Acts 23:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

ACTS CHAPTER 23 Acts 23:1-5 Paul, pleading his integrity, is smitten at the command of the high priest, whom he reproveth of injustice. Acts 23:6-9 By declaring himself a Pharisee, and questioned for the hope of the resurrection, he causeth a division in the council. Acts 23:10,11 He is carried back to the castle, and encouraged by the Lord in a vision. Acts 23:12-22 A conspiracy against him is discovered to the chief captain, Acts 23:23-35 who sendeth him under a guard with a letter to Felix the governor at Caesarea. Said, Men and brethren; acknowledging himself to have descended from the patriarchs as well as they; and bespeaks, as much as he could, their favour and attention. I have lived in all good conscience; not that he thought himself to have been without sin or fault, for he acknowledges and bewails his captivity to the law of sin, Romans 7:23,24; but that he was not conscious to himself of any notorious impiety (as sacrilege, which they accused him of); nay, he had not suffered willingly any sin to be, much less to reign, in him. And as for his persecuting of the Christians, he did it not to flatter any with it, or upon any sinister design whatsoever, but thinking to serve God by it, 1 Timothy 1:13. Before God; in the sense of God's seeing of him, and whom St. Paul acknowledges to be the searcher and knower of the heart and conscience.