♦“achievments” replaced with “achievements”♠“emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”Herod Agrippa.——All the interesting details of this richly romantic life, are given in a most delightful style by Josephus. (Antiquities,XVIII.v.3,–viii.9.andXIX.i–ix.)The same is more concisely given by the same author in another place. (Jewish War,II.ix.5,–xi.6.) The prominent events of Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in♦reference to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.♦“refereuce” replaced with “reference”In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains ablank to the modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.ROMAN TOLERANCE.These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,——thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against thegrowing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,——wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,——a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;——for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:Justum et tenacem propositi virum,Non civium ardor prava jubentium,Non vultus instantis tyranniMente quatit solida. * * *The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,——“A man just and resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,——that the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind movements of aperverse public opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its accomplishment,——that the majority of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;——and that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all human systems;——among the curses of that Roman sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often occurred,——overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the Roman governor would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought under his cognizance,——being done as it was, so directly in the face of those principles of religious tolerance which the policy of the empire enforced every where, excepting cases in which sedition and rebellion against their dominion was combined with religious zealotism, like the instances of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and others. Even Jesus himself, was thus accused by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate for his alleged endeavors to excite a revolt against Caesar, and opposing the payment of the Roman taxes,——as is shown by the statement of all the evangelists, and more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross. The persecution which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried on under the sanction ofthe Roman government, nor yet was it against their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment, scourging, banishment,&c.But the punishment of death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the persecuted Hellenists ever suffereddeathby the condemnation of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,——a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with allits paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come.PETER’S THREATENED MARTYRDOM.The long expected favorite and friend of the Jewish people, having been thus hailed sovereign by their grateful voices, and having strengthened his throne and influence by his opening acts of liberality and devotion to the national faith, now entered upon a reign which presented only the portents of a course most auspicious to his own fame and his people’s good. Uniting in his person the claims of the Herodian and Asmonaean lines,——with the blood of the heroic Maccabees in his veins,——crowned by the imperial lord of the civilized world, whose boundless power was pledged in his support, by the obligations of an intimate personal friendship, and of a sincere gratitude for the attainment of the throne of the Caesars through his prompt and steady exertions,——received with universal joy and hope by all the dwellers of the consolidated kingdoms of his dominion, which had been long thriving under the mild and equitable administration of a prudent governor,——there seemed nothing wanting to complete the happy auspices of a glorious reign, under which the ancient honors of Israel should be more than retrieved from the decline of ages.Yet what avails the bright array of happily conspiring circumstances, to prince or people, against the awful majesty of divine truth, or the pure, simple energy of human devotion? Within the obscurer corners of his vast territories, creeping for room under the outermost colonnades of that mighty temple whose glories he had pledged himself to renew,——wandering like outcasts from place to place,——seeking supporters only among the unintellectual mass of the people,——were a set of men of whom he probably had not heard until he entered his own dominions. They were now suggested to his notice for the first time, by the decided voice of censure from the devout and learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who invoked the aid of his sovran power, to check and utterly uproot this heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of Roman government had too long shielded from the just visitations of judicial vengeance. Nor did the royal Agrippa hesitate to gratify, in this slight and reasonable matter, the express wishes of the reverend heads of the Jewish faith and law. Ah! how little did he think, that in that trifling movement was bound up the destiny of ages, and that its results would send his name——though then so loved and honored——like Pharaoh’s, down to all time, a theme of religious horror and holy hatred, to the unnumbered millions of a thousand races, and lands then unknown;——an awful doom, from which one act of benign protection, or of prudent kindness, to that feeble band of hated, outcast innovators, might have retrieved his fame, and canonized it in the faithful memory of the just, till the glory of the old patriarchs and prophets should grow dim. But, without one thought of consequences, a prophetic revelation of which would so have appalled him, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm in vindictive cruelty over the church of Christ, for the gratification of those whose praise was to him more than the favor of God. Singling out first the person whom momentary circumstances might render most prominent or obnoxious to censure, he at once doomed to a bloody death the elder son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolicTHREE. No sooner was this cruel sentence executed, than, with a most remarkable steadiness in the execution of his bloody plan, he followed up this action, so pleasing to the Jews, by another similar movement. Peter, the active leader of the heretical host, ever foremost in braving the authority of the constituted teachers of the law, and in exciting commotion and dissatisfaction among the commonalty, was now seized by a military force, too strong tofear any resistance from popular movements, which had so much deterred the Sanhedrim. This occurred during the week of the passover; and such was king Agrippa’s profound regard for all things connected with his national religion, that he would not violate the sanctity of this holy festival by the execution of a criminal, however deserving of vengeance he might seem in that instance. The fate of Peter being thus delayed, he was therefore committed to prison, (probably in castle Antonia,) and to prevent all possibility of his finding means to escape prepared ruin again, he was confined to the charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four sets, of four men each, who were to keep him under constant supervision day and night, by taking turns, each set an equal time; and according to the established principles of the Roman military discipline, with the perfect understanding that if, on the conclusion of the passover, the prisoner was not forthcoming, the guards should answer the failure with their lives. These decided and careful arrangements being made, the king, with his gratified friends in the Sanhedrim and among the rabble, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the great national festival, with a peculiar zest, hightened by the near prospect of the utter overthrow of the advancing heresy, by the sweeping blow that robbed them of their two great leaders, and more especially of him who had been so active in mischievous attempts to perpetuate the memory of the original founder of the sect, and to frustrate the good effect of his bloody execution, by giving out that the crucified Jesus still lived, and would yet come in vengeance on his murderers. While such triumphant reflections swelled the festal enjoyments of the powerful foes of Christ, the unhappy company of his persecuted disciples passed through this anniversary-week with the most mournful reminiscences and anticipations. Ten years before, in unutterable agony and despair, they had parted, as they then supposed forever, with their beloved Lord; and now, after years of devotion to the work for which he had commissioned them, they were called to renew the deep sorrows of that parting, in the removal of those who had been foremost among them in the great work, cheering them and leading them on through toil and peril, with a spirit truly holy, and with a fearless energy, kindred with that of their divine Lord. Of these two divinely appointed chiefs, one had already poured out his blood beneath the executioner’s sword, and the other, their great leader, theRockof the church, was now only waiting the speedy close of the festal week, to crown his gloriouscourse, and his enemies’ cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of Peter.Castle Antonia.——For Josephus’s account of the position and erection of this work, see my note on page95, (section 8.) There has been much speculation about the place of the prison to which Peter was committed. The sacred text (Actsxii.10,) makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after leaving the prison it was still necessary to enter the city by “the iron gate.” Walch, Kuinoel and Bloomfield adopt the view that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified the walls. Wolf and others object to the view that it was without the walls; because, as Wolf says, it was not customary to have public prisons outside of the cities, since the prisoners might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from some hardy band of comrades,&c.But this objection is worth nothing against castle Antonia, which, though it stood entirely separated from the rest of the city, was vastly strong, and by its position as well as fortification, impregnable to any common force;——a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend it as a secure place for one who, like Peter, had escaped once from the common prison. There was always a Roman garrison in Antonia. (Josephus, Jewish War,V.v.8.)In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers’ God, who still remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the anthems ofpraise to God which sounded along the courts and porches of the temple, were no doubt heard, too, the thanks of many a grateful Hebrew for the goodness of the generous king, who had pledged his royal word to complete the noble plan of that holy pile, as suited the splendid conceptions of the founder. And this was the king whose decree had doomed that lonely and desolate prisoner in the castle, to a bloody and shameful death,——as a crowning offering at the close of the great festival; and how few among that vast throng, before whose eyes he was to yield his life, would repine at the sentence that dealt exterminating vengeance on the obstinately heretical preacher of the crucified Nazarene’s faith! Well might such dark visions of threatening ruin appal a heart whose enthusiasm had caught its flame from the unholy fires of worldly ambition, or devoted its energies to the low purpose of human ascendency. And truly sad would have been the lonely thoughts of this very apostle, if this doom had found him in the spirit which first moved him to devote himself to the cause which now required the sacrifice of life. But higher hopes and feelings had inspired his devoted exertions forten years, and higher far, the consolations which now sustained him in his friendless desolation. This very fate, he had long been accustomed to regard as the earthly meed of his labors; and he had too often been threatened with it, to be overwhelmed by its near prospect. Vain, then, were all solemn details of that awful sentence, to strike terror into his fixed soul,——vain the dark sureties of the high, steep rock, the massive, lofty walls, the iron gates, the ever-watchful Roman guards, the fetters and manacles, to control or check the“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!——Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,For there thy habitation is the heart.”Thus sublimely calm, sat Peter in his prison, waiting for death. Day after day, all day long, the joyous feast went on beneath him:——the offering, the prayer and the hymn varying the mighty course, from the earliest morning supplication to the great evening sacrifice. Up rolled the glorious symphony of the Levites’ thousand horns, and the choral harmony of their chanting voices,——up rolled the clouds of precious incense to the skiey throne of Israel’s God,——and with this music and fragrance, up rolled the prayers of Israel’s worshiping children; but though the glorious sound and odor fell delightfully on the senses of the lonely captive, as they passed upwards by his high prison-tower, no voiceof mercy came from below, to cheer him in his desolation. But from above, from the heaven to which all these prayer-bearing floods of incense and harmony ascended, came down divine consolation and miraculous delivery to this poor, despised prisoner, with a power and a witness that not all the solemn pomp of the passover ceremony could summon in reply to its costly offerings. The feeble band of sorrowing Nazarenes, from their little chamber, were lifting unceasing voices of supplication for their brother, in his desperate prospects, which entered with his solitary prayer into the ears of the God of Hosts, while the ostentatious worship of king Agrippa and his reverend supporters, only brought back shame and woful ruin on their impious supplications for the divine sanction to their bloody plans of persecution. At last the solemn passover-rites of “the last great day of the feast” were ended;——the sacrifice, the incense and the song, rose no more from the sanctuary,——the fires on the altars went out, the hum and the roar of worshiping voices was hushed, and the departing throngs poured through the “ETERNAL” and the “BEAUTIFUL” gates, till at last the courts and porches of the temple were empty through all their vast extent, and hushed in a silence, deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God had doomed them shortly to pass; and all was still, save where the footfall of the passing priest echoed along the empty colonnades, as he hurried over the vast pavements into the dormitories of the inner temple; or where the mighty gates thundered awfully as they swung heavily together under the strong hands of the weary Levites, and sent their long reverberations among the walls. Even these closing sounds soon ceased also; the Levite watchmen took their stand on the towers of the temple, and paced their nightly rounds along the flat roofs, guarding with careful eyes their holy shrine, lest the impious should, under cover of night, again profane it, (as the Samaritans had secretly done a few years before.) And on the neighboring castle of Antonia, the Roman garrison, too, had set their nightly watch, and the iron warriors slumbered, each in his turn, till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. Within thedungeon keepof the castle, was still safely held the weighty trust that was to be answered for, on peril of life; and all arrangements were made which so great a responsibility seemed to require. The prisoner already somewhat notorious for making unaccountable escapes from guarded dungeons, was secured with a particularity, quite complimentary to his dexterity as ajail-breaker. The quaternion on duty was divided into two portions; each half being so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision of which the place was capable,——two men keeping watch outside of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited to the charge of merely keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened to their bodies, by a chain on each side. In this neighborly proximity to his rough companions, Peter was in the habit of passing the night; but in the day-time was freed from one of these chains, remaining attached to only one soldier. (This arrangement was in accordance with the standard mode of guarding important state-prisoners among the Romans.) Matters being thus accommodated, and the watch being set for the next three hours, Peter’s twofastcompanions, finding him but indifferent company, no doubt, notwithstanding his sociable position, soon grew quite dull in the very tame employment of seeing that he did not run away with them; for as to getting awayfromthem, the idea could have no place at all in the supposition. These sturdy old veterans had probably, though Gentiles, conformed so far to Judaical rituals as to share in the comfortable festivities of this great religious occasion, and could not have suffered any heathenish prejudices to prevent them from a hearty participation in the joyous draughts of the wine, which as usual did its part to enliven the hearts and countenances of all those who passed the feast-day in Jerusalem. The passover coming so many months after the vintage too, the fermentation of a long season must have considerably energized “the pure juice of the grape,” so that its exhilarant and narcotic powers could have been by no means feeble; and if the change thus wrought by time and its own inherent powers, at all corresponds to that which takes places in cider in this country under the same circumstances, the latter power must have so far predominated, as to leave them rather below than above the ordinary standard of vivacity, and induce that sort of apathetic indifference to consequences, which is far from appropriate in a soldier on duty over an important trust. Be that as it may, Peter’s two room-mates soon gave themselves quietly up to slumber. If any scruple arose in their heavy heads as to the risk they ran in case of his escape, that was soon soothed by the consideration of the vast number of impassable securities upon the prisoner. They might well reason with themselves, “If this sharp Galilean can manage to break his chains without waking us, and burst open this stout door inspite of bars, without rousing the sentinels who are posted against it on the outside, and make his way unseen and unchecked through all the gates and guards of Castle Antonia——why, let him. But there’s no use in our losing a night’s rest by any uneasiness about such a chance.” So stretching themselves out, they soon fell into a sound sleep, none the less pleasant for their lying in such close quarters; for it is natural to imagine, that in a chilly March night in Jerusalem, stowing three in a bed was no uncomfortable arrangement. Circumstanced as he was, Peter had nothing to do but conform to their example, for the nature of his attachment to them was such, that he had no room for the indulgence of his own fancies about his position; and he also lay down to repose. He slept. The sickening and feverish confinement of his close dungeon had not yet so broken his firm and vigorous frame, nor so drained its energies, as to hinder the placid enjoyment of repose; nor did the certainty of a cruel and shameful death, to which he was within a few hours to be dragged, before the eyes of a scoffing rabble, move his high spirit from its self-possession:——“And still he slumberedWhile in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”He slept. And from that dark prison-bed what visions could beguile his slumbering thoughts? Did fancy bear them back against the tide of time, to the humble, peaceful home of his early days,——to the varied scenes of the lake whereon he loved to dwell, and along whose changeful waters he had learned so many lessons of immortal faith and untrembling hope in his Lord? Amid the stormy roar of its dark waters, the voice of that Lord once called him to tempt the raging deep with his steady foot, and when his feeble faith, before untried, failed him in the terrors of the effort, His supporting hand recalled him to strength and safety. And had that lesson of faith and hope been so poorly learned, that in this dark hour he could draw no consolation from such remembrances? No. He could even now find that consolation, and he did. In the midst of this “sea of troubles,” he felt the same mighty arm now upholding him, that bore him above the waters, “when the blue wave rolled nightly on deep Galilee.” Again he had stood by those waters, swelling brightly in the fresh morning breeze, with his risen Lord beside him, and received the solemn commission, oft-renewed, to feed the flock that was so soon to lose the earthly presence of its greatShepherd. In the steady and dauntless execution of that parting commission, he had in the course of long years gone on in the face of death,——“feeding the lambs” of Christ’s gathering, and calling vast numbers to the fold; and for the faithful adherence to that command, he now sat waiting the fulfilment of the doom that was to cut him down in the midst of life and in the fullness of his vigor. Yet the nearness of this sad reward of his labors, seemingly offering so dreadful an interpretation of the mystical prophecy that accompanied that charge, moved him to no desperation or distress, and still he calmly slept, with as little agitation and dread as at the transfiguration, and at the agony of the crucifixion eve; nor did that compunction for heedless inattention, that then hung upon his slumbering senses, now disturb him in the least. It is really worth noticing, in justice to Peter, that his sleepiness, of which so many curious instances are presented in the sacred narrative, was not of the criminally selfish kind that might be supposed on a partial view. If he slept during his Master’s prayers on Mount Hermon, and in Gethsemane, he slept too in his own condemned cell; and if in his bodily infirmity he had forgotten to watch and pray when death threatened his Lord, he was now equally indifferent to his own impending destruction. He was, evidently, a man of independent and regular habits. Brought up a hard-working man, he had all his life been accustomed to repose whenever he was at leisure, if he needed it; and now too, though the “heathen might rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,——though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together” against him, and doomed him to a cruel death,——in spite of all these, Peter would sleep when he was sleepy. Not the royal Agrippa could sleep sounder on his pavilioned couch of purple. In the calm confidence of one steadily fixed in a high course, and perfectly prepared for every and any result, the chained apostle gave himself coolly to his natural rest, without borrowing any trouble from the thought, that in the morning the bloody sword was to lay him in “the sleep that knows no earthly waking.” So slept the Athenian sage, on the eve of his martyrdom to the cause of clearly and boldly spoken truth,——a sleep that so moved the wonder of his agonizing disciples, at the power of a good conscience and a practical philosophy to sustain the soul against the horrors of such distress; but a sleep not sounder nor sweeter than that of the poor Galilean outcast, who, though not knowing even the name of philosophy,had a consolation far higher, in the faith that his martyred Lord had taught him in so many experimental instructions. That faith, learned by the painful conviction of his own weakness, and implanted in him by many a fall when over confident in his own strength, was now his stay and comfort, so that he might say to his soul, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the help of my countenance and my God.” Nor did that hope prove groundless. From him in whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance; and from the depths of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought, to serve that helping-God through many faithful years, feeding the flock till, in his old age, “another should gird him, and carry him whither he would not.” He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do; and to new works of love and glory he now called him, from the castle-prison of his royal persecutor.Ten years.——This piece of chronology is thus settled. Jesus Christ, according to all common calculation, was crucified as early as thetwentiethyear of the reign of Tiberius. Irenaeus maintains that it was in thefifteenthof that reign. Eusebius and Epiphanius fix it in theeighteenth, or, according to Petavius’s explanation of their meaning, in theseventeenthof his actual reign. Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Jerome, and Augustin, put it in thesixteenth. Roger Bacon, Paulus Burgensis, and Tostatus, also support this date, on the ground of an astronomical calculation of the course of the moon, fixing the time when the passover must have occurred, so as to accord with the requirement of the Mosaic law, that it should be celebrated on a new moon. But Kepler has abundantly shown the fallacy of this calculation. Antony Pagus, also, though rejecting this astronomical basis, adheres to the opinion of Tertullian, Jerome,&c.Baronius fixes it in thenineteenthof Tiberius. Pearson, L. Cappel, Spanheim, and Witsius, with the majority of the moderns, in thetwentiethof Tiberius. So that the unanimous result of all these great authorities, places it as early as this last mentioned year. A full and highly satisfactory view of all these chronological points and opinions, is given by the deeply learned Antony Pagus, in his great “Critical Historico-Chronological Review of Baronii.” Saecul. I. Ann. Per. Gr.–Rom. 5525. ¶ 3–13.Now, from Josephus it is perfectly evident that Agrippa did not leave Rome until some time after the beginning of the reign of Claudius, and it is probable not before the close of the first year. Counting backwards through the four years of Caligula, this makesfiveyears after the death of Tiberius, andeighton the latest calculation from the death of Christ; while according to the higher and earlier authority, it amounts tonine,ten,eleven, or totwelveyears from the crucifixion to Agrippa’s arrival in Judea. And moreover, it is not probable that the persecution referred to occurred immediately on his arrival. Indeed, from the close way in which Luke connects Agrippa’s death with the preceding events, it would seem as if he would fix his “going down from Jerusalem to Caesarea,” and his death at the latter place, very soon after the escape of Peter. This of course being in the end of Claudius’sthirdyear, brings the events above, down to theeleventhortwelfthfrom the crucifixion, even according to the latest conjecture as to the date of that event. Probably, however, the connection of the two events was not as close as a common reading of the Acts would lead one to suppose.So also Lardner, in his Life of Peter, says, “The death of Herod Agrippa happened before the end of that year,” in which he escaped. (Lardner’s Works 4to.Vol. III.p.402, bottom.)Natalis Alexander fixes Peter’s escape in thesecondyear of Claudius, and theforty-fourthfrom Christ’s birth, which is, according to his computation, thetenthfrom his death. (Church History,Saec. I.Cap. vi.)A chain on each side.——That this was a common mode of fastening such prisoners among the Romans, appears from the authorities referred to by Wolf, (Cur. Philology in Actsxii.6,) Kuinoel and Rosenmueller, (quoting from Walch,) and Bloomfield, all in loc.Quaternion.