"
In this last instance, Saint John gives the motive of Christ's conduct,
which is left unexplained by the other evangelists, who have related the
conduct itself.
V. Another, and a more singular circumstance in Christ's ministry, was
the reserve which, for some time, and upon some occasions at least, he
used in declaring his own character, and his leaving it to be collected
from his works rather than his professions. Just reasons for this
reserve have been assigned. (See Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity.)
But it is not what one would have expected. We meet with it in Saint
Matthew's Gospel (chap. xvi. 20): "Then charged he his disciples that
they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ." Again, and upon a
different occasion, in Saint Mark's (chap. iii. 11): "And unclean
spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying,
Thou art the Son of God: and he straitly charged them that they should
not make him known." Another instance similar to this last is recorded
by Saint Luke (chap. iv. 41). What we thus find in the three
evangelists, appears also in a passage of Saint John (chap.
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