Chapter XXX: Section III: Personal Liberty.—resistance to an Armed Force

The act was done in the night time. After having celebrated the Supper, Jesus had conducted his disciples to the Mount of Olives. He prayed fervently; but they fell asleep.

Jesus awakes them, with a gentle reproof for their weakness, and warns them that the moment is approaching. “Rise, let us be going; behold he is at hand that doth betray me.” Matt. xxvi. 46.

Judas was not alone; in his suite there was a kind of ruffian band, almost entirely composed of servants of the high priest, but whom Mr. Salvador honours with the title of the _legal soldiery_. If in the crowd there were any Roman _soldiers_, they were there as spectators, and without having been legally called on duty; for the Roman commanding officer, Pilate, had not yet heard the affair spoken of.

This personal seizure of Jesus had so much the appearance of a forcible arrest, an illegal act of violence, that his disciples made preparation to repel force by force.

Malchus, the insolent servant of the high priest, having shown himself the most eager to rush upon Jesus, Peter, not less zealous for his own master, cut off the servant’s right ear.

This resistance might have been continued with success, if Jesus had not immediately interfered. But what proves that Peter, even while causing bloodshed, was not resisting a _legal order_, a _legal judgment_ or decree, (which would have made his resistance an act of _rebellion by an armed force against a judicial order_,) is this—that he was not arrested, either at the moment or afterwards, at the house of the high priest, to which he followed Jesus, and where he was most distinctly recognised by the maid servant of the high priest, and even by a relative of Malchus.

Jesus alone was arrested; and although he had not individually offered any active resistance, and had even restrained that of his disciples, they bound him as a malefactor; which was a criminal degree of rigour, since for the purpose of securing a single man by a numerous band of persons armed with swords and staves it was not necessary. “Be ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves?” Luke xxii. 52.