——That is, a band offour. See Bloomfield in defense of my mode of disposing them about the prison,——also Rosenmueller,&c.Wolf quotes appositely from Polybius; but Kuinoel is richest of all in quotations and illustrations. (Actsxii.4, 5.)THE DELIVERANCE.Peter was now quietly sleeping between his two guards, when his rest was suddenly broken by a smart blow on the side, too energetically given to be mistaken for an accidental knock from the elbow of one of his heavy bed-fellows. Rousing his senses, and opening his eyes, he was startled by a most remarkable light shining throughout his dungeon, which his last waking glance had left in utter darkness. In this unaccountable illumination, he saw standing before him and bending over him, a form in which he could recognize only the divine messenger of deliverance. The shock of such a surprise must have been overwhelming;——to be waked from a sound sleep by an appearance so utterly unearthly, might have struck horror into the stoutest heart; but Peter seems to have suffered no such emotion to hinder his attendance to the heavenly call. The apparition, before he could exercise thought enough to sit up of himself, had raised him up from his bed, and that without the slightest alarm to his still slumbering keepers,——for “immediately the chains fell from his hands,”——a motion which by the rattling of the falling irons should have aroused the sleepers if any sound could have impressed their senses. The impulse of the now unmanacled captive might have been to spring forth his dungeon without the slightest delay, but his deliverer’s next command forbade any such unnecessary haste. His first words were, “Gird thyself; and tie on thy sandals.” Before laying himself down, he had, as usual, thrown off his outer garments and loosened his girdle, so that his under dress need not so much confine him in sleep as to prevent that perfect relaxation which is necessary for comfortable repose. Just as now-a-days, a man in taking up such a lodging as often falls to a traveler’s lot, will seldom do more than pull off his coat and boots, as Peter did, and perhaps unbutton his waist-band and suspenders, so that on a sudden alarm from his rest, the first direction would very properly be, to “gird himself,” (button histrowsers,) “and tie on his sandals,” (put on his shoes or boots.) The next direction given to Peter, also, “Cast thy garment about thee,” (put on thy coat,) would be equally appropriate. The meaning of all this particularity and deliberation was, no doubt, that there was no need whatever of hurry or slyness about the escape. It was not to be considered a mere smart trick of jail-breaking, by which Peter was to crawl out of his dungeon in such a hurry as to leave his coat and shoes behind him, but a truly miraculous providence insuring his deliverance with a completeness and certainty that allowed him to take every thing that belonged to him. Having now perfectly accoutred himself in his ordinary style, Peter immediately obeyed the next order of his deliverer,——“Follow me.” Leaving his two bed-fellows and room-mates sleeping hard, without the slightest idea of the evacuation of the premises which was so deliberately going on, to their great detriment, Peter now passed out through the open door, following the divine messenger in a state of mind altogether indescribable, but still with just sense enough to obey the directions which thus led him on to blissful freedom. The whole scene bore so perfectly the character of one of those enchanting dreams of liberty with which painful hope often cheats the willing senses of the poor captive in slumber, that he might well and wisely doubt the reality of an appearance so tempting, and which his wishes would so readily suggest to his forgetful spirit. But passing on with his conductor, he moved between the sentinels posted at the doors, who were also equally unaware of the movement going on so boldly under their noses, or ratheroverthem, for they, too, were faster bound in slumber than their prisoner had been in his chains; and he now stepped over their outstretched bodies as they lay before the entrances. These soldiers, too, evidently looked upon their duty as a sort of sinecure, rationally concluding that their two stout comrades on the inside were rather more than a match for the fettered and manacled captive, and that if he should be at all obstreperous, or even uneasy, the noise would soon enough awake them from their nap. And thus excessive precaution is very apt to overshoot itself, each part of the arrangement relying too much on the security of all the rest. The two passengers soon reached the great iron gate of the castle, through which they must pass in order to enter the city. But all the seeming difficulties of this passage vanished as soon as they approached it. The gate swung its enormous mass of metalself-moving through the air, and the half-entranced Peter went on beneath the vacant portal, and now stood without the castle, once more a free man in the fresh, pure air. The difficulties and dangers were not all over yet, however. During all the great feast-days, when large assemblies of people were gathered at Jerusalem from various quarters, to guard against the danger of riots and insurrection in these motley throngs,——the armed Roman force on duty, as Josephus relates, was doubled and tripled, occupying several new posts around the temple, and, as the same historian particularly mentions, on the approaches of castle Antonia, where its foundations descended towards the terraces of the temple, and gave access to the colonnades of the temple. On all these places the guard must have been under arms during this passover, and even at night the sentries would be stationed at all the important posts, as a reasonable security against the numerous strangers of a dubious character, who now thronged the city throughout. Yet all these peculiar precautions, which, at this time, presented so many additional difficulties to the escaping apostle, hindered him not in the least. Entering the city, he followed the footsteps of his blessed guide, unchecked, till they had passed on through the first street, when all at once, without sign or word of farewell, the mysterious deliverer vanished, leaving Peter alone in the silent city, but free and safe. Then flashed upon his mind the conviction of the true character of the apparition. The departure of his guide leaving him to seek his own way, his senses were, by the necessity of this self-direction, recalled from the state of stupefaction, in which he had mechanically followed on from the prison. With the first burst of reflection, he broke out in the exclamation, “Now I know of a truth, that the Lord has sent forth his messenger, and has rescued me out of the hand of Herod, in spite of all the expectation of the Jewish people.” Refreshed and encouraged by this impression, he now used his thoroughly awakened senses to find his exact situation, and after looking about him, he made his way through the dark streets to a place where he knew he should find those whose despairing hearts would be inexpressibly rejoiced by the news of his deliverance. This was the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the disciples were accustomed to assemble. Going up to the gate-way, he rapped on the door, and at once aroused those within; for in their sleepless distress for the imprisoned apostle, several of the brethren had given up all thoughts of sleep, and,as Peter had suspected, were now watching in prayer within this house. The noise of a visitant at this unseasonable hour of the night, immediately brought to the door a lively damsel, named Rhoda; who, according to the Jewish custom of employing females in this capacity, acted as portress of the mansion of Mary. Prudently requiring some account of the person who made this late call, before she opened the door of the persecuted Christians to an unknown and perhaps an ill-disposed character, she was struck with almost frantic joy at hearing the well-known voice of the much mourned Peter, craving admittance. In the highth of her thoughtless gladness, she ran off at once to make known the delightful fact to the disciples in the house, without even seeming to think of the desirableness of admitting the apostle, perhaps because she very naturally wanted to tell such pleasant news first herself. Bursting into the room where the disciples were at prayer for their lamented leader, whom they supposed to be then fast bound for death in the dungeon of Antonia, she communicated the joyful fact, that “Peter was before the gate.” A declaration so extravagantly improbable, at once suggested the idea of her having lost her wits through her affectionate sorrow for the sufferings and anticipated death of the great apostle, and they therefore replied, “Thou art crazy.” Rhoda, somewhat excited by such a provoking expression of incredulity, loudly repeated her slighted piece of good news, and so gravely maintained the truth of it, that some of the more superstitious at last began to think there must be something in it, and seriously suggested, that it must be a supernatural messenger come to give them notice of his certain doom,——“It is his guardian angel.” Peter, however, was all this while standing outside during this grave debate about his real entity, and shivering with the cold of a chilly March night, grew quite impatient at the girl’s inconsiderate folly, and knocked away with might and main, making a noise of most unspiritual character, till at last the disciples determined to cut short the debate by an actual observation; so opening the door to the shivering apostle, the light brought his material existence to a certainty beyond all doubt. Their amazement and joy was bursting forth with a vivacity which quite made up for their previous incredulity; when the apostle, making a hushing sign with his hand,——and with a reasonable fear, too, no doubt, that their obstreperous congratulations might be heard in other houses around, so as to alarm the neighbors and bring out some spitefulJews, who would procure his detection and recapture,——having obtained silence, went on to give them a full account of his being brought out of prison by the Lord, and after finishing his wonderful story, said to them, “Tell these things to James and the brethren.” From this it would seem that the apostles were all somewhere else, probably having found that a temporary concealment was expedient for their safety, but were still not far from the city. His own personal danger was of so imminent a character, however, that Jerusalem could not be a safe place for him during the search that would be immediately instituted after him by his disappointed and enraged persecutors. It was quite worth while, therefore, for him to use the remaining darkness of the night to complete his escape; and without staying to enjoy their outflowing sympathies, he bade them a hasty farewell, and, as the historian briefly says, went toANOTHER PLACE. Where this “other place” was, he does not pretend to tell or know, and the only certain inference to be drawn from the circumstance is, that it was beyond the reach or knowledge of the mighty and far-ruling king, who had taken such particular pains to secure Peter’s death. The probabilities as to the real place of his retirement will, however, be given, as soon as the sequel of events in Jerusalem has been narrated, as far as concerns the discovery of his escape.Bright light.——Some commentators have attempted to make out an explanation of this phenomenon, by referring the whole affair to the effects of a sudden flash and stroke of lightning, falling on the castle, and striking all the keepers senseless,——meltingPeter’s chains, and illuminating the place, so that Peter, unhurt amid the general crash, saw this opportunity for escaping, and stepping over their prostrate bodies, made his way out of the prison, and was out of sight before theycame to. The most important objection to this ingenious speculation is, that it directly contradicts every verse in Luke’s account of the escape, as well as the general spirit of the narrative. Another weighty reason is, that the whole series of natural causes and effects, proposed as a substitute for the simple meaning, is brought together in such forced and uncommon coincidences, as to require a much greater effort of faith and credulity for its belief, than the miraculous view, which it quite transcends in incredibility. The introduction of explanations of miracles by natural phenomena, is justifiable only so far as these may illustrate theaccompanimentsof the event, by showing the mode in which those things which are actually mentioned as physical results, operated in producing the impressions described. Thus, when thunder and lightning are mentioned in connection with miraculous events, they are to be considered asrealelectrical discharges, made to accompany and manifest the presence of God; and where lambent flames are described as appearing in a storm, they, like thecorpos santos, are plainly also results of electrical discharges. So too, when mighty winds are mentioned, they are most honestly taken to berealwinds, and not deceptive sounds or impressions; and when a cloud is mentioned, it is but fair to consider it a real cloud, made up, like all other clouds, of vapor, and not a mere non-entity, or a delusion existing only in the minds of those who are mentioned as beholding it. But where nothing of this kind is spoken of, and where a distinct personal presence is plainly declared, the attempt to substitute a physical accident for such an apparition, is a direct attack on thehonestyof the statement. Such attempts, too, are devoid of the benefits of such illustrationsas I have alluded to as desirable; they bring in a new set of difficulties with them, without removing any of those previously obstructing the interpretation of the facts. In this case, the only circumstance which could be reasonably made to agree with the idea of lightning, is the mention of the bright light; while throughout the whole account, the presence of a supernaturally mysteriousperson, acting and speaking, is perfectly unquestionable. The violation of all probability, shown in this forced explanation, will serve as a fair instance of the mode in which many modern German critics are in the habit of distorting the simple, manifest sense of the sacred writers, for the sake of dispensing with all supernatural occurrences. (See Kuinoel for an enlarged view and discussion of this opinion. Other views of the nature of the phenomenon are also given by him, and by Rosenmueller, on Actsxii.7.)
