Acts 6:13

and set up false witnesses which said Their falseness consists in the perverted turn which they gave to the words of Stephen. Though we have no words of his hitherto recorded, we can see from the character of his defence in the next chapter that he must have been heard to declare that the worship of God was no longer to be restricted as it had been to the Temple at Jerusalem. And just as in the accusation of Christ (Matthew 26:61) the witnesses (called, as here, false, and for a like reason) perverted a saying of Jesus, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up," which St John (John 2:21) explains, into "I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days," so the words of Stephen which spake of a worship now "to be bound to no fixed spot, and fettered by no inflexible externality" (Zeller), were twisted into blasphemy against the Temple and the law, called in Acts 6:11 blasphemy against Moses and against God; and by the use of these two phrases as equivalent the one to the other, they shew us how God and Moses meant for them no more than their Temple and its ritual.

This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words The best authorities omit blasphemous.