Perhaps Peter now hoped that he had silenced his accusers, and should be left in peace; but he was shortly undeceived. "The servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the High Priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off," seems, however, to have recognized Peter as the person who did this act, and saith, "Did not I see thee in the garden with him?" What had been denied before was not likely to be confessed now. "Peter then denied again; and he went out into the porch; and immediately the cock crew." These three denials,--first, to the damsel; secondly, to the servants and officers; and thirdly, to the kinsman of Malchus,--which are related in the different Gospels, all took place much at the same time, and are therefore to be looked upon as one act: thus we see how every word spoken by Jesus on the subject of Peter's denial came true. He said that before it was time for the cock to crow at all, Peter would have denied Him three times; and this he had done, and the warning voice of the cock had been heard for the first time. If we resist the Devil, he will flee from us: if we give way to one temptation, we shall be more likely to fall again: so it was with Peter. "When he was gone out into the porch, after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And another maid saw him, and began to say to them that stood by, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. This is one of them." Peter now added to his sin, "for he denied with an oath, I do not know the man,"--thus calling upon God as a witness to the truth of what he was saying. This was Peter's second denial of his Lord and Master. About an hour afterwards, when it was nearly three o'clock in the morning, Peter seems to have been again in the hall, where the soldiers were waiting with Jesus, until it should be time for them to take Him before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. Here the third denial took place. Before we go further, some little explanation is necessary. You know that in different countries, as in France, Spain, China, &c., the people speak different languages; so that without learning one another's language, the natives of different countries cannot talk to each other. But even in different parts of the same country, the people often pronounce their words in such a different manner as to make it almost a different language, so that the "dialect," or manner of speaking, in one province, would be hardly understood in another province of the same country. Even in England we have something of the same kind; and if you were to hear the people of Yorkshire or of Somersetshire talking to each other, you would not understand much of their conversation.