♦“achievments” replaced with “achievements”♠“emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”
♦“achievments” replaced with “achievements”
♦“achievments” replaced with “achievements”
♠“emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”
♠“emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”
Herod Agrippa.——All the interesting details of this richly romantic life, are given in a most delightful style by Josephus. (Antiquities,XVIII.v.3,–viii.9.andXIX.i–ix.)The same is more concisely given by the same author in another place. (Jewish War,II.ix.5,–xi.6.) The prominent events of Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.
THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in♦reference to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.♦“refereuce” replaced with “reference”In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains ablank to the modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.ROMAN TOLERANCE.These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,——thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against thegrowing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,——wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,——a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;——for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:Justum et tenacem propositi virum,Non civium ardor prava jubentium,Non vultus instantis tyranniMente quatit solida. * * *The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,——“A man just and resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,——that the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind movements of aperverse public opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its accomplishment,——that the majority of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;——and that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all human systems;——among the curses of that Roman sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often occurred,——overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the Roman governor would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought under his cognizance,——being done as it was, so directly in the face of those principles of religious tolerance which the policy of the empire enforced every where, excepting cases in which sedition and rebellion against their dominion was combined with religious zealotism, like the instances of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and others. Even Jesus himself, was thus accused by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate for his alleged endeavors to excite a revolt against Caesar, and opposing the payment of the Roman taxes,——as is shown by the statement of all the evangelists, and more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross. The persecution which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried on under the sanction ofthe Roman government, nor yet was it against their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment, scourging, banishment,&c.But the punishment of death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the persecuted Hellenists ever suffereddeathby the condemnation of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,——a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with allits paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come.PETER’S THREATENED MARTYRDOM.The long expected favorite and friend of the Jewish people, having been thus hailed sovereign by their grateful voices, and having strengthened his throne and influence by his opening acts of liberality and devotion to the national faith, now entered upon a reign which presented only the portents of a course most auspicious to his own fame and his people’s good. Uniting in his person the claims of the Herodian and Asmonaean lines,——with the blood of the heroic Maccabees in his veins,——crowned by the imperial lord of the civilized world, whose boundless power was pledged in his support, by the obligations of an intimate personal friendship, and of a sincere gratitude for the attainment of the throne of the Caesars through his prompt and steady exertions,——received with universal joy and hope by all the dwellers of the consolidated kingdoms of his dominion, which had been long thriving under the mild and equitable administration of a prudent governor,——there seemed nothing wanting to complete the happy auspices of a glorious reign, under which the ancient honors of Israel should be more than retrieved from the decline of ages.Yet what avails the bright array of happily conspiring circumstances, to prince or people, against the awful majesty of divine truth, or the pure, simple energy of human devotion? Within the obscurer corners of his vast territories, creeping for room under the outermost colonnades of that mighty temple whose glories he had pledged himself to renew,——wandering like outcasts from place to place,——seeking supporters only among the unintellectual mass of the people,——were a set of men of whom he probably had not heard until he entered his own dominions. They were now suggested to his notice for the first time, by the decided voice of censure from the devout and learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who invoked the aid of his sovran power, to check and utterly uproot this heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of Roman government had too long shielded from the just visitations of judicial vengeance. Nor did the royal Agrippa hesitate to gratify, in this slight and reasonable matter, the express wishes of the reverend heads of the Jewish faith and law. Ah! how little did he think, that in that trifling movement was bound up the destiny of ages, and that its results would send his name——though then so loved and honored——like Pharaoh’s, down to all time, a theme of religious horror and holy hatred, to the unnumbered millions of a thousand races, and lands then unknown;——an awful doom, from which one act of benign protection, or of prudent kindness, to that feeble band of hated, outcast innovators, might have retrieved his fame, and canonized it in the faithful memory of the just, till the glory of the old patriarchs and prophets should grow dim. But, without one thought of consequences, a prophetic revelation of which would so have appalled him, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm in vindictive cruelty over the church of Christ, for the gratification of those whose praise was to him more than the favor of God. Singling out first the person whom momentary circumstances might render most prominent or obnoxious to censure, he at once doomed to a bloody death the elder son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolicTHREE. No sooner was this cruel sentence executed, than, with a most remarkable steadiness in the execution of his bloody plan, he followed up this action, so pleasing to the Jews, by another similar movement. Peter, the active leader of the heretical host, ever foremost in braving the authority of the constituted teachers of the law, and in exciting commotion and dissatisfaction among the commonalty, was now seized by a military force, too strong tofear any resistance from popular movements, which had so much deterred the Sanhedrim. This occurred during the week of the passover; and such was king Agrippa’s profound regard for all things connected with his national religion, that he would not violate the sanctity of this holy festival by the execution of a criminal, however deserving of vengeance he might seem in that instance. The fate of Peter being thus delayed, he was therefore committed to prison, (probably in castle Antonia,) and to prevent all possibility of his finding means to escape prepared ruin again, he was confined to the charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four sets, of four men each, who were to keep him under constant supervision day and night, by taking turns, each set an equal time; and according to the established principles of the Roman military discipline, with the perfect understanding that if, on the conclusion of the passover, the prisoner was not forthcoming, the guards should answer the failure with their lives. These decided and careful arrangements being made, the king, with his gratified friends in the Sanhedrim and among the rabble, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the great national festival, with a peculiar zest, hightened by the near prospect of the utter overthrow of the advancing heresy, by the sweeping blow that robbed them of their two great leaders, and more especially of him who had been so active in mischievous attempts to perpetuate the memory of the original founder of the sect, and to frustrate the good effect of his bloody execution, by giving out that the crucified Jesus still lived, and would yet come in vengeance on his murderers. While such triumphant reflections swelled the festal enjoyments of the powerful foes of Christ, the unhappy company of his persecuted disciples passed through this anniversary-week with the most mournful reminiscences and anticipations. Ten years before, in unutterable agony and despair, they had parted, as they then supposed forever, with their beloved Lord; and now, after years of devotion to the work for which he had commissioned them, they were called to renew the deep sorrows of that parting, in the removal of those who had been foremost among them in the great work, cheering them and leading them on through toil and peril, with a spirit truly holy, and with a fearless energy, kindred with that of their divine Lord. Of these two divinely appointed chiefs, one had already poured out his blood beneath the executioner’s sword, and the other, their great leader, theRockof the church, was now only waiting the speedy close of the festal week, to crown his gloriouscourse, and his enemies’ cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of Peter.
THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.
The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in♦reference to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.
♦“refereuce” replaced with “reference”
♦“refereuce” replaced with “reference”
♦“refereuce” replaced with “reference”
In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains ablank to the modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.
ROMAN TOLERANCE.
These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,——thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against thegrowing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,——wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,——a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;——for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:
Justum et tenacem propositi virum,Non civium ardor prava jubentium,Non vultus instantis tyranniMente quatit solida. * * *
Justum et tenacem propositi virum,Non civium ardor prava jubentium,Non vultus instantis tyranniMente quatit solida. * * *
Justum et tenacem propositi virum,
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida. * * *
The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory. There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this poetical conception of Horace,——“A man just and resolute, unshaken from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,——that the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind movements of aperverse public opinion, changing with each year, and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its accomplishment,——that the majority of the people were not allowed to tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;——and that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for the imperfections of all human systems;——among the curses of that Roman sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but too often occurred,——overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment, the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all, and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the Roman governor would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought under his cognizance,——being done as it was, so directly in the face of those principles of religious tolerance which the policy of the empire enforced every where, excepting cases in which sedition and rebellion against their dominion was combined with religious zealotism, like the instances of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and others. Even Jesus himself, was thus accused by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate for his alleged endeavors to excite a revolt against Caesar, and opposing the payment of the Roman taxes,——as is shown by the statement of all the evangelists, and more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross. The persecution which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried on under the sanction ofthe Roman government, nor yet was it against their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment, scourging, banishment,&c.But the punishment of death was entirely reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence, which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob, in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the persecuted Hellenists ever suffereddeathby the condemnation of the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were charged,——a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable, therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system, with allits paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders. The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady, benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change should take place which should give the country a ruler of less independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained, in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come.
PETER’S THREATENED MARTYRDOM.
