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When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death:

When the morning was come — They had broken their sleep the night before, and yet were up and at it early the next morning, so soon as the day peeped ( ως εγενετο ημερα ), Luke 22:66 . So sedulous are the devil’s servants. Esau began to bustle with Jacob even in the very womb, that no time might be lost.

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And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

And when they had bound him — Bound he had been before this (to loose the cords of our iniquities): but likely they had loosed him again, to try if by fair means they could make him belie himself. So those martyrs were tempted, Hebrews 11:37 . ( επρισθησαν, επειρασθησαν .) And this was Julian’s way of persecuting the primitive Christians, as Nazianzen testifieth: persecutioni suae miscuit persuasionem; ideoque fuit superioribus nocentior, et perniciosior. So Bonner, after he had allowed William Hunter, martyr, a halfpenny a day in bread and drink in prison, persuaded with him, saying, If thou wilt recant, I will make thee a freeman in the city, and give thee forty pounds in good money, to set up thine occupation also; or I will make thee steward of mine house, and set thee in office. So, to reduce Dr Taylor, martyr, they promised him not only his pardon, but a bishopric.

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Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,

Then Judas, which had betrayed him — Might not Judas have sang care away, now that he had both the bag and the price of blood, but he must come and betray himself. While he played alone, he won all; but soon after, his own "wickedness corrected him, and his backslidings reproved him,"Jeremiah 2:19; Jeremiah 2:19 . Sin will surely prove evil and bitter, when the bottom of the bag is once turned upward. A man may have the stone, who feels no fit of it. Conscience will work once; though for the time, one may feel no fit of accusation: Laban showed himself at parting. "Knowest thou not that there will be bitterness in the latter end?" 2 Samuel 2:26 . But the devil deals with men as the panther does with the beasts: he hides his deformed head, till his sweet scent have drawn them into his danger. Till we have sinned, Satan is a parasite; when we have sinned he is a tyrant. But it is good to consider that of Bernard. At the day of judgment a pure conscience shall better bestead one than a full purse. In die iudicii plus valebit conscientia pura quam marsupia plena.

When he saw that he was condemned — He hoped, belike, that Christ would, as at other times he did, have delivered himself by a miracle. Let no man flatter himself, as if there were no such hurt in sin; for like dirty dogs, it doth but defile us in fawning: and like a treacherous host, though it welcome us into the inn with smiling countenance, yet it will cut our throats in our beds. Judas was first nibbling upon the silver bait, after which the hook of conscience troubled him.

He repented — That is, he changed his mind ( μεταμεληθεις ), from thinking well of his former actions. So those miscreants in Malachi are said to "return and discern," …, Malachi 3:18 . So Rodolphus, Duke of Suabia, when, at the pope’s instigation, taking up arms against Henry the emperor, he had lost his right hand in the battle, he sent for his bishops and other his confederates, and said unto them: Lo, this is that hand wherewith I swore that allegiance to my sovereign, which by your means and motion I have violated. Videte an recta via me duxeritis, … Consider whether you have led me on in a right way or not. (Func. Chronol.)

" Hic fuit ille cui Papa coronam misit cum ista inscriptione,

Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodulpho. "

And brought again the thirty pieces — So did James Abbes bring to the Bishop of Norwich his forty pence fastened upon him by the bishop; which when he had received (saith Mr Fox) and was gone from the bishop, who had prevailed with him to recant, his conscience began to throb, and inwardly to accuse this fact, how he had displeased the Lord by consenting to their beastly illusions. In which combat with himself, being piteously vexed, he went to the bishop again, and there threw him his money, and said, it repented him that he ever consented to their wicked persuasions in taking of his money. Hereupon the bishop with his chaplains laboured afresh to win him again, but he was better resolved, and crying out to God for pardon of his sin (which Judas did not) he obtained mercy, and suffered martyrdom.

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Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that .

I have sinned, … — Here was contrition, confession, restitution (most men go not so far, that yet profess large hopes of heaven); there was wanting that transmentation, conversion, obedience of faith that should have completed his repentance. He died in the birth, as that foolish child Ephraim. He confessed to men, and not to God; and by his confession he sought no more than to ease his heart, as drunkards by vomiting rid their stomachs. So Latemus of Louvain confessed, inter horrendos mugitus, se contra conscientiam adversatum esse veritati, roaring and crying out, that against his conscience he had persecuted the truth of God. Melancth. in Chronic. In trouble of mind, all will out. Conscience, like Samson’s wife, conceals not the riddle: like Futvia, a whorish woman, who declared all the secrets of her foolish lover Cneius, a noble Roman. Sallust. in Bel. Catil.

