f

d In value sevenpence halfpenny. Matt. xx. 2.

Verse 17. Is it lawful to pay tribute? &c. -The word nyoos, is the Latin census, in Greek letters, and is used both for an enumeration of the people, and, as here also, for the capitation-tax levied upon them in those Roman provinces which did not, as Italy, enjoy the privilege of exemption. This was entirely different from the temple tribute before mentioned, which was a didrachm or half shekel from every Jew throughout the world. The question being, whether it was lawful to pay the poll-tax to Cæsar, which was a mark of the subjection of Judea, as a province, to the Roman power, necessarily implied whether it was not a religious duty to unite and throw off this subjection by violence. If therefore our Lord had determined that it was not lawful to pay the tribute, he would have been charged with sanctioning rebellion; but if he had declared the contrary, this might have been employed to lessen his present influence with the multitude, by representing him as an abettor of the Roman tyranny, and as having uttered a decision utterly incompatible with his own pretensions. "For how," they might have said to the multitudes that followed him, he be the Messiah, as you believe, who, instead of delivering you from a foreign yoke, enjoins even the lawfulness, and not merely the expediency, for a time, of submitting to this exercise of a foreign and idolatrous domination?"

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Verse 19. Shew me the tribute money · The coin in which the tax was paid; for the Romans required the payment in Roman money.

Cæsar

And they brought unto him a penny.— That is, a denarius, value about 74d. "The denarius," says Adolphus Occo, "paid by the Jews as tribute money, had round the head of Cæsar this inscription, Καισαρ Αυγουστ. Ιουδαίας εαλωκίας. Augustus; Judea being subdued." "But it might," says Hammond, "have been a denarius of Tiberius." Whatever it was, it had both a head of Cæsar, called his image, and an epigraph or superscription, which was the name of the emperor.

Verse 21. Render therefore unto Cesar, &c.-Those who think that our Lord in reality determined the artful question which was put to him on the side of the lawfulness of paying tribute to Cæsar, do not disentangle him from the dilemma which was prepared for him; and hence we see in commentators many just things said of the consummate wisdom of this answer without any clear indication of that in which its wisdom consists. Thus the generality of interpreters have more ably exhibited the snare laid for Christ by the question proposed, than made it

manifest how his reply evaded it. But that our Lord did not determine the question either way, is plain from the effect produced upon the inquirers. St.

not the an

Matthew says, "They marvelled and left him;" St. Luke, "They could take hold of his words before people; and they marvelled at his swer, and held their peace." Now certainly, if he had decided that it was lawful to pay tribute to the Romans in the sense in which its lawfulness was understood in the question, this was one of the decisions they wished to obtain from him; and being in favour of the unpopular Roman power, they might have "taken hold of his words before the people." But the question, "Is it lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar, or not?" was equivalent to, "Is this submission to a foreign and idolatrous power forbidden by the law of God, or is it not?" and it was put with manifest reference to the duty of insurrection, or an attempt to throw off that yoke, which the opinion of its being unlawful for the people of God, as they still thought themselves, in several instances led to, and which all were constantly meditating, the Herodians not excepted, whose support of the Roman claims was the result of an unwilling and constrained policy, only they wished the supreme power to be lodged in the family of Herod, to whom the Jews generally were averse. The point therefore they wished to be solved was, whether they were bound in conscience, by the law of God, to acknowledge a foreign yoke as of divine appointment, by paying tribute, or to throw it off, not by the refusal of individuals to pay tribute, (for that they did and were compelled to do,) but by the joint effort of the nation, as incompatible with their relation to God as his peculiar people. This was the case which our Lord did not determine; the case of right and wrong, as it lay between the Romans and the Jewish nation, which would have brought in endless questions as to the origin of the Roman power, the manner in which it had been used, the degree of injustice which must be sustained before a nation can legally throw

off an allegiance to which it has submitted, and a definition of the theocracy in the modified form in which it then existed, and which was so soon to expire; with many other considerations of a political and minute kind which Christianity does not interfere with, contenting itself with declaring that government is of God, and prescribing the general duties of rulers and subjects, without determining modes of civil polity, or settling points which the nature of mutual compacts, and the known principles of justice, are sufficient of themselves to determine without a revelation.