The long expected favorite and friend of the Jewish people, having been thus hailed sovereign by their grateful voices, and having strengthened his throne and influence by his opening acts of liberality and devotion to the national faith, now entered upon a reign which presented only the portents of a course most auspicious to his own fame and his people’s good. Uniting in his person the claims of the Herodian and Asmonaean lines,——with the blood of the heroic Maccabees in his veins,——crowned by the imperial lord of the civilized world, whose boundless power was pledged in his support, by the obligations of an intimate personal friendship, and of a sincere gratitude for the attainment of the throne of the Caesars through his prompt and steady exertions,——received with universal joy and hope by all the dwellers of the consolidated kingdoms of his dominion, which had been long thriving under the mild and equitable administration of a prudent governor,——there seemed nothing wanting to complete the happy auspices of a glorious reign, under which the ancient honors of Israel should be more than retrieved from the decline of ages.Yet what avails the bright array of happily conspiring circumstances, to prince or people, against the awful majesty of divine truth, or the pure, simple energy of human devotion? Within the obscurer corners of his vast territories, creeping for room under the outermost colonnades of that mighty temple whose glories he had pledged himself to renew,——wandering like outcasts from place to place,——seeking supporters only among the unintellectual mass of the people,——were a set of men of whom he probably had not heard until he entered his own dominions. They were now suggested to his notice for the first time, by the decided voice of censure from the devout and learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who invoked the aid of his sovran power, to check and utterly uproot this heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of Roman government had too long shielded from the just visitations of judicial vengeance. Nor did the royal Agrippa hesitate to gratify, in this slight and reasonable matter, the express wishes of the reverend heads of the Jewish faith and law. Ah! how little did he think, that in that trifling movement was bound up the destiny of ages, and that its results would send his name——though then so loved and honored——like Pharaoh’s, down to all time, a theme of religious horror and holy hatred, to the unnumbered millions of a thousand races, and lands then unknown;——an awful doom, from which one act of benign protection, or of prudent kindness, to that feeble band of hated, outcast innovators, might have retrieved his fame, and canonized it in the faithful memory of the just, till the glory of the old patriarchs and prophets should grow dim. But, without one thought of consequences, a prophetic revelation of which would so have appalled him, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm in vindictive cruelty over the church of Christ, for the gratification of those whose praise was to him more than the favor of God. Singling out first the person whom momentary circumstances might render most prominent or obnoxious to censure, he at once doomed to a bloody death the elder son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolicTHREE. No sooner was this cruel sentence executed, than, with a most remarkable steadiness in the execution of his bloody plan, he followed up this action, so pleasing to the Jews, by another similar movement. Peter, the active leader of the heretical host, ever foremost in braving the authority of the constituted teachers of the law, and in exciting commotion and dissatisfaction among the commonalty, was now seized by a military force, too strong tofear any resistance from popular movements, which had so much deterred the Sanhedrim. This occurred during the week of the passover; and such was king Agrippa’s profound regard for all things connected with his national religion, that he would not violate the sanctity of this holy festival by the execution of a criminal, however deserving of vengeance he might seem in that instance. The fate of Peter being thus delayed, he was therefore committed to prison, (probably in castle Antonia,) and to prevent all possibility of his finding means to escape prepared ruin again, he was confined to the charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four sets, of four men each, who were to keep him under constant supervision day and night, by taking turns, each set an equal time; and according to the established principles of the Roman military discipline, with the perfect understanding that if, on the conclusion of the passover, the prisoner was not forthcoming, the guards should answer the failure with their lives. These decided and careful arrangements being made, the king, with his gratified friends in the Sanhedrim and among the rabble, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the great national festival, with a peculiar zest, hightened by the near prospect of the utter overthrow of the advancing heresy, by the sweeping blow that robbed them of their two great leaders, and more especially of him who had been so active in mischievous attempts to perpetuate the memory of the original founder of the sect, and to frustrate the good effect of his bloody execution, by giving out that the crucified Jesus still lived, and would yet come in vengeance on his murderers. While such triumphant reflections swelled the festal enjoyments of the powerful foes of Christ, the unhappy company of his persecuted disciples passed through this anniversary-week with the most mournful reminiscences and anticipations. Ten years before, in unutterable agony and despair, they had parted, as they then supposed forever, with their beloved Lord; and now, after years of devotion to the work for which he had commissioned them, they were called to renew the deep sorrows of that parting, in the removal of those who had been foremost among them in the great work, cheering them and leading them on through toil and peril, with a spirit truly holy, and with a fearless energy, kindred with that of their divine Lord. Of these two divinely appointed chiefs, one had already poured out his blood beneath the executioner’s sword, and the other, their great leader, theRockof the church, was now only waiting the speedy close of the festal week, to crown his gloriouscourse, and his enemies’ cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of Peter.
Castle Antonia.——For Josephus’s account of the position and erection of this work, see my note on page95, (section 8.) There has been much speculation about the place of the prison to which Peter was committed. The sacred text (Actsxii.10,) makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after leaving the prison it was still necessary to enter the city by “the iron gate.” Walch, Kuinoel and Bloomfield adopt the view that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified the walls. Wolf and others object to the view that it was without the walls; because, as Wolf says, it was not customary to have public prisons outside of the cities, since the prisoners might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from some hardy band of comrades,&c.But this objection is worth nothing against castle Antonia, which, though it stood entirely separated from the rest of the city, was vastly strong, and by its position as well as fortification, impregnable to any common force;——a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend it as a secure place for one who, like Peter, had escaped once from the common prison. There was always a Roman garrison in Antonia. (Josephus, Jewish War,V.v.8.)
In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers’ God, who still remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the anthems ofpraise to God which sounded along the courts and porches of the temple, were no doubt heard, too, the thanks of many a grateful Hebrew for the goodness of the generous king, who had pledged his royal word to complete the noble plan of that holy pile, as suited the splendid conceptions of the founder. And this was the king whose decree had doomed that lonely and desolate prisoner in the castle, to a bloody and shameful death,——as a crowning offering at the close of the great festival; and how few among that vast throng, before whose eyes he was to yield his life, would repine at the sentence that dealt exterminating vengeance on the obstinately heretical preacher of the crucified Nazarene’s faith! Well might such dark visions of threatening ruin appal a heart whose enthusiasm had caught its flame from the unholy fires of worldly ambition, or devoted its energies to the low purpose of human ascendency. And truly sad would have been the lonely thoughts of this very apostle, if this doom had found him in the spirit which first moved him to devote himself to the cause which now required the sacrifice of life. But higher hopes and feelings had inspired his devoted exertions forten years, and higher far, the consolations which now sustained him in his friendless desolation. This very fate, he had long been accustomed to regard as the earthly meed of his labors; and he had too often been threatened with it, to be overwhelmed by its near prospect. Vain, then, were all solemn details of that awful sentence, to strike terror into his fixed soul,——vain the dark sureties of the high, steep rock, the massive, lofty walls, the iron gates, the ever-watchful Roman guards, the fetters and manacles, to control or check the“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!——Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,For there thy habitation is the heart.”Thus sublimely calm, sat Peter in his prison, waiting for death. Day after day, all day long, the joyous feast went on beneath him:——the offering, the prayer and the hymn varying the mighty course, from the earliest morning supplication to the great evening sacrifice. Up rolled the glorious symphony of the Levites’ thousand horns, and the choral harmony of their chanting voices,——up rolled the clouds of precious incense to the skiey throne of Israel’s God,——and with this music and fragrance, up rolled the prayers of Israel’s worshiping children; but though the glorious sound and odor fell delightfully on the senses of the lonely captive, as they passed upwards by his high prison-tower, no voiceof mercy came from below, to cheer him in his desolation. But from above, from the heaven to which all these prayer-bearing floods of incense and harmony ascended, came down divine consolation and miraculous delivery to this poor, despised prisoner, with a power and a witness that not all the solemn pomp of the passover ceremony could summon in reply to its costly offerings. The feeble band of sorrowing Nazarenes, from their little chamber, were lifting unceasing voices of supplication for their brother, in his desperate prospects, which entered with his solitary prayer into the ears of the God of Hosts, while the ostentatious worship of king Agrippa and his reverend supporters, only brought back shame and woful ruin on their impious supplications for the divine sanction to their bloody plans of persecution. At last the solemn passover-rites of “the last great day of the feast” were ended;——the sacrifice, the incense and the song, rose no more from the sanctuary,——the fires on the altars went out, the hum and the roar of worshiping voices was hushed, and the departing throngs poured through the “ETERNAL” and the “BEAUTIFUL” gates, till at last the courts and porches of the temple were empty through all their vast extent, and hushed in a silence, deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God had doomed them shortly to pass; and all was still, save where the footfall of the passing priest echoed along the empty colonnades, as he hurried over the vast pavements into the dormitories of the inner temple; or where the mighty gates thundered awfully as they swung heavily together under the strong hands of the weary Levites, and sent their long reverberations among the walls. Even these closing sounds soon ceased also; the Levite watchmen took their stand on the towers of the temple, and paced their nightly rounds along the flat roofs, guarding with careful eyes their holy shrine, lest the impious should, under cover of night, again profane it, (as the Samaritans had secretly done a few years before.) And on the neighboring castle of Antonia, the Roman garrison, too, had set their nightly watch, and the iron warriors slumbered, each in his turn, till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. Within thedungeon keepof the castle, was still safely held the weighty trust that was to be answered for, on peril of life; and all arrangements were made which so great a responsibility seemed to require. The prisoner already somewhat notorious for making unaccountable escapes from guarded dungeons, was secured with a particularity, quite complimentary to his dexterity as ajail-breaker. The quaternion on duty was divided into two portions; each half being