But, lo, he speaks boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?
Read Chapter 7
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And lo He speaketh openly, and they say nothing against Him. What means this great silence? says Nonnus. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? They know it, or easily could have known it, but they, blinded by their pride and hatred, persecuted Him to the death; but they were restrained by His divine power from laying hands on Him.
They multiply expressions of assurance among themselves, and advance as it were to more manifest proof, beholding the unperilled boldness of Christ. For they are astonished and that with the greatest reason at finding those that were of old ungodly brought to an unpractised and unwonted patience and, beholding those who had been violent practising a gentleness that was new to them, they thence go forth into reasonable surmises: and in that they wonder at their forbearance in those matters in which they |515 ought never to have been angry, in these very things they are found to be blaming them, as though it were their habit without discrimination to press hard upon the teachers of the most excellent doctrines, and to proceed hotly against any one whatever, if he did but say things dissentient from them, though he should agree with the Divine Law. For dreadful was the conceit of the Pharisees, and the daring of their senselessness knew not bounds. Who then (say they) is He who tames them...
