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But the most prevailing argument of all, that this was God's money which should be rendered to God, and not Cesar's which was to be rendered to Cesar, is, that there would be no force whatever in the Lord's conclusion, "Then are the children free," as giving him this exemption, unless it was from dues owing to God, and not to Cesar, that by the preceding process of argument he was claiming his freedom. As a Son in his own house, he affirmed his exemption from the first. How could he on this ground have claimed immunity from the last? on the ground, that is, of being the son of him on whose behalf the tax was claimed. For he was no son of Cesar. He might indeed have asserted his immunity on other grounds, though that he would not, since he had come submitting himself during his earthly life to every ordinance of man. But this claim which he does put forward, only holds good on the supposition that the payment is one made to God. They who maintain the contrary interpretation are driven to say that it is his royal Davidical descent, on the score of which he claims this immunity. But neither can this stand for the argument then would be, that because Jesus is one king's son, therefore he is exempted from the tribute owing to another king, and that other, one of a hostile dynasty,-in itself a most insufficient argument, and certainly not that of the sacred text: "Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free.'

We may presume, then, that our Lord and Peter, with others also, it is most probable, of his disciples, were now returning to Capernaum, which was "his city," after one of their usual absences. The Lord passed forward without question, but the collectors detained Peter, who, having lingered a little behind, was now following his Lord. Chrysostom suggests that their question may be a rude and ill-mannered one: "Does your Master count himself exempt from the payment of the ordinary dues? we know his freedom: does he mean to exercise it here?" yet on the other hand it may have been, as I should suppose it was, the exact contrary. Having seen or heard of the wonderful works which Christ did, they may really have been uncertain in what light to regard

passage, observes this: Exactores Romani acerbiùs haud dubiè exegissent tributum Cæsari solvendum. And in the Rabbinical treatise especially relating to the manner of collecting these dues, it is said: Placidè à quovis semisiclum expetierunt. Grotius: Credibile est multos, quia non cogebantur, id onus detrectâsse.

* Augustine (Quæst. Evang., 1. 1, qu. 23) helps it out in another way: In omni regno terreno intelligendum est liberos esse regni filios... Multò ergo magis liberi esse debent in quolibet regno terreno filii regni illius, sub quo sunt omnia regna terrena. See Mr. GRESWELL'S Dissertations, v. 2, p. 374, seq.

him, whether to claim from him the money or not, and in this doubting and inquiring spirit, they may have put the question to Peter. This Theophylact suggests. But after all, we want that which the history has not given, the tone in which the question was put, to know whether it was a rude one or the contrary. To their demand Peter, overhasty, as was so often the case, at once replied that his master would pay the money. No doubt zeal for his master's honor made him so quick to pledge his Lord: he was confident that his piety would make him prompt to every payment sanctioned and sanctified by God's Law.

Yet at the same time there was here on the part of the apostle a failing to recognize the higher dignity of his Lord: it was not in this spirit that he had said a little while before, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." He understood not, or at least for the time had lost sight of, his Lord's true position and dignity, that he was a Son over his own house, not a servant in another's house-that he was the Head of the theocracy, not one of its subordinate members, so that it was to him in his Father that payments were to be made, not from him to be received. This last had been out of all reason; for he who was to be a ransom for all other souls, could not properly give a ransom for his own.* It was not for him who was "greater than the temple,” and himself the true temple, (John ii. 21,) identical with it according to its spiritual significance, and in whom the Shechinah glory dwelt, to pay dues for the support of that other temple built with hands, which was now fast losing its significance, since the true tabernacle was set up, which the Lord had pitched and not man.

It is then for the purpose of bringing back Peter, and with him the other disciples, to the true recognition of himself, from which they had in part fallen, that the Lord puts to him the question which follows; and being engaged, through Peter's hasty imprudence, to the rendering of the didrachm, which now he could scarcely recede from, yet did it in the remarkable way of this present miracle-a miracle which should testify that all things served him, from the greatest to the least, even to the fishes that walked through the paths of the sea,-that he was Lord over nature, and having nothing, yet in his Father's care for him, was truly possessed of all things. Here, as so often in the life of our Lord,

* Ambrose (Ep. 7, c. 12, Ad Justum): Hoc est igitur didrachma, quod exigebatur secundùm legem: sed non debebat illud filius regis, sed alienus. Quid enim se Christus redimeret ab hoc mundo, qui venerat ut tolleret peccatum mundi? Quid se à peccato redimeret, qui descenderat, ut omnibus peccatum dimitteret? . . . Quid se redimeret à morte, qui carnem susceperat, ut morte suâ omnibus resurrectionem adquireret Cf. Enarr. in Ps. xlviii. 14.

