Why askest thou
me? ask them which heard me what I have said unto them," is very much of
a piece with his reply to the armed party which seized him, as we read
it in Saint Mark's Gospel, and in Saint Luke's:(Mark xiv. 48. Luke xxii.
52.) "Are you come out as against a thief, with swords and with staves
to take me? I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me
not." In both answers we discern the same tranquillity, the same
reference to his public teaching. His mild expostulation with Pilate, on
two several occasions, as related by Saint John, (Chap. xviii. 34; xix.
11.) is delivered with the same unruffled temper as that which conducted
him through the last scene of his life, as described by his other
evangelists. His answer, in Saint John's Gospel, to the officer who
struck him with the palm of his hand, "If I have spoken evil, bear
witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou me?" (Chap. xviii.
23.) was such an answer as might have been looked for from the person
who, as he proceeded to the place of execution, bid his companions (as
we are told by Saint Luke; Chap.
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