But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.
Ver. 19. Take no thought how or what ye shall speak] Be not anxious about either matter or manner of your apology for yourselves. Ye shall be supplied from on high both with invention and elocution. Demosthenes, that great orator, was many times dismayed when he spoke to King Philip, and sometimes so disheartened that he had not a word more to say. Moses, that great scholar, feared he should lack words when he was to stand before Pharaoh, and professes, that since God had called him to that service, he found less freedom of speech than before. Latomus of Lovain, a very learned man, having prepared an eloquent oration to Charles V, emperor, was so confounded in the delivering of it, that he came off with great discredit, and fell into utter despair. No wonder therefore though the apostles, being ignorant and unlettered men, were somewhat troubled how to do when brought before kings and Caesars. Our Saviour here cures them of that care by a promise of help from heaven. And they had it, Acts 5:41; Acts 13:52. And so had the confessors and martyrs in all ages of the Church. Nescio unde veniunt istae meditationes, I do not know from where such thoughts come, saith Luther of himself in a letter to his friend. And in his book of the Babylonish captivity he professeth, that whether he would or no, he became every day more learned than other. a How bravely did Ann Askew, Alice Driver, and other poor women, answer the doctors, and put them to a nonplus! Was not that the Spirit of the Father speaking in them?
a Profitetur se quotidie, velit, nolit, doctiorem fieri.