that very party, whom he had publicly branded as a hypocrite, with the significant appellation of whited wall! Let it be also remembered that the supposed breach of the precept ("thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people") could not rest on the circumstance of knowing Ananias to be the high priest; for, whether the apostle did know, or did not know that Ananias was high priest, yet he certainly knew, before he censured him, that he was a ruler of the people, and that he then sat in