Especially because I know you to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews: therefore I beseech you to hear me patiently.
Read Chapter 26
John Chrysostom
AD 407
And he said not, Why is this? Once for all I have appealed to Cæsar: I have been tried many times: when will there be an end of this? But what did he? Again he is ready to render an account, and that, before the man who was the best informed on the subject; and with much boldness, seeing they were not his judges to condemn him: but still, though they were not his judges, since that declaration was in force, Unto Cæsar shall you go, he renders an account and gives full answers, touching all the things, and not merely on one and another here and there. They accuse me of sedition, accuse me of heresy, accuse me that I have profaned the temple: touching all these things I answer for myself: now that these are not things in accordance with my ways, my accusers themselves are witnesses: my manner of life from my youth, etc.
And yet, had he been conscious of guilt, he should have feared at being tried in the presence of one who knew all the facts: but this is a mark of a clear conscience, not to shrink from a judge who has an accurate knowledge of the circumstances, but even to rejoice, and to call himself happy. I beseech you, he says, to hear me patiently. Since he is about to lengthen out his speech, and to say something about himself, on this account, he premises an entreaty, and (then) says: My manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among my own nation at Jerusalem, know all the Jews: which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
