nd asked: "How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?"
The man was questioned as to his personal opinion of Jesus, and promptly
answered: "He is a prophet." The man knew his Benefactor to be more than
any ordinary being; as yet, however, he had no knowledge of Him as the
Christ.

The inquisitorial Jews were afraid of the result of such a wondrous
healing, in that the people would support Jesus whom the rulers were
determined to destroy. They assumed it to be possible that the man had
not been really blind; so they summoned his parents, who answered their
interrogatories by affirming that he was their son, and they knew him to
have been born blind; but as to how he had received sight, or through
whose ministration, they refused to commit themselves, knowing the
rulers had decreed that any one who confessed Jesus to be the Christ
should be cast out from the community of the synagog, or, as we would
say today, excommunicated from the Church. With pardonable astuteness
the parents said of their son: "He is of age; ask him: he shall speak
for himself."

Compelled to acknowledge, to themselves at least, that the fact and the
manner of the man's restoration to sight were supported by irrefutable
evidence, the crafty Jews called the man again, and insinuatingly said
unto him: "Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner." He
replied fearlessly, and with such pertinent logic as to completely
offset their skill as cross-examiners: "Whether he be a sinner or no, I
know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." He
very properly declined to enter into a discussion with his learned
questioners as to what constituted sin under their construction of the
law; of what he was ignorant he declined to speak; but on one matter he
was happily and gratefully certain, that whereas he had been blind, now
he could see.

The Pharisaical inquisitors next tried to get the man to repeat his
story of the means employed in the healing, probably with the subtle
purpose of leading him into inconsistent or contradictory statements;
but he replied with emphasis, and possibly with some show of impatience,
"I have told you already, and ye did not hear:[872] wherefore would ye
hear it again? will ye also be his disciples?" They retorted with anger,
and reviled the man; the ironical insinuation that they perchance wished
to become disciples of Jesus was an insult they would not brook. "Thou
art his disciple," said they,