John 9:18

The Jews therefore did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and had received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight, and asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see?

Such unbelief on the part of the majority of the Sanhedrin suggests the quotation ascribed to Voltaire:

If in the market of Paris, before the eyes of a thousand men, a miracle should be performed, I would much rather disbelieve their two thousand eyes and my own two, than believe it.[9]

Voltaire has many spiritual descendants, some of them being in pulpits, and this is the true explanation of what is called "modernism" in the religious community of our day. The attitude of the Pharisees here shows the folly of supposing that evidence of any kind can persuade men whose purpose is to disbelieve. Faith is a moral thing, as well as intellectual (John 3:19).

They called his parents ... They overreached themselves in this, for they promptly corroborated the son's identity and the fact of his being born blind. The whole neighborhood could have done the same. It was another example of how the Lord "taketh the wise in their own craftiness" (1 Corinthians 3:19).

Ryle quoted Chrysostom who thought that:

"Whom ye say" insinuated that they supposed the parents to be impostors, and that they were acting deceitfully, and plotting on behalf of Christ, by spreading a report that their son was born blind.[10]

The very fact of calling the man's parents shows the desperate nature of the Pharisees' position.

[9] J. C. Ryle, op. cit., p. 600.

[10] Ibid.