The grand poem which Tholuck has translated from the Persian Mystic (Blu

the depth of his poverty and humiliation is lightened up by a gleam of his glory. And thus, by the manner of the payment, did he re-assert the true dignity of his person, which else by the payment itself might have been obscured and compromised in the eyes of some, but which it was of all importance for the disciples that they should not lose sight of, or forget. The miracle, then, was to supply a real need,-slight, indeed, as an outward need, for the money could assuredly have been in some other and more ordinary ways procured; but as an inner need, most real in this, then, differing in its essence from the apocryphal miracles, which are continually mere sports and freaks of power, having no ethical motive or meaning whatever.

And we may see this purpose of our Lord's coming clearly out from the very first. He did not wait for Peter to inform him what he had done, and to what he had engaged him; but as soon as "he was come into the house, Jesus prevented," or anticipated, his communication, showing that he was acquainted with it already,—that he was a discerner of the thoughts of the heart,-that it was for him as though he had been present at that conversation between his disciple and the collectors of the money.* Preventing him thus, he said, "What thinkest thou, Simon? on what principle hast thou been promising this for me? is not all the analogy of things earthly against it? Of whom do the kings of the earth," (with an emphasis on these last words, for there is a silent contrasting of these with the King of heaven, as at Ps. ii. 2,) "take

thensammlung aus der Morgenl. Myst., p. 148,) tells exactly the same story, namely, that all nature waits on him who is the friend of God, so that all things are his, and his seeming poverty is but another side of his true riches; only that what there is only in idea, is here clothed in the flesh and blood of an actual fact. I can give but a most inadequate extract:

Adham Ibrahim sass einst am Meeresstrand,
Nähte dort als Bettler sich sein Mönchgewand.
Plötzlich tritt ein Emir mit Gefolg' ihn an,
Der vormals dem Seelenkönig unterthan,
Küsst den Fuss ihm, und wird alsobald verwirrt,
Da den Scheich er in der Kutt' ansichtig wird.
Den, dem einst gehorcht' ein weites Landgebiet,
Staunend er jetzt seine Kutte nähen sieht.

Drauf der Scheich die Nadel plötzlich wirft in's Meer,
Ruft dann laut: Ihr Fische, bringt die Nadel her!
Alsbald ragen hunderttausend Köpf' hervor,

Jeder Fisch bringt eine goldne Nadel vor.

Nun der Scheich mit Ernst sich zu dem Emir kehrt:

Wunderst du dich noch, dass ich die Kutt' begehrt?

* Jerome: Antequàm Petrus suggeret, Dominus interrogat, ne scandalizentur discipuli ad postulationem tributi, quum videant eum nosse quæ absente se gesta sunt.

custom or tribute?"* Christ argues here from the less to the greater, from things earthly to things heavenly, not as though the things earthly could prove the things heavenly; but, since those are the shadows of these, from the shadow concluding the form of the substance. And when Peter confessed that it was not of their own children, but "of strangers," then at once he brought him to the conclusion whither he was leading him, that "the children," or as it would be better, "the sons," were "free."‡

But this plural," the sons," and not "the Son," has sometimes been brought against the interpretation, which would make our Lord to have had himself and himself only, as the only-begotten Son of God, in his eye when he thus spake. Yet it is obvious that while he is making a general statement of the worldly relations from which he borrows his analogy, and by which he is helping the understanding of his disciples, as there might be not merely one but many sons to a worldly king, or as there are many kings of whom he is speaking, so was it natural for him to throw his speech into a plural form; and it is just as natural, when we come to the heavenly order of things which is there shadowed forth, to restrain it to the singular, to the one Son; since to the King of heaven, who is set against the kings of the earth, there is but one, the only-begotten of the Father.§ And the explanation, namely, that he

* Kivσos, the capitation tax; réλn, customs or tolls on goods.

