certain day that He was sitting teaching,912 and there were Pharisees and doctors of the law also sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judæa, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them. And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before Him. And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the house-top, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus. And when He saw their faith, He said, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee;” and so forth.913 The question, therefore, remains one between Mark and Matthew, in so far as Matthew writes of the incident as taking place in the Lord’s city;914 while Mark locates it in Capharnaum. This question would be more difficult to solve if Matthew mentioned Nazareth by name. But, as the case stands, when we reflect that the state of Galilee itself might have been called Christ’s city,915 because Nazareth was in Galilee, just as the whole region which was made up of so many cities916 is yet called a Roman state;917 when, further, it is considered that so many nations are comprehended in that city, of which it is written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God;”918 and also that God’s ancient people, though dwelling in so many cities, have yet been spoken of as one house, the house of Israel,919—who can doubt that [it may be fairly said that] Jesus wrought this work in His own city [or, state], inasmuch as He did it in the city of Capharnaum, which was a city of that Galilee to which He had returned when He crossed over again from the country of the Gerasenes, so that when He came into Galilee He might correctly be said to have come into His own city [or, state], in which ever town of Galilee He might happen to be? This explanation may be vindicated more particularly on the ground that Capharnaum itself held a position of such eminence in Galilee that it was reckoned to be a kind of metro- polis. But even were it altogether illegitimate to take the city of Christ in the sense either of Galilee itself, in which Nazareth was situated, or of Capharnaum, which was distinguished as in a certain sense the capital of Galilee, we might still affirm that Matthew has simply passed over all that happened after Jesus came into His own city until He reached Capharnaum, and that he has simply tacked on the narrative of the healing of the paralytic at this point; just as the writers do in many instances, leaving unnoticed much that intervenes, 912 Et ipse sedebat docens. 913 Luke v. 17–26. 914 Or, state—civitate. 915 Or, state—civitas. 916 Civitatibus. 917 Civitas, city. 918 Ps. lxxxvii. 3. 919 Isa. v. 7; Jer. iii. 20; Ezek. iii. 4. 287 Of the Man Sick of the Palsy to Whom the Lord Said, ‘Thy Sins are Forgiven…