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Take another example in support of our position. The Scribes and Pharisees, with that craft, cunning and duplicity always characteristic of religious and political jesuits, employed every stratagem to entrap the Redeemer, so as to make him commit himself on same great question of religion or politics, came to him on one occasion, and with the subtility of their father—the Devil—intending to take him by surprise, thus addressed him: “Master, we know that thou regardest not the person of any man, and carest for no man, but teachest the way of God truly: tell us therefore, is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not? Shall we give? or shall we not give?”
It is not possible to conceive a more deep-laid and cunningly contrived scheme to entrap an innocent person, than this, which was the master-piece of deceit of these serpents and vipers, as John truly called them. There is the insidious manner of address—the appeal to human vanity, the delicate and subtile flattery, that Delilah, that has destroyed stronger Sampsons than he of old.
They no doubt expected, that, as the Redeemer came in the character of a deliverer and also a king, that he would at once have told them to pay no tribute to Cæsar; and then they would have accused him to Cæsar for rebellion; or, should he answer in the affirmative, then they could accuse him of imposture and hypocrisy. Either way they had him sure: and how they must have chuckled with delight at the certainty of success this time. But how must they have stared at him, and one another, when he said “Shew me a penny.” And what a suppressed whisper must have run round this circle of serpents, “A penny? why, what is the fellow going to do with a penny?” And when the penny was presented to him, and the question asked, “Whose image and superscription are these;” and being told, “Cæsar’s”—how confounding and crushing the declaration—“Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Look, then, at the facts and circumstanecs of the case before us. Here we see the Redeemer, the son of God, sovereign Lord of all—and to whom every knee must ultimately bow, submitting and requiring submission to what?—to a government whose policy was founded in blood, cruelty and rapine—a government as opposite in spirit and principle to the kingdom of Christ, as good is to evil—and a government too at that very time, by taxation and oppression, that was squeezing the life and soul out of the very nation, which the son of God came to redeem—and carrying the principle of his
