“Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?”
The chief priests and Pharisees are here in a close cabal, contriving how to suppress Christ; though this was the great day of the feast, they attended not the religious services of the day, but left them to the vulgar, to whom it was common for those great ecclesiastics to consign and turn over the business of devotion, while they thought themselves better employed in the affairs of church-policy.
Commenting on John 7:45-53
Verse 51. Doth our law, &c. The law required justice to be done, and gave every man the right to claim a fair and impartial trial, . Their condemnation of Jesus was a violation of every rule of right. He was not arraigned; he was not heard in self-defence, and not a single witness was adduced.
Doth our law, &c.--a very proper, but all too tame rejoinder, and evidently more from pressure of conscience than any design to pronounce positively in the case. "The feebleness of his defense of Jesus has a strong contrast in the fierceness of the rejoinders of the Pharisees" [WEBSTER and WILKINSON].