Thirdly: It was customary for the governors of provinces to send to the emperor an account of remarkable transactions in places where they presided.
"So thought the learned Eusebius, as we have seen.
"And Pliny's letters to Trajan, still extant, are a proof of it. Philo speaks of the Acts or Memoirs of Alexandria sent to Caligula, which that emperor read with more eagerness and satisfaction than anything else.
"Fourthly: It has been said to be very unlikely that Pilate should write such things to Tiberius, concerning a man whom he [Pilate] had condemned to death.
"To which it is easy to reply, that if he wrote to Tiberius at all, it is very likely that he should speak favorably and honorably of the Savior.
"That Pilate passed sentence of condemnation upon our Lord very unwillingly, and not without a sort of compulsion, appears from the history of the Evangelist: Matt. xxvii.; Mark xv.; Luke xxiii.; John xviii. Pilate was hard pressed. The rulers of the Jews vehemently accused our Lord to him. They said they had found him perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that himself is Christ, a king, and the like; and all without effect for a while.
"Pilate still sought for expedients to set Jesus at liberty.
"As his reluctance had been very manifest and public in a court of judicature, in the chief city of the nation at the time of one of their great festivals, it is highly probable that when he sent to Rome he should make some apology for his conduct. Nor could anything be more proper than to allege some of our Savior's miracles which he had heard of, and to give an account to the zeal of those who professed faith in him after his ignominious crucifixion, and openly asserted that he had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven.
"Pilate would not dare in such a report to write falsehood, nor to conceal the most material circumstances of the case about which he was writing. At the trial he publicly declared his innocence: and told the Jews several times 'that he found no fault in him at all.'
"And when he was going to pronounce the sentence of condemnation, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just person: 'See ye to it.' Matt. xxvii. 24.