He leaves the whole question of the RIGHT or lawfulness of sovereignty between the Jews and the Romans, untouched; but he lays it down, that a settled government, de facto, whatever may be the ground on which its claims rest, whether clear or questionable, is entitled to receive tribute, as affording protection and fulfilling the general purposes of government for the public welfare, by the application of the talents and time of its officers, and the expense of various agencies. He neither says how much tribute, nor how little; whether the sovereignty under which the tribute was exacted was legitimate or usurped; whether it might or might not be modified; or in some circumstances changed by public resistance; but simply, that a government in the regular exercise of an acknowledged dominion, should be maintained by the tribute of the people. Now the exhibition of the Roman money, in which the tribute was paid, proved the fact of the Roman dominion; its circulation as a part of the current coin of Judea, proved that the Roman government was in the regular exercise of its authority, defending property and life; therefore, that it had its claims, and something belonged to Cæsar, as of right, considered as their supreme governor, maintaining a magistracy under him for the public welfare, quite independent of the original title, or the question of the present legitimacy of the sovereignty itself; and in this our Lord agreed with their own writers, who say, "Wherever the money of any king is current, the inhabitants acknowledge that

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g Mark xii. 18; Luke xx. 27.

king for their lord." In this, then, lay the WISDOM of our Lord's reply, which furnished his followers, in future times, with a most important principle to guide them in their civil conduct. He leaves the particular questions of government to be regulated by human prudence, on the same principle that he refused to be the arbitrator in a question respecting an inheritance; but enjoins that wherever a regular government exists, it shall receive tribute, and that none are to take its benefits without giving back its dues. And the PRUDENCE was as conspicuous as the wisdom; for, as he left the question of the lawfulness of their subjection as a nation to the Romans undecided, and grounded his exhortation to pay tribute to Cæsar, not upon that, but upon their own principle, that "wherever the money of a king is current, the inhabitants acknowledge him for their lord;" as, in other words, they perceived that he placed the obligation of paying tribute, upon that ordinary state of things in which a sovereign power bestows the benefits of civil government, and a people accepts them, 'they marvelled and held their peace;" the answer had taken an unexpected turn, and "they could not take hold of his words before the people.” This obligation to pay tribute is, however, put by our Lord under two restrictions: Cæsar is to claim nothing but what "is Cæsar's," that only which of right belongs to him; and he is neither to claim, nor are we to render, what is God's," what of right belongs to him, as declared in his own word. This latter is a grand principle engrafted on the former, and had, no doubt, as well as the other, a prospective reference. "Cæsar," as Le Clerc well expresses it, "is your prince, and may demand his

tribute; your religion, properly and solely, belongs to God." Here the civil ruler has no right to command, you have no power to submit. Whatever God claims you must render; and if Cæsar intrude here, you must suffer rather than sin. At all hazards, we are to render unto God the things which are God's,”—love, worship, obedience, according to an honest interpretation of his will as contained in the scriptures, inspired by him, which interpretation is a matter of pure conscience between us and God alone.

Verse 22. The Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection.-The object of the Pharisees and Herodians was to entangle him in a political difficulty; that of the Sadducees, in a theological one, and by putting an objection to the doctrine of a resurrection, which they thought he could not answer, to lower his reputation for wisdom before the multitude. To deny the resurrection of the body, was but one of the tenets of the Sadducees : they denied the existence of "angels and spirits," holding, says Josephus, that the soul, σvvapuviše, vanishes with the body, and confining all rewards and punishments to the present life. It followed therefore, from their denial of the immortality of the soul and its existence after death, that they should deny the resurrection of the body. To this doctrine they added philosophical objections, and persuaded themselves that it was impossible. Hence the appeal of St. Paul, Acts xxvi. 8, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?" Here, however, they bring not a philosophic, but a popular, objection.

Verse 24. Moses said, If a man die, &c. By an ancient custom of the Hebrews, which was afterwards sanctioned by the

Mosaic law, if a man died childless, leaving a widow, the brother of the deceased, or the nearest male relation, was bound to marry the widow; to give to the firstborn son the name of the deceased; to insert his name in the genealogical register; and to deliver the estate of the deceased into his possession.

His brother shall marry his wife.Επιγαμβρεύω signifes to marry a wife by the law of affinity. See Gen. xxxviii. 8, and Deut. xxv. 5.

