For it is wonderful! that the Jewish rulers, and the rigorous Pharisees should in so public a manner thus violate the precept for observing the Sabbath day; for the penalty of this action of theirs was no less than death! More wonderful still is it that they should have so much better attended to, and comprehended the meaning of the prediction of Jesus to his disciples, than his own disciples did; and most wonderful of all, that a Roman Proconsul should consent to let his troops keep watch round a tomb, for fear it should be thought that a dead man was come to life again.
But though our author's history of these extraordinary facts is neither consistent with reason, and probability, nor with the other histories of the same event; it proceeds in pretty strict conformity to the manner in which it sets out.

For to convince us still more fully that the author was totally ignorant of the mode of computing time in use among the Jews, and habituated to that in use among the Greeks and Romans?
He reckons the Sabbath to last till day light on Sunday morn, and says, (chapter xxviii.), "that in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week," the two Marys before mentioned, came, (not as in Luke, to embalm the body, for, with a guard round the sepulchre, that would have been impracticable, but) to see the sepulchre.

"Whilst they were there, the author tells us, there was another great earthquake, and an angel descended, rolled away the stone, and sat upon it, at whose sight, the soldiers trembled, and were frighted to death.

But to prevent the like effect of his appearance upon the women, he said unto them, fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus who was crucified.

That the women as well as the soldiers were present at the descent of this angel, appears not only from there being nobody else, by whom these uncommon circumstances could have been related, but also by the pronoun personal ye, inserted in the original Greek, which in that language is never done, unless it be emphatically to mark such a distinction, or antithesis, as there was on this occasion, between them and the Roman guard.