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Their design was from his answer to take some colourable pretence to accuse, and either to discredit him with the people, or to expose him to the displeasure of the superior powers. If he had directed to send her to be punished by the Roman governors, who administered justice in capital causes, the people would be fired with indignation; for they looked upon them as invaders of the rights of government that belonged to the Israelites. If he had advised them to put her to death by their own power, they would have accused him of sedition, as an enemy of the Roman authority. If he had dismissed her as not worthy of death, they would have accused him to the sanhedrim, as an infringer of the law of Moses, as a favourer of dissoluteness, an enemy to civil society, and worthy of universal hatred. This malicious design, so craftily concerted, our Saviour easily discovered and defeated; whereas they thought it would require his most attentive consideration to extricate himself from the snare. He seemed not at all to attend to what they said, but, stooping down, wrote on the ground: what he wrote, or how he could write upon the floor of the temple, (which was of stone), are very idle questions; the first not possible to be resolved, the second impertinent; for it is not said, that he made any impression upon the ground, though it be said, he wrote upon it. It appeareth plainly to have been but a divertive action, by which our Saviour signified that he gave no ear to them.