Notwithstanding, that I be not further tedious Ινα δε μη επι πλειον σε εγκοπτω, that I may not trouble thee any further, by trespassing either on thy patience or modesty. The eloquence of Tertullus was as bad as his cause; a lame introduction, a lame transition, and a lame conclusion! Did not God confound the orator's language? I pray that thou wouldest hear What we have to offer; of thy clemency With thy usual candour and well-known goodness. For we have found this man a pestilent fellow Or rather, a pestilence, or plague, as λοιμος signifies; a man infecting others with pernicious principles, and spreading mischief wherever he comes; and a mover of sedition among all the Jews Rendering them disaffected to the government, and exciting them to rise in rebellion against it; and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes A term of reproach, which, it seems, was given to the disciples of Christ even at that early period. Who also hath gone about to profane the temple
By bringing heathen into it. “Tertullus artfully mentions this, as the most express fact he had to charge upon him, as he knew that the Romans allowed the Jews a power of executing, even without forms of law, any person who should be found in such an act of profanation; and he seems to have intended to make a merit of their moderation, that they intended, nevertheless, fairly to have tried him, and not to have destroyed him on the spot, as Lysias had justly charged them with attempting to do. And it is observable, that Tertullus nowhere expressly avows so much as a design to have put Paul to death, though it was undoubtedly intended.” Doddridge. Thus, after a fawning preface, Tertullus prefers charges against Paul, for which there was not the shadow of a foundation, except that he was a leading person among the Nazarenes, or Christians. For that he had moved the Jews to sedition against the government, or that he went about to profane the temple, was utterly false; (see Acts 21:28;) and so it was also, that they took him to judge him according to their law; for they took him by violence, and drew him out of the temple, and went about to kill him without any judicial process. In short, the whole accusation, together with the circumstances by which the orator aggravated it, were all mere fictions, of which he offered no proof whatever, only that (Act 24:9) the Jews Namely, the high-priest and the elders; assented, saying that these things were so.