Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/212

 the Roman government, nor yet was it against their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment, scourging, banishment, &c. But the punishment of death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the persecuted Hellenists ever suffered death by the condemnation of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,—a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with all