Verse 28. Whose wife shall she be? &c. -It appears that though the Pharisees held the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, their gross corruption of all spiritual things, which so influenced their interpretation of the prophecies respecting the Messiah, and converted "the kingdom of heaven" into a worldly monarchy, had produced a like darkening effect upon their conceptions of a future state. They allowed of marriage in heaven; and, generally, Josephus compares their ideas of a future life to those of the Greek poets; and if Maimonides and other subsequent Rabbins speak in more spiritual terms, and with more worthy conceptions of the world to come, this is another instance in which they derived superior knowledge from the gospel without acknowledging it. Still this was a subject debated among the modern Rabbins, some of them still clinging to the gross opinions of the Pharisees of our Lord's day. In disputing with the Pharisees, the Sadducees had probably

started this and similar difficulties as to the resurrection, with some success; and this rendered them the more confident.

Verse 29. Not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.-They knew not the true doctrine of the inspired writings on this subject, which was not to be confounded with the gross and erring conceptions of men. If infidels and semiinfidels would fairly inquire into the true sense of scripture, and not fix upon the weak opinions which many have corruptly or hastily deduced from it, they would be deprived of half their arguments. As they were ignorant of the scriptures, so also of the power of God, taking limited and partial views of that infinite attribute; otherwise they would have seen that he who gives life must have power to restore life; that he who built the body of man out of the dust of the earth can re-build it after it has crumbled into dust again; that, in point of fact, God is always changing lifeless inorganic matter into the living bodies of vegetables, animals, and men ; and that, as to the difficulties which have in all ages been urged against the resurrection of the same body, from the scattering of its parts, and their supposed conversion into others, it is even manifest to reason that a being of almighty power is able to prevent every combination and change in the world of matter which could frustrate his design, and involve a contradiction to it, and that this supposes only the same constant, though wonder

ful superintendence and government, which the maintenance of the regular order of all things daily, and indeed every moment, demands, and which, we are sure, from the effect, is always exerted.

Verse 30. In the resurrection they neither marry, &c.-The resurrection from the dead is expressed by avaσraois, a figurative term which signifies a rising up, and is opposed to Tтwσis, a falling down. In the resurrection here means, in the state to which men are introduced by the resurrection. As our Lord here so formally lays down the doctrine that there is no marriage in heaven, it is plain that the opposite opinion had been generally entertained by the advocates of the resurrection; and, indeed, if not, it would have been a mere impertinence for the Sadducees to have urged an objection which clearly had no relation to the doctrine as held by their opponents. Our Lord, therefore, not merely to silence them, but to instruct his followers, draws the veil more fully from before that new and eternal state of being which shall succeed the general resurrection, discloses its exclusive SPIRITUAL character, and shuts out for ever those gross conceptions with which imagination has clothed its pagan, Pharisaic, and Mahometan paradises. It does not, however, follow from this exalted view of a future life, that we shall not recognise each other; nor that those tender intellectual affections which bind pious friends and relations to each other on earth, shall not there exist. The contrary is indicated in many passages; only we are to recollect that every affection will be purged, not only from sin, but from infirmity.

As the angels of God.-That is, not only in immortality and purity, but in freedom from all bodily appetites.

Verse 32. I am the God of Abraham, &c. -As the Sadducees received no other of the sacred books than those of the Pentateuch, our Lord draws his proof from one of them. The words quoted were spoken to Moses, Exod. iii. 6, consequently long after the death of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and the stress of the argument lies in this, that Jehovah, who had been the God of these patriarchs during life, after their death still calls himself their God: "I AM the God of Abraham," &c. Now to be "their God,” expressed a coVENANT relation. He was not only the chosen object of their worship and trust, but stood engaged by his covenant with them to be their patron, protector, and the source of all blessings to them in the present and in a future life; for, in dependence upon this covenant, they were content "to dwell in tents" whilst on earth, because "they looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God." It followed, therefore, from the obvious truth that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," or that he could stand in no covenant relation to the dead, that these patriarchs were still alive as to their souls; which utterly subverted the material doctrine of the Sadducees, that they perished with the body. But how did it prove the doctrine of the resurrection of the body? From a supposed difficulty in connecting the argument with this doctrine, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Campbell, and others depart from the plain meaning of the word resurrection, and consider our