so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision of which the place was capable,——two men keeping watch outside of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited to the charge of merely keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened to their bodies, by a chain on each side. In this neighborly proximity to his rough companions, Peter was in the habit of passing the night; but in the day-time was freed from one of these chains, remaining attached to only one soldier. (This arrangement was in accordance with the standard mode of guarding important state-prisoners among the Romans.) Matters being thus accommodated, and the watch being set for the next three hours, Peter’s twofastcompanions, finding him but indifferent company, no doubt, notwithstanding his sociable position, soon grew quite dull in the very tame employment of seeing that he did not run away with them; for as to getting awayfromthem, the idea could have no place at all in the supposition. These sturdy old veterans had probably, though Gentiles, conformed so far to Judaical rituals as to share in the comfortable festivities of this great religious occasion, and could not have suffered any heathenish prejudices to prevent them from a hearty participation in the joyous draughts of the wine, which as usual did its part to enliven the hearts and countenances of all those who passed the feast-day in Jerusalem. The passover coming so many months after the vintage too, the fermentation of a long season must have considerably energized “the pure juice of the grape,” so that its exhilarant and narcotic powers could have been by no means feeble; and if the change thus wrought by time and its own inherent powers, at all corresponds to that which takes places in cider in this country under the same circumstances, the latter power must have so far predominated, as to leave them rather below than above the ordinary standard of vivacity, and induce that sort of apathetic indifference to consequences, which is far from appropriate in a soldier on duty over an important trust. Be that as it may, Peter’s two room-mates soon gave themselves quietly up to slumber. If any scruple arose in their heavy heads as to the risk they ran in case of his escape, that was soon soothed by the consideration of the vast number of impassable securities upon the prisoner. They might well reason with themselves, “If this sharp Galilean can manage to break his chains without waking us, and burst open this stout door inspite of bars, without rousing the sentinels who are posted against it on the outside, and make his way unseen and unchecked through all the gates and guards of Castle Antonia——why, let him. But there’s no use in our losing a night’s rest by any uneasiness about such a chance.” So stretching themselves out, they soon fell into a sound sleep, none the less pleasant for their lying in such close quarters; for it is natural to imagine, that in a chilly March night in Jerusalem, stowing three in a bed was no uncomfortable arrangement. Circumstanced as he was, Peter had nothing to do but conform to their example, for the nature of his attachment to them was such, that he had no room for the indulgence of his own fancies about his position; and he also lay down to repose. He slept. The sickening and feverish confinement of his close dungeon had not yet so broken his firm and vigorous frame, nor so drained its energies, as to hinder the placid enjoyment of repose; nor did the certainty of a cruel and shameful death, to which he was within a few hours to be dragged, before the eyes of a scoffing rabble, move his high spirit from its self-possession:——“And still he slumberedWhile in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”He slept. And from that dark prison-bed what visions could beguile his slumbering thoughts? Did fancy bear them back against the tide of time, to the humble, peaceful home of his early days,——to the varied scenes of the lake whereon he loved to dwell, and along whose changeful waters he had learned so many lessons of immortal faith and untrembling hope in his Lord? Amid the stormy roar of its dark waters, the voice of that Lord once called him to tempt the raging deep with his steady foot, and when his feeble faith, before untried, failed him in the terrors of the effort, His supporting hand recalled him to strength and safety. And had that lesson of faith and hope been so poorly learned, that in this dark hour he could draw no consolation from such remembrances? No. He could even now find that consolation, and he did. In the midst of this “sea of troubles,” he felt the same mighty arm now upholding him, that bore him above the waters, “when the blue wave rolled nightly on deep Galilee.” Again he had stood by those waters, swelling brightly in the fresh morning breeze, with his risen Lord beside him, and received the solemn commission, oft-renewed, to feed the flock that was so soon to lose the earthly presence of its greatShepherd. In the steady and dauntless execution of that parting commission, he had in the course of long years gone on in the face of death,——“feeding the lambs” of Christ’s gathering, and calling vast numbers to the fold; and for the faithful adherence to that command, he now sat waiting the fulfilment of the doom that was to cut him down in the midst of life and in the fullness of his vigor. Yet the nearness of this sad reward of his labors, seemingly offering so dreadful an interpretation of the mystical prophecy that accompanied that charge, moved him to no desperation or distress, and still he calmly slept, with as little agitation and dread as at the transfiguration, and at the agony of the crucifixion eve; nor did that compunction for heedless inattention, that then hung upon his slumbering senses, now disturb him in the least. It is really worth noticing, in justice to Peter, that his sleepiness, of which so many curious instances are presented in the sacred narrative, was not of the criminally selfish kind that might be supposed on a partial view. If he slept during his Master’s prayers on Mount Hermon, and in Gethsemane, he slept too in his own condemned cell; and if in his bodily infirmity he had forgotten to watch and pray when death threatened his Lord, he was now equally indifferent to his own impending destruction. He was, evidently, a man of independent and regular habits. Brought up a hard-working man, he had all his life been accustomed to repose whenever he was at leisure, if he needed it; and now too, though the “heathen might rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,——though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together” against him, and doomed him to a cruel death,——in spite of all these, Peter would sleep when he was sleepy. Not the royal Agrippa could sleep sounder on his pavilioned couch of purple. In the calm confidence of one steadily fixed in a high course, and perfectly prepared for every and any result, the chained apostle gave himself coolly to his natural rest, without borrowing any trouble from the thought, that in the morning the bloody sword was to lay him in “the sleep that knows no earthly waking.” So slept the Athenian sage, on the eve of his martyrdom to the cause of clearly and boldly spoken truth,——a sleep that so moved the wonder of his agonizing disciples, at the power of a good conscience and a practical philosophy to sustain the soul against the horrors of such distress; but a sleep not sounder nor sweeter than that of the poor Galilean outcast, who, though not knowing even the name of philosophy,had a consolation far higher, in the faith that his martyred Lord had taught him in so many experimental instructions. That faith, learned by the painful conviction of his own weakness, and implanted in him by many a fall when over confident in his own strength, was now his stay and comfort, so that he might say to his soul, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the help of my countenance and my God.” Nor did that hope prove groundless. From him in whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance; and from the depths of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought, to serve that helping-God through many faithful years, feeding the flock till, in his old age, “another should gird him, and carry him whither he would not.” He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do; and to new works of love and glory he now called him, from the castle-prison of his royal persecutor.
In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers’ God, who still remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the anthems ofpraise to God which sounded along the courts and porches of the temple, were no doubt heard, too, the thanks of many a grateful Hebrew for the goodness of the generous king, who had pledged his royal word to complete the noble plan of that holy pile, as suited the splendid conceptions of the founder. And this was the king whose decree had doomed that lonely and desolate prisoner in the castle, to a bloody and shameful death,——as a crowning offering at the close of the great festival; and how few among that vast throng, before whose eyes he was to yield his life, would repine at the sentence that dealt exterminating vengeance on the obstinately heretical preacher of the crucified Nazarene’s faith! Well might such dark visions of threatening ruin appal a heart whose enthusiasm had caught its flame from the unholy fires of worldly ambition, or devoted its energies to the low purpose of human ascendency. And truly sad would have been the lonely thoughts of this very apostle, if this doom had found him in the spirit which first moved him to devote himself to the cause which now required the sacrifice of life. But higher hopes and feelings had inspired his devoted exertions forten years, and higher far, the consolations which now sustained him in his friendless desolation. This very fate, he had long been accustomed to regard as the earthly meed of his labors; and he had too often been threatened with it, to be overwhelmed by its near prospect. Vain, then, were all solemn details of that awful sentence, to strike terror into his fixed soul,——vain the dark sureties of the high, steep rock, the massive, lofty walls, the iron gates, the ever-watchful Roman guards, the fetters and manacles, to control or check the
“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!——Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,For there thy habitation is the heart.”
“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!——Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,For there thy habitation is the heart.”
“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!——
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart.”
Thus sublimely calm, sat Peter in his prison, waiting for death. Day after day, all day long, the joyous feast went on beneath him:——the offering, the prayer and the hymn varying the mighty course, from the earliest morning supplication to the great evening sacrifice. Up rolled the glorious symphony of the Levites’ thousand horns, and the choral harmony of their chanting voices,——up rolled the clouds of precious incense to the skiey throne of Israel’s God,——and with this music and fragrance, up rolled the prayers of Israel’s worshiping children; but though the glorious sound and odor fell delightfully on the senses of the lonely captive, as they passed upwards by his high prison-tower, no voiceof mercy came from below, to cheer him in his desolation. But from above, from the heaven to which all these prayer-bearing floods of incense and harmony ascended, came down divine consolation and miraculous delivery to this poor, despised prisoner, with a power and a witness that not all the solemn pomp of the passover ceremony could summon in reply to its costly offerings. The feeble band of sorrowing Nazarenes, from their little chamber, were lifting unceasing voices of supplication for their brother, in his desperate prospects, which entered with his solitary prayer into the ears of the God of Hosts, while the ostentatious worship of king Agrippa and his reverend supporters, only brought back shame and woful ruin on their impious supplications for the divine sanction to their bloody plans of persecution. At last the solemn passover-rites of “the last great day of the feast” were ended;——the sacrifice, the incense and the song, rose no more from the sanctuary,——the fires on the altars went out, the hum and the roar of worshiping voices was hushed, and the departing throngs poured through the “ETERNAL” and the “BEAUTIFUL” gates, till at last the courts and porches of the temple were empty through all their vast extent, and hushed in a silence, deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God had doomed them shortly to pass; and all was still, save where the footfall of the passing priest echoed along the empty colonnades, as he hurried over the vast pavements into the dormitories of the inner temple; or where the mighty gates thundered awfully as they swung heavily together under the strong hands of the weary Levites, and sent their long reverberations among the walls. Even these closing sounds soon ceased also; the Levite watchmen took their stand on the towers of the temple, and paced their nightly rounds along the flat roofs, guarding with careful eyes their holy shrine, lest the impious should, under cover of night, again profane it, (as the Samaritans had secretly done a few years before.) And on the neighboring castle of Antonia, the Roman garrison, too, had set their nightly watch, and the iron warriors slumbered, each in his turn, till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. Within thedungeon keepof the castle, was still safely held the weighty trust that was to be answered for, on peril of life; and all arrangements were made which so great a responsibility seemed to require. The prisoner already somewhat notorious for making unaccountable escapes from guarded dungeons, was secured with a particularity, quite complimentary to his dexterity as ajail-breaker. The quaternion on duty was divided into two portions; each half being so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision of which the place was capable,——two men keeping watch outside of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited to the charge of merely keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened to their bodies, by a chain on each side. In this neighborly proximity to his rough companions, Peter was in the habit of passing the night; but in the day-time was freed from one of these chains, remaining attached to only one soldier. (This arrangement was in accordance with the standard mode of guarding important state-prisoners among the Romans.) Matters being thus accommodated, and the watch being set for the next three hours, Peter’s twofastcompanions, finding him but indifferent company, no doubt, notwithstanding his sociable position, soon grew quite dull in the very tame employment of seeing that he did not run away with them; for as to getting awayfromthem, the idea could have no place at all in the supposition. These sturdy old veterans had probably, though Gentiles, conformed so far to Judaical rituals as to share in the comfortable festivities of this great religious occasion, and could not have suffered any heathenish prejudices to prevent them from a hearty participation in the joyous draughts of the wine, which as usual did its part to enliven the hearts and countenances of all those who passed the feast-day in Jerusalem. The passover coming so many months after the vintage too, the fermentation of a long season must have considerably energized “the pure juice of the grape,” so that its exhilarant and narcotic powers could have been by no means feeble; and if the change thus wrought by time and its own inherent powers, at all corresponds to that which takes places in cider in this country under the same circumstances, the latter power must have so far predominated, as to leave them rather below than above the ordinary standard of vivacity, and induce that sort of apathetic indifference to consequences, which is far from appropriate in a soldier on duty over an important trust. Be that as it may, Peter’s two room-mates soon gave themselves quietly up to slumber. If any scruple arose in their heavy heads as to the risk they ran in case of his escape, that was soon soothed by the consideration of the vast number of impassable securities upon the prisoner. They might well reason with themselves, “If this sharp Galilean can manage to break his chains without waking us, and burst open this stout door inspite of bars, without rousing the sentinels who are posted against it on the outside, and make his way unseen and unchecked through all the gates and guards of Castle Antonia——why, let him. But there’s no use in our losing a night’s rest by any uneasiness about such a chance.” So stretching themselves out, they soon fell into a sound sleep, none the less pleasant for their lying in such close quarters; for it is natural to imagine, that in a chilly March night in Jerusalem, stowing three in a bed was no uncomfortable arrangement. Circumstanced as he was, Peter had nothing to do but conform to their example, for the nature of his attachment to them was such, that he had no room for the indulgence of his own fancies about his position; and he also lay down to repose. He slept. The sickening and feverish confinement of his close dungeon had not yet so broken his firm and vigorous frame, nor so drained its energies, as to hinder the placid enjoyment of repose; nor did the certainty of a cruel and shameful death, to which he was within a few hours to be dragged, before the eyes of a scoffing rabble, move his high spirit from its self-possession:——
“And still he slumberedWhile in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”
“And still he slumberedWhile in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”
“And still he slumbered
While in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”
He slept. And from that dark prison-bed what visions could beguile his slumbering thoughts? Did fancy bear them back against the tide of time, to the humble, peaceful home of his early days,——to the varied scenes of the lake whereon he loved to dwell, and along whose changeful waters he had learned so many lessons of immortal faith and untrembling hope in his Lord? Amid the stormy roar of its dark waters, the voice of that Lord once called him to tempt the raging deep with his steady foot, and when his feeble faith, before untried, failed him in the terrors of the effort, His supporting hand recalled him to strength and safety. And had that lesson of faith and hope been so poorly learned, that in this dark hour he could draw no consolation from such remembrances? No. He could even now find that consolation, and he did. In the midst of this “sea of troubles,” he felt the same mighty arm now upholding him, that bore him above the waters, “when the blue wave rolled nightly on deep Galilee.” Again he had stood by those waters, swelling brightly in the fresh morning breeze, with his risen Lord beside him, and received the solemn commission, oft-renewed, to feed the flock that was so soon to lose the earthly presence of its greatShepherd. In the steady and dauntless execution of that parting commission, he had in the course of long years gone on in the face of death,——“feeding the lambs” of Christ’s gathering, and calling vast numbers to the fold; and for the faithful adherence to that command, he now sat waiting the fulfilment of the doom that was to cut him down in the midst of life and in the fullness of his vigor. Yet the nearness of this sad reward of his labors, seemingly offering so dreadful an interpretation of the mystical prophecy that accompanied that charge, moved him to no desperation or distress, and still he calmly slept, with as little agitation and dread as at the transfiguration, and at the agony of the crucifixion eve; nor did that compunction for heedless inattention, that then hung upon his slumbering senses, now disturb him in the least. It is really worth noticing, in justice to Peter, that his sleepiness, of which so many curious instances are presented in the sacred narrative, was not of the criminally selfish kind that might be supposed on a partial view. If he slept during his Master’s prayers on Mount Hermon, and in Gethsemane, he slept too in his own condemned cell; and if in his bodily infirmity he had forgotten to watch and pray when death threatened his Lord, he was now equally indifferent to his own impending destruction. He was, evidently, a man of independent and regular habits. Brought up a hard-working man, he had all his life been accustomed to repose whenever he was at leisure, if he needed it; and now too, though the “heathen might rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,——though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together” against him, and doomed him to a cruel death,——in spite of all these, Peter would sleep when he was sleepy. Not the royal Agrippa could sleep sounder on his pavilioned couch of purple. In the calm confidence of one steadily fixed in a high course, and perfectly prepared for every and any result, the chained apostle gave himself coolly to his natural rest, without borrowing any trouble from the thought, that in the morning the bloody sword was to lay him in “the sleep that knows no earthly waking.” So slept the Athenian sage, on the eve of his martyrdom to the cause of clearly and boldly spoken truth,——a sleep that so moved the wonder of his agonizing disciples, at the power of a good conscience and a practical philosophy to sustain the soul against the horrors of such distress; but a sleep not sounder nor sweeter than that of the poor Galilean outcast, who, though not knowing even the name of philosophy,had a consolation far higher, in the faith that his martyred Lord had taught him in so many experimental instructions. That faith, learned by the painful conviction of his own weakness, and implanted in him by many a fall when over confident in his own strength, was now his stay and comfort, so that he might say to his soul, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the help of my countenance and my God.” Nor did that hope prove groundless. From him in whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance; and from the depths of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought, to serve that helping-God through many faithful years, feeding the flock till, in his old age, “another should gird him, and carry him whither he would not.” He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do; and to new works of love and glory he now called him, from the castle-prison of his royal persecutor.
Ten years.——This piece of chronology is thus settled. Jesus Christ, according to all common calculation, was crucified as early as thetwentiethyear of the reign of Tiberius. Irenaeus maintains that it was in thefifteenthof that reign. Eusebius and Epiphanius fix it in theeighteenth, or, according to Petavius’s explanation of their meaning, in theseventeenthof his actual reign. Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Jerome, and Augustin, put it in thesixteenth. Roger Bacon, Paulus Burgensis, and Tostatus, also support this date, on the ground of an astronomical calculation of the course of the moon, fixing the time when the passover must have occurred, so as to accord with the requirement of the Mosaic law, that it should be celebrated on a new moon. But Kepler has abundantly shown the fallacy of this calculation. Antony Pagus, also, though rejecting this astronomical basis, adheres to the opinion of Tertullian, Jerome,&c.Baronius fixes it in thenineteenthof Tiberius. Pearson, L. Cappel, Spanheim, and Witsius, with the majority of the moderns, in thetwentiethof Tiberius. So that the unanimous result of all these great authorities, places it as early as this last mentioned year. A full and highly satisfactory view of all these chronological points and opinions, is given by the deeply learned Antony Pagus, in his great “Critical Historico-Chronological Review of Baronii.” Saecul. I. Ann. Per. Gr.–Rom. 5525. ¶ 3–13.
Now, from Josephus it is perfectly evident that Agrippa did not leave Rome until some time after the beginning of the reign of Claudius, and it is probable not before the close of the first year. Counting backwards through the four years of Caligula, this makesfiveyears after the death of Tiberius, andeighton the latest calculation from the death of Christ; while according to the higher and earlier authority, it amounts tonine,ten,eleven, or totwelveyears from the crucifixion to Agrippa’s arrival in Judea. And moreover, it is not probable that the persecution referred to occurred immediately on his arrival. Indeed, from the close way in which Luke connects Agrippa’s death with the preceding events, it would seem as if he would fix his “going down from Jerusalem to Caesarea,” and his death at the latter place, very soon after the escape of Peter. This of course being in the end of Claudius’sthirdyear, brings the events above, down to theeleventhortwelfthfrom the crucifixion, even according to the latest conjecture as to the date of that event. Probably, however, the connection of the two events was not as close as a common reading of the Acts would lead one to suppose.
So also Lardner, in his Life of Peter, says, “The death of Herod Agrippa happened before the end of that year,” in which he escaped. (Lardner’s Works 4to.Vol. III.p.402, bottom.)
Natalis Alexander fixes Peter’s escape in thesecondyear of Claudius, and theforty-fourthfrom Christ’s birth, which is, according to his computation, thetenthfrom his death. (Church History,Saec. I.Cap. vi.)
A chain on each side.——That this was a common mode of fastening such prisoners among the Romans, appears from the authorities referred to by Wolf, (Cur. Philology in Actsxii.6,) Kuinoel and Rosenmueller, (quoting from Walch,) and Bloomfield, all in loc.
Quaternion.——That is, a band offour. See Bloomfield in defense of my mode of disposing them about the prison,——also Rosenmueller,&c.Wolf quotes appositely from Polybius; but Kuinoel is richest of all in quotations and illustrations. (Actsxii.4, 5.)
THE DELIVERANCE.Peter was now quietly sleeping between his two guards, when his rest was suddenly broken by a smart blow on the side, too energetically given to be mistaken for an accidental knock from the elbow of one of his heavy bed-fellows. Rousing his senses, and opening his eyes, he was startled by a most remarkable light shining throughout his dungeon, which his last waking glance had left in utter darkness. In this unaccountable illumination, he saw standing before him and bending over him, a form in which he could recognize only the divine messenger of deliverance. The shock of such a surprise must have been overwhelming;——to be waked from a sound sleep by an appearance so utterly unearthly, might have struck horror into the stoutest heart; but Peter seems to have suffered no such emotion to hinder his attendance to the heavenly call. The apparition, before he could exercise thought enough to sit up of himself, had raised him up from his bed, and that without the slightest alarm to his still slumbering keepers,——for “immediately the chains fell from his hands,”——a motion which by the rattling of the falling irons should have aroused the sleepers if any sound could have impressed their senses. The impulse of the now unmanacled captive might have been to spring forth his dungeon without the slightest delay, but his deliverer’s next command forbade any such unnecessary haste. His first words were, “Gird thyself; and tie on thy sandals.” Before laying himself down, he had, as usual, thrown off his outer garments and loosened his girdle, so that his under dress need not so much confine him in sleep as to prevent that perfect relaxation which is necessary for comfortable repose. Just as now-a-days, a man in taking up such a lodging as often falls to a traveler’s lot, will seldom do more than pull off his coat and boots, as Peter did, and perhaps unbutton his waist-band and suspenders, so that on a sudden alarm from his rest, the first direction would very properly be, to “gird himself,” (button histrowsers,) “and tie on his sandals,” (put on his shoes or boots.) The next direction given to Peter, also, “Cast thy garment about thee,” (put on thy coat,) would be equally appropriate. The meaning of all this particularity and deliberation was, no doubt, that there was no need whatever of hurry or slyness about the escape. It was not to be considered a mere smart trick of jail-breaking, by which Peter was to crawl out of his dungeon in such a hurry as to leave his coat and shoes behind him, but a truly miraculous providence insuring his deliverance with a completeness and certainty that allowed him to take every thing that belonged to him. Having now perfectly accoutred himself in his ordinary style, Peter immediately obeyed the next order of his deliverer,——“Follow me.” Leaving his two bed-fellows and room-mates sleeping hard, without the slightest idea of the evacuation of the premises which was so deliberately going on, to their great detriment, Peter now passed out through the open door, following the divine messenger in a state of mind altogether indescribable, but still with just sense enough to obey the directions which thus led him on to blissful freedom. The whole scene bore so perfectly the character of one of those enchanting dreams of liberty with which painful hope often cheats the willing senses of the poor captive in slumber, that he might well and wisely doubt the reality of an appearance so tempting, and which his wishes would so readily suggest to his forgetful spirit. But passing on with his conductor, he moved between the sentinels posted at the doors, who were also equally unaware of the movement going on so boldly under their noses, or ratheroverthem, for they, too, were faster bound in slumber than their prisoner had been in his chains; and he now stepped over their outstretched bodies as they lay before the entrances. These soldiers, too, evidently looked upon their duty as a sort of sinecure, rationally concluding that their two stout comrades on the inside were rather more than a match for the fettered and manacled captive, and that if he should be at all obstreperous, or even uneasy, the noise would soon enough awake them from their nap. And thus excessive precaution is very apt to overshoot itself, each part of the arrangement relying too much on the security of all the rest. The two passengers soon reached the great iron gate of the castle, through which they must pass in order to enter the city. But all the seeming difficulties of this passage vanished as soon as they approached it. The gate swung its enormous mass of metalself-moving through the air, and the half-entranced Peter went on beneath the vacant portal, and now stood without the castle, once more a free man in the fresh, pure air. The difficulties and dangers were not all over yet, however. During all the great feast-days, when large assemblies of people were gathered at Jerusalem from various quarters, to guard against the danger of riots and insurrection in these motley throngs,——the armed Roman force on duty, as Josephus relates, was doubled and tripled, occupying several new posts around the temple, and, as the same historian particularly mentions, on the approaches of castle Antonia, where its foundations descended towards the terraces of the temple, and gave access to the colonnades of the temple. On all these places the guard must have been under arms during this passover, and even at night the sentries would be stationed at all the important posts, as a reasonable security against the numerous strangers of a dubious character, who now thronged the city throughout. Yet all these peculiar precautions, which, at this time, presented so many additional difficulties to the escaping apostle, hindered him not in the least. Entering the city, he followed the footsteps of his blessed guide, unchecked, till they had passed on through the first street, when all at once, without sign or word of farewell, the mysterious deliverer vanished, leaving Peter alone in the silent city, but free and safe. Then flashed upon his mind the conviction of the true character of the apparition. The departure of his guide leaving him to seek his own way, his senses were, by the necessity of this self-direction, recalled from the state of stupefaction, in which he had mechanically followed on from the prison. With the first burst of reflection, he broke out in the exclamation, “Now I know of a truth, that the Lord has sent forth his messenger, and has rescued me out of the hand of Herod, in spite of all the expectation of the Jewish people.” Refreshed and encouraged by this impression, he now used his thoroughly awakened senses to find his exact situation, and after looking about him, he made his way through the dark streets to a place where he knew he should find those whose despairing hearts would be inexpressibly rejoiced by the news of his deliverance. This was the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the disciples were accustomed to assemble. Going up to the gate-way, he rapped on the door, and at once aroused those within; for in their sleepless distress for the imprisoned apostle, several of the brethren had given up all thoughts of sleep, and,as Peter had suspected, were now watching in prayer within this house. The noise of a visitant at this unseasonable hour of the night, immediately brought to the door a lively damsel, named Rhoda; who, according to the Jewish custom of employing females in this capacity, acted as portress of the mansion of Mary. Prudently requiring some account of the person who made this late call, before she opened the door of the persecuted Christians to an unknown and perhaps an ill-disposed character, she was struck with almost frantic joy at hearing the well-known voice of the much mourned Peter, craving admittance. In the highth of her thoughtless gladness, she ran off at once to make known the delightful fact to the disciples in the house, without even seeming to think of the desirableness of admitting the apostle, perhaps because she very naturally wanted to tell such pleasant news first herself. Bursting into the room where the disciples were at prayer for their lamented leader, whom they supposed to be then fast bound for death in the dungeon of Antonia, she communicated the joyful fact, that “Peter was before the gate.” A declaration so extravagantly improbable, at once suggested the idea of her having lost her wits through her affectionate sorrow for the sufferings and anticipated death of the great apostle, and they therefore replied, “Thou art crazy.” Rhoda, somewhat excited by such a provoking expression of incredulity, loudly repeated her slighted piece of good news, and so gravely maintained the truth of it, that some of the more superstitious at last began to think there must be something in it, and seriously suggested, that it must be a supernatural messenger come to give them notice of his certain doom,——“It is his guardian angel.” Peter, however, was all this while standing outside during this grave debate about his real entity, and shivering with the cold of a chilly March night, grew quite impatient at the girl’s inconsiderate folly, and knocked away with might and main, making a noise of most unspiritual character, till at last the disciples determined to cut short the debate by an actual observation; so opening the door to the shivering apostle, the light brought his material existence to a certainty beyond all doubt. Their amazement and joy was bursting forth with a vivacity which quite made up for their previous incredulity; when the apostle, making a hushing sign with his hand,——and with a reasonable fear, too, no doubt, that their obstreperous congratulations might be heard in other houses around, so as to alarm the neighbors and bring out some spitefulJews, who would procure his detection and recapture,——having obtained silence, went on to give them a full account of his being brought out of prison by the Lord, and after finishing his wonderful story, said to them, “Tell these things to James and the brethren.” From this it would seem that the apostles were all somewhere else, probably having found that a temporary concealment was expedient for their safety, but were still not far from the city. His own personal danger was of so imminent a character, however, that Jerusalem could not be a safe place for him during the search that would be immediately instituted after him by his disappointed and enraged persecutors. It was quite worth while, therefore, for him to use the remaining darkness of the night to complete his escape; and without staying to enjoy their outflowing sympathies, he bade them a hasty farewell, and, as the historian briefly says, went toANOTHER PLACE. Where this “other place” was, he does not pretend to tell or know, and the only certain inference to be drawn from the circumstance is, that it was beyond the reach or knowledge of the mighty and far-ruling king, who had taken such particular pains to secure Peter’s death. The probabilities as to the real place of his retirement will, however, be given, as soon as the sequel of events in Jerusalem has been narrated, as far as concerns the discovery of his escape.
THE DELIVERANCE.
Peter was now quietly sleeping between his two guards, when his rest was suddenly broken by a smart blow on the side, too energetically given to be mistaken for an accidental knock from the elbow of one of his heavy bed-fellows. Rousing his senses, and opening his eyes, he was startled by a most remarkable light shining throughout his dungeon, which his last waking glance had left in utter darkness. In this unaccountable illumination, he saw standing before him and bending over him, a form in which he could recognize only the divine messenger of deliverance. The shock of such a surprise must have been overwhelming;——to be waked from a sound sleep by an appearance so utterly unearthly, might have struck horror into the stoutest heart; but Peter seems to have suffered no such emotion to hinder his attendance to the heavenly call. The apparition, before he could exercise thought enough to sit up of himself, had raised him up from his bed, and that without the slightest alarm to his still slumbering keepers,——for “immediately the chains fell from his hands,”——a motion which by the rattling of the falling irons should have aroused the sleepers if any sound could have impressed their senses. The impulse of the now unmanacled captive might have been to spring forth his dungeon without the slightest delay, but his deliverer’s next command forbade any such unnecessary haste. His first words were, “Gird thyself; and tie on thy sandals.” Before laying himself down, he had, as usual, thrown off his outer garments and loosened his girdle, so that his under dress need not so much confine him in sleep as to prevent that perfect relaxation which is necessary for comfortable repose. Just as now-a-days, a man in taking up such a lodging as often falls to a traveler’s lot, will seldom do more than pull off his coat and boots, as Peter did, and perhaps unbutton his waist-band and suspenders, so that on a sudden alarm from his rest, the first direction would very properly be, to “gird himself,” (button histrowsers,) “and tie on his sandals,” (put on his shoes or boots.) The next direction given to Peter, also, “Cast thy garment about thee,” (put on thy coat,) would be equally appropriate. The meaning of all this particularity and deliberation was, no doubt, that there was no need whatever of hurry or slyness about the escape. It was not to be considered a mere smart trick of jail-breaking, by which Peter was to crawl out of his dungeon in such a hurry as to leave his coat and shoes behind him, but a truly miraculous providence insuring his deliverance with a completeness and certainty that allowed him to take every thing that belonged to him. Having now perfectly accoutred himself in his ordinary style, Peter immediately obeyed the next order of his deliverer,——“Follow me.” Leaving his two bed-fellows and room-mates sleeping hard, without the slightest idea of the evacuation of the premises which was so deliberately going on, to their great detriment, Peter now passed out through the open door, following the divine messenger in a state of mind altogether indescribable, but still with just sense enough to obey the directions which thus led him on to blissful freedom. The whole scene bore so perfectly the character of one of those enchanting dreams of liberty with which painful hope often cheats the willing senses of the poor captive in slumber, that he might well and wisely doubt the reality of an appearance so tempting, and which his wishes would so readily suggest to his forgetful spirit. But passing on with his conductor, he moved between the sentinels posted at the doors, who were also equally unaware of the movement going on so boldly under their noses, or ratheroverthem, for they, too, were faster bound in slumber than their prisoner had been in his chains; and he now stepped over their outstretched bodies as they lay before the entrances. These soldiers, too, evidently looked upon their duty as a sort of sinecure, rationally concluding that their two stout comrades on the inside were rather more than a match for the fettered and manacled captive, and that if he should be at all obstreperous, or even uneasy, the noise would soon enough awake them from their nap. And thus excessive precaution is very apt to overshoot itself, each part of the arrangement relying too much on the security of all the rest. The two passengers soon reached the great iron gate of the castle, through which they must pass in order to enter the city. But all the seeming difficulties of this passage vanished as soon as they approached it. The gate swung its enormous mass of metalself-moving through the air, and the half-entranced Peter went on beneath the vacant portal, and now stood without the castle, once more a free man in the fresh, pure air. The difficulties and dangers were not all over yet, however. During all the great feast-days, when large assemblies of people were gathered at Jerusalem from various quarters, to guard against the danger of riots and insurrection in these motley throngs,——the armed Roman force on duty, as Josephus relates, was doubled and tripled, occupying several new posts around the temple, and, as the same historian particularly mentions, on the approaches of castle Antonia, where its foundations descended towards the terraces of the temple, and gave access to the colonnades of the temple. On all these places the guard must have been under arms during this passover, and even at night the sentries would be stationed at all the important posts, as a reasonable security against the numerous strangers of a dubious character, who now thronged the city throughout. Yet all these peculiar precautions, which, at this time, presented so many additional difficulties to the escaping apostle, hindered him not in the least. Entering the city, he followed the footsteps of his blessed guide, unchecked, till they had passed on through the first street, when all at once, without sign or word of farewell, the mysterious deliverer vanished, leaving Peter alone in the silent city, but free and safe. Then flashed upon his mind the conviction of the true character of the apparition. The departure of his guide leaving him to seek his own way, his senses were, by the necessity of this self-direction, recalled from the state of stