2. It may seem to have been, if not commanded, yet in some measure authorized, or it was at least, by an express revelation, afterwards justified. For the matter is thus related. Upon the defection of the Israelites at Shittim into idolatry, in consequence of their prophane, as well as impure commerce with the daughters of Moab, God sent a plague among them, and besides commanded Moses to put to death all those who had been guilty of such abominations. Moses obeyed, and said unto the judges of Israel, slay ye every one his men, that were joined unto Baal-Peor.
This command was issued very properly to the Judges: but a private man, Phinehas, the son of Eleazer, the son of Aaron the priest, instigated by his zeal, and presuming perhaps on his relationship to the high priest (from whose family, a more than ordinary zeal in such a case might be expected) did, under these circumstances, take upon himself to execute that command on two persons, surprized in the very act, for which the penalty had been denounced, in the presence of all the people. Now, though this proceeding was irregular in itself, yet the notoriety of the fact, the most atrocious that could be, and the most daring insult on the divine authority, seemed almost to supersede the necessity of a legal process. The consequence was, that God himself was pleased to accept and reward the deed, because the author of it, on such a provocation, and at such a time, was zealous for his God, and had made an atonement for the children of Israel.
But to argue from a single instance, so circumstanced, that the same zeal was allowable in other cases, in which no such countenance had been given, and no such necessity or provocation could be pretended, is evidently so unreasonable, that no stress ought to be laid on this argument. The Jews, indeed, in succeeding times, might fancy a general rule to have been implied in this single instance; and we know from their history, to what enormous excesses this their easy belief, concurring with a natural violence of temper, afterwards transported them, during the last calamities of this devoted people[306]: but our Lord was very unlikely to give a countenance to their traditions, or to add the sanction of his authority to a principle, so weakly founded, and so liable to the worst abuse.
3. This traffic of the merchants, in the court of the Gentiles, how unfit soever it might be, depended on the same authority, as this pretended right itself of the zealots; that is, on the allowed usage and constant discipline of their country. No express precept of the law could be alledged for either. So that this right could not be exerted but at the expence of another, equally well founded.
4. Mr. Selden himself appears to have had some distrust of his own hypothesis, by the care he takes to interweave, in his discourse, a charge of fraud on the merchants, together with their prophanation of the temple. But the learned writer forgets, that ZELOTISM (if I may have leave to use a new term) respected religion only, and not private morals. For even the act of zeal, performed by Phinehas (from which, only, the very idea of this Jewish right, if it were one, was derived) had, for its object, not the fornication simply, but the idolatry, of the criminals: it was a sacrifice, not to the honour of virtue, as such, but to the honour of God. And, indeed, nothing but the singular structure of the Jewish polity, in which the honour of God was so extraordinarily considered, could give any the least colour to the fiction of such a right.
5. Lastly, whatever degree of credit this principle of zelotism might have acquired among the Jews, it was very unlikely, perhaps we may say, impossible, that Jesus should act upon it. When the Disciples, James and John, on a certain occasion, were instigated by this zeal to call for fire from Heaven on the heads of some persons, who had offered an insult to their master, Jesus himself rebuked them in these terms—Ye know not what spirit ye are of: For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them [Luke ix. 55.]—To burn with fire, is indeed something more than, to scourge: but, though the vengeance be not equal, in these two instances, the spirit is the same from which it is derived, and by which it is justified: and this spirit, we are expressly told, is not that by which Jesus chose to conduct himself. It was to no purpose to alledge the case of a Phinehas, or even an Elias: these were no precedents for HIM, who came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
I conclude then, upon the whole, that Jesus did not perform this act of driving the merchants out of the temple, in the Jewish character of ZEALOT; in what other character he might possibly perform it, I shall now inquire.
The ingenious conjecture of Mr. Selden, already considered, was apparently taken up by him to avoid the difficulties which he found in accounting for this act of zeal in our Lord, from his prophetic character only. These difficulties, he saw very distinctly, and has explained with much force.
“Though the Saviour of the world, says he, was undoubtedly both God and King, and, by his absolute dominion, not over the Jews only, but the whole race of mankind, must be supposed to have had a right of doing whatever he saw fit to do; yet since we know, that he constantly submitted himself in all things to the established forms of civil justice, whether of Jewish, or Roman institution; and, as being desirous to exhibit in his own person a most absolute example of obedience to the course of human authority, was careful always to abstain from every thing, that might be thought a violation of it in any private man; since, besides, we know, that, considering the peculiar envy, to which his life was exposed, he could not possibly have gratified his enemies more, than by putting it in their power to bring a criminal charge against him: it must, on all these accounts, be thought reasonable to suppose, that our Lord would not have ventured on so extraordinary an act, as that of driving the merchants out of the temple, unless it had been such, as, even in the opinion of those who were most prejudiced against him, he might lawfully and regularly perform[307].”
All this, the reader sees, is prudently, piously, and ably said, by this very learned writer; and I readily subscribe to every word of it. We only differ in our conclusion from these premises. Mr. Selden holds, that what Jesus did on this occasion, cannot be reconciled to the idea of his PROPHETIC CHARACTER, as sustained by him in the course of his ministry: I, on the contrary, conceive, that it very well may. But then I consider that character, as exercised by our Lord, at this time, in another manner, and to other ends, than the learned writer supposed.