Acts 5:28

Acts 5:28. Did not we straitly command you, that ye should not teach in this name? and behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. A concealed dread underlies the whole of the high priest's accusation. He never asks them how they came to be in the Temple teaching that morning, though he knew the evening before they were securely lodged in the state prison. He carefully, too, avoids mentioning the sacred name of Jesus, no doubt uttering with fierce contempt the words, ‘this name,' ‘your doctrine,' ‘this man's blood.' The charge against them really was one of direct disobedience to a decree of the Sanhedrim: this plain command, said the high priest, these men, Peter and his companions, had disobeyed in the hope that they might excite the people to rise against the Sanhedrists, as the murderers of an innocent man; in fact, had not unexpected friends been found in the midst of the sacred assembly itself, no popular favour without could have saved the apostles then from a most severe sentence of long and rigorous imprisonment, perhaps of death; for in their public teaching, the high priest and his assessors in the council were charged with the awful accusation of murdering the Messiah (sec Acts 5:33). Nor was the manifest favour in which they were held by the people generally without, and the powerful intervention of the Pharisee party in the council, sufficient to procure the acquittal of the accused. The council, in spite of these, condemned the teaching and severely punished the leaders before letting them go (see Matthew 27:25).