Again, on another occasion, Jesus said emphatically: "I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work, we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God."[220] Even before this bold declaration of His identity with Jehovah, He had intimated that He was of Heavenly origin and had enjoyed a divine preëxistence. He had declared that He was the "Bread which came down from Heaven,"[221] and that "Before Abraham was, I am."[222] The Jews regarded His statement that He had lived before Abraham as blasphemy, and "took up stones to cast at him," this being the usual punishment for blasphemous conduct. We have said enough to emphasize the point that there was another kind of blasphemy known to the Jews of the days of Jesus than that prescribed in Leviticus; and that the confession of being "Christ, the Son of God," as the Jews and Caiaphas interpreted the term, brought Jesus within the meaning of blasphemy, in its wider signification--that of assuming equality with God. The numerous illustrations above furnished were given to provide means of clear interpretation of the term blasphemy, as used in the condemnatory sentence of the high priest. For it is clearly evident that he and the other judges must have had many charges against Jesus in mind other than those that appear in the record of the trial. But we repeat, these extra-judicial charges must be considered only for purposes of correct interpretation and as a means of throwing light upon the actual proceedings in the night trial before the Sanhedrin. We further repeat that the New Testament furnishes abundant evidence that Jesus the man, the Jewish citizen, had, at divers times and places, committed blasphemy against Jehovah, under a strict interpretation of the law of God. Mr. Simon Greenleaf, the great Christian writer on the Law of Evidence and the Harmony of the Gospels, has thus tersely and admirably summarized the matter from the lawyer's point of view: "If we regard Jesus simply as a Jewish citizen, and with no higher character, this conviction seems substantially right in point of law, though the trial were not legal in all its forms. For, whether the accusation were founded on the first or the second command in the Decalogue, or on the law laid down in the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, or on that in the eighteenth chapter and the twentieth verse, he had violated them all by assuming to himself powers belonging alone to Jehovah. It is not easy to perceive on what ground his conduct could have been defended before any tribunal, unless upon that of his superhuman character. No lawyer, it is conceived, would think of placing his defense upon any other basis."[223]