sight of Jesus, and they cried out, ‘Put him to death; crucify him.’  ‘Are you not content?’ said Pilate.  ’The punishment he has received is, beyond question, sufficient to deprive him of all desire of making himself king.’  But they cried out the more and the multitude joined in the cry, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’ Pilate then sounded the trumpet to demand silence, and said:  ’Take you him and crucify him, for I find no cause in him.’  ’We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die,’ replied the priests, ’because he made himself the Son of God.’  These words, ‘he made himself the Son of God,’ revived the fears of Pilate; he took Jesus into another room, and asked him; ‘Whence art thou?’ But Jesus made no answer.  ‘Speakest thou not to me?’ said Pilate; ’knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and power to release thee?’ ‘Thou shouldst not have any power against me,’ replied Jesus, ’unless it were given thee from above; therefore he that hath delivered me to thee hath the greater sin.’

The undecided, weak conduct of Pilate filled Claudia Procles with anxiety; she again sent him the pledge, to remind him of his promise, but he only returned a vague, superstitious answer, importing that he should leave the decision of the case to the gods.  The enemies of Jesus, the High Priests and the Pharisees, having heard of the efforts which were being made by Claudia to save him, caused a report to be spread among the people, that the partisans of our Lord had seduced her, that he would be released, and then join the Romans and bring about the destruction of Jerusalem, and the extermination of the Jews.

Pilate was in such a state of indecision and uncertainty as to be perfectly beside himself; he did not know what step to take next, and again addressed himself to the enemies of Jesus, declaring that ’he found no crime in him,’ but they demanded his death still more clamorously.  He then remembered the contradictory accusations which had been brought against Jesus, the mysterious dreams of his wife, and the unaccountable impression which the words of Jesus had made on himself, and therefore determined to question him again in order thus to obtain some information which might enlighten him as to the course he ought to pursue; he therefore returned to the Praetorium, went alone into a room, and sent for our Saviour.  He glanced at the mangled and bleeding Form before him, and exclaimed inwardly:  ’Is it possible that he can be God?’ Then he turned to Jesus, and adjured him to tell him if he was God, if he was that king who had been promised to the Jews, where his kingdom was, and to what class of gods he belonged.  I can only give the sense of the words of Jesus, but they were solemn and severe.  He told him ‘that his kingdom was not of this world,’ and likewise spoke strongly of the many hidden crimes with which the conscience of Pilate was defiled; warned him of the dreadful fate which would be his if he did not repent; and finally declared that he himself, the Son of Man, would come at the last day, to pronounce a just judgment upon him.