ll, why smitest thou me?" (Chap. xviii.
23.) was such an answer as might have been looked for from the person
who, as he proceeded to the place of execution, bid his companions (as
we are told by Saint Luke; Chap. xxiii. 28.) weep not for him, but for
themselves, their posterity, and their country; and who, whilst he was
suspended upon the cross, prayed for his murderers, "for they know not,"
said he, "what they do." The urgency also of his judges and his
prosecutors to extort from him a defence to the accusation, and his
unwillingness to make any (which was a peculiar circumstance), appears
in Saint John's account, as well as in that of the other
evangelists. (See John xix. 9. Matt. xxvii. 14. Luke xxiii. 9.)

There are, moreover, two other correspondencies between Saint John's
history of the transaction and theirs, of a kind somewhat different from
those which we have been now mentioning.

The first three evangelists record what is called our Saviour's agony,
i.e. his devotion in the garden immediately before he was apprehended;
in which narrative they all make him pray "that the cup might pass from
him." This is the particular metaphor which they all ascribe to him.
Saint Matthew adds, "O, my Father, if this cup may not pass away from
me, except I drink it, thy will be done." (Chap, xxvi. 42.) Now Saint
John does not give the scene in the garden: but when Jesus was seized,
and some resistance was attempted to be made by Peter, Jesus, according
to his account, checked the attempt, with this reply: "Put up thy sword
into the sheath; the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not
drink it?" (Chap. xviii. 11.) This is something more than
consistency---it is coincidence; because it is extremely natural that
Jesus, who, before he was apprehended, had been praying his Father that
"that cup might pass from him," yet with such a pious retraction of his
request as to have added, "If this cup may not pass from me, thy will be
done;" it was natural, I say, for the same person, when he actually was
apprehended, to express the resignation to which he had already made up
his thoughts, and to express it in the form of speech which he had
before used, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink
it?" This is a coincidence between writers in whose narratives there is
no imitation, but great diversity.

A second similar correspondency is the following: Matthew and Mark make
the charge upon which our Lord was condemne