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Observe here, The innocent policy which the apostle uses for his own preservation: he, perceiving that the council before whom he stood were not all of a piece, but patched up of Pharisees and Sadducees, he publicly professes himself a Pharisee by education, and of that persuasion now in point of the resurrection.
Thus at once he cast in a bone of contention between the Sadducees who denied the resurrection, and the Pharisees who owned it; and obliged the Pharisees, at least as to that opinion, to take his part, and so by pious prudence he turned their opposition against him upon one another: that by setting them at variance he might the better escape.
Learn hence, that an innocent and prudent policy may warrantably be made use of by the members and ministers of Jesus Christ, without any blemish to their holy profession, in order to our preservation from the hands of persecutors; a serpentine subtilty may be made use of, together with a dovelike innocincy. Thus did St. Paul here: when he perceived that one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out, &c.