Then went the captain with the officers, and brought them without violence: for they feared the people, lest they should have been stoned.
Read Chapter 5
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Then went the magistrate; which by the Greek was a military officer. But he did not bind them like prisoners, for fear of a tumult, but desired them to go along with them to the sanhedrim. (Witham)
Without violence. They persuaded them to appear willingly before the sanhedrim, thinking, perhaps, moreover, that they could not bind them, whom the walls of the prison could not confine. The apostles here, and on all other occasions, show the most astonishing examples of patience, constancy, and obedience to the laws of the country. (Menochius)
O Jews! who do you shut your eyes against the light? why so blindly mad? You say the apostles took Christ from the tomb. Tell me, then, who stole the apostles from under your locks and bolts? Who conveyed them from your prison through the midst of your guards, without alarming them? Shall the evidence of the miracle serve only to make you the less open to conviction? (Ven. Bede; Denis the Carthusian)
O the folly of the men! They feared, says he, the multitude. Why, how had the multitude helped the Apostles? When they ought to have feared that God Who was continually delivering them like winged creatures out of their power, instead of that, they feared the multitude! And the high-priest, shameless, reckless, senseless, asked them, saying, Did not we strictly command you that you should not teach in this name? And, behold you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. (v. 27, 28.) What then (say the Apostles)? Again with mildness they address them; and yet they might have said, Who are you, that you countermand God? But what do they say? Again in the way of exhortation and advice, and with much mildness, they make answer.