What is that to us? See thou to that — Miserable comforters, physicians of no value. "To him that is afflicted pity should be showed from his friend: but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty,"Job 6:14; Job 6:14 . The devil and his imps love to bring men into the briers, and there leave them; as familiar devils forsake their witches, when they have brought them once into fetters. Thus the old Bethelite, that had been at pains to fetch back the prophet, would not go back with him. Thus the Papists burnt Cranmer recanting, and the present prelates cast off their great anti-Sabbatarian, White, when they had served their turns on him. David, when he was hunted from Samuel the prophet, fled to Abimelech the priest, as one that knew that justice and compassion should dwell in those breasts that are consecrated to God. But Judas met with no such matter in the priests of his time. Those mischievous men left him, when they had led him to his bane.

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And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

And he cast down the pieces of silver — That wage of wickedness burnt in his purse, in his conscience; neither could it secure him in the day of wrath. See Zephaniah 1:18 ; Ezekiel 7:19 ; Obadiah 1:4 James 4:1-2 . Omnia fui, et nihil mihi profitit, I had everything and it profited my nothing, said Severus the emperor, when he lay dying. Most of the emperors got nothing by their advancement to the empire, whereof they were so ambitious, but this, Ut citius interficerentur, that they were slain the sooner. All, or most of them, till Constantine, died unnatural deaths. Achan’s wedge of gold served but to cleave asunder his soul from his body; and the Babylonish garment but for a shroud.

And went and hanged himself — If you confess yourself to a priest, and not to God, said that martyr, you shall have the reward that Judas had. For he confessed himself to a priest, and yet went and hanged himself by-and-by. So did Porter, townclerk of London in Henry VIII’s time, who had before sworn a great oath, that if the king’s highness would set forth the Scripture in English, and let it be read of the people by his authority, rather than he would so long live, he would cut his own throat. But he brake promise: for shortly after he hanged himself. And about the same time, Foxford, chancellor to the bishop of London, a cruel persecutor and butcher of the saints, died suddenly in his chair, his belly being burst, and his guts falling out before him; as likewise Judas’ did, Cum quodam singulari crepitus fragore, as the word ελακησε imports, Acts 1:18 . Selneccerus makes mention of a covetous bishop of Misna in Germany, who had the devil for his death’s man. And Dr Morton, late bishop of Durham, reports a story of his own knowledge, of one Sir Booth, a Bachelor of Arts in St John’s College in Cambridge, who, being popishly affected, took the consecrated bread at the time of the communion; and forbearing to eat it, conveyed and kept it closely for a time, and afterwards threw it over the college wall. But a short time after, not enduring the torment of his guilty conscience, he threw himself headlong over the battlements of the chapel, and some few hours after ended his life. "The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity:" some shift or other a man may make to suffer whatsoever other calamities, "but a wounded spirit who can bear?"Proverbs 18:14; Proverbs 18:14: there is no fighting with a mighty fire, no bearing up sail against a storm. Job, when once wet to the skin, curseth the day of his birth, and thinketh it better to be strangled or hanged than longer to endure it, Job 7:15 . And yet God was but in jest, as it were, with Job, in comparison of Judas.

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And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

It is not lawful, … — They would not suffer the price of blood to lie in a chest; but the blood itself they could well enough suffer to lie in their consciences. So our modern Pharisees (the Popish prelates) will not be present when the martyrs are condemned to death, but have a hypocritical form of interceding for them to the secular powers, whereas they themselves have delivered them up to the judges to be executed, Quos suis praeiudiciis damnarunt, as one speaketh, having first degraded, excommunicated, and adjudged them worthy of death.

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And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.

To bury strangers in — Romans and others, with whom they would have nothing common, no, not so much as a burial place, Isaiah 65:4-5 . God complains of a people that "remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments; which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me, for I am holier than thou," …; sick they were of a Noli me tangere, Do not touch me, strict in trifles, senseless of foul sins. There are those who tell us, that the nature of this potter’s field is such, as, if a stranger’s body be laid in it, it consumes it to the bone in twenty-four hours; which it doth not to the body of any Jew. This, if it be true, saith one, it seems God would have the earth thus marked to preserve the memory of the bloody money by which it was purchased; and therefore he gave it a virtue to consume strangers’ bodies ere they could corrupt, refusing the Jews; to show how they had lost their privilege to their own land, by crucifying their Lord, and strangers began to be possessed of it. Also, to teach us, that his hope is nearest incorruption, who is the greatest stranger from the sin of the Jews, that is, crucifying Christ.

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Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.

Was called the field of blood — Not the burial place for strangers, as they would have had it called (thinking thereby to have gotten themselves an eternal commendation, for their love and liberality to strangers), but "the field of blood" (so the Vulgate would needs call it, much against these masters’ minds), for a lasting monument of their detestable villany, which they thought to have carried so cleanly, that the world should have been never the wiser; and therefore they would not kill Christ themselves as they did Stephen; but, to decline the envy, delivered him up to Pilate to be put to death. It is hard if hypocrites be not, by one means or other, detected; how else should their names rot?

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