xxiii. 28.) weep not for him, but for
themselves, their posterity, and their country; and who, whilst he was
suspended upon the cross, prayed for his murderers, "for they know not,"
said he, "what they do." The urgency also of his judges and his
prosecutors to extort from him a defence to the accusation, and his
unwillingness to make any (which was a peculiar circumstance), appears
in Saint John's account, as well as in that of the other
evangelists. (See John xix. 9. Matt. xxvii. 14. Luke xxiii. 9.)
There are, moreover, two other correspondencies between Saint John's
history of the transaction and theirs, of a kind somewhat different from
those which we have been now mentioning.
The first three evangelists record what is called our Saviour's agony,
i.e. his devotion in the garden immediately before he was apprehended;
in which narrative they all make him pray "that the cup might pass from
him." This is the particular metaphor which they all ascribe to him.
Saint Matthew adds, "O, my Father, if this cup may not pass away from
me, except I drink it, thy will be done." (Chap, xxvi.
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