There is no doubt a difficulty in finding exactly the right translation for ¿2207píwv. For it is not so strong as our "strangers," or the alieni of the Vulgate, or Luther's von Fremden. It means to express no more than those that are not the vioí, that stand not in their nearest and most immediate relation to the king (qui non pertinent ad familiam Regis: Kuinoel). So Hammond, "other folk," and De Wette, von ihren Söhnen, [which is better than Luther's von ihren Kindern,] oder von den andern Leuten. Compare for this use of dλλórpíos, Sirac. xl. 29. Gfrörer, (Die Heil. Sage, v. 2, p. 56,) stumbling at the whole account, finds fault with this interpretation, because forsooth the Jews were not daλorpio,-as though they were not so in comparison with Christ: and, again, because they too were vioí Oɛoù,—as though they were so in any such sense as he was. It is most true that from his standing point, to whom there is nothing in Christ different from another man, the narrative does, in his own words, "suffer under incurable difficulties."

With a play on the words, which is probably much more than a mere play, and rests upon a true etymology, so witnessing for the very truth which Christ is asserting here, we might say in Latin, Liberi sunt liberi. (Liberi, the children, so called in opposition to the household, the servi: FREUND'S Lat. Wörterbuch, s. v. liber.) Those very words do occur in the noble Easter hymn beginning,

Cedant justi signa luctûs.

§ Grotius observes rightly that it is the locus communis, which is to account for the plural: Plurali numero utitur, non quod ad alios eam extendat libertatem, sed quod comparatio id exigebat, sumta non ab unius sed ab omnium Regum more ac con

intends to extend the liberty to his poeple, to all that in this secondary sense are the sons of God, cannot be admitted: for it is not the fact concerning dues owing to God. Nor even if this discourse had relation to a civil payment, would it be true; however such an interpretation might be welcome to Anabaptists,* having found favor also with some of the extreme Romish canonists, as an argument for the exemption of the clergy from payments to the state, although others among themselves truly remark that it must include all the faithful or none. It is not thus, not as one of many, not as the first among many sons, but as the true and only Son of God, he claims this liberty for himself; and "we may observe by the way, that the reasoning itself is a strong and convincing testimony to the proper Sonship, and in the capacity of Son to the proper relationship of Jesus Christ to the Father, which those who deny that relationship will not easily evade or impugn. There is in these words the same implicit assertion of Christ's relation to God as a different one from that of other men, which there is throughout the parable of the Wicked Husbandman, in the distinction which is so

suetudine. The best defence of the cleaving to the plural in the application of the words is that made by Cocceius: Christus ostendit nec se, qui Filius Dei est, obligari ad didrachma solvendum, tanquam λúrpov animæ suæ, nec suos discipulos, qui ab ipso hæreditant libertatem, et non argento redimuntur (Es. lii. 3) sed precioso ipsius sanguine (1 Pet. i. 18, 19) et facti sunt filii Dei vivi (Hos. i. 10) amplius teneri ad servitutem figuræ. Olshausen follows him in this.

*The Anabaptist conclusions which might be drawn from an abuse of the passage, are met on right general grounds by Aquinas (Sum. Theol., 2a 2o, 104, art. 6,) though he has not any very precise insight into the meaning of this history. Milton (Defence of the People of England, c. 3) makes exceedingly unfair use of this

passage.

+ Tirinus (in loc.): Nam pari jure omnes justi, immo omnes Christiani exempti essent. Michaelis affirms that others too have pushed these words to the asserting the same liberty; for he tells a story (Mosaische Recht, v. 3, p. 210) of having himself, in travelling, seen a Pietist cheat the revenue before his eyes; and when he asked him how he could find conscience to do so, the other defended himself with these words, "Then are the children free." The story is, unhappily, only too welcome to him. GRESWELL'S Dissert., v. 2, p. 736. Chrysostom uses the same argument. I know not whether any use was made of this passage in the Arian controversy by those who were upholding the Catholic faith; but Hilary, a confessor and standard-bearer, for the truth in that great conflict, does distinctly bring out how the Godhead of Christ is involved in this argument (Comm. in Matth., in loc.): Didrachma tamquam ab homine poscebatur à Christo. Sed ut ostenderet Legi se non esse subjectum, ut in se paternæ dignitatis gloriam contestaretur, terreni privilegii posuit exemplum: censu aut tributis regum filios non teneri, potiusque se redemtorem animæ nostræ corporisque esse quàm in redemptionem sui aliquid postulandum; quia Regis Filium extra communionem oporteret esse reliquorum.

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