Master had instructed his disciples
how they should act in the event of a brother doing them an injury:
three distinct steps are indicated, rising one above another like courts
of appeal; first, a private remonstrance; if that prove unavailing, then
a remonstrance in the presence of one or two witnesses; and lastly, an
appeal to the Church. These rules are very specific, and together
constitute a complete code on the branch of the subject to which they
refer. In the matter of dealing with an offending brother with the view
of bringing him to a better mind, you can no further go: if all these
efforts fail, you must separate yourself from the offender, lest by
continued intimacy you should seem indifferent to his sin. After this
the Lord proceeds to give instruction on other subjects, and especially
on united prayer. Peter, I suppose, had allowed his mind to be so
completely occupied with the question of forgiving injuries, that he
failed to follow his Teacher when the lesson glided into another theme.
I could suppose him to have been so busy with the thought of injuries
received, and the difficulty of forgiving them, all the time that the
Lord was discoursing on united prayer, that he scarcely observed his
Master's words. All the more readily might this happen, if the impetuous
fisherman had a quarrel with some of his neighbours on hand at the very
time, and was exercised in conscience about the duty of bringing it to a
close. At the first pause, the current which had been for a time flowing
under ground, burst out on the surface. Taking up and again abruptly
introducing the subject which had been for some time dismissed, he
asked, as if unconscious that the theme had been changed during his
reverie, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive
him? Till seven times?" He wanted to have a number specified, beyond
which he should not be bound to forgive repeated offences. In suggesting
seven he seems to have had in his mind some Pharisaical formula:
probably he thought the allowance was liberal, and expected to be
approved for his magnanimity.

The formula, seventy times seven, while it serves to intimate that there
is in the law no limit to the exercise of a forgiving spirit, seizes
upon Peter's narrow proposal and makes a show of it openly. It is
possible that he may have fallen into a mistake here through the
misapprehension of a lesson on the same subject given by the Lord. He
may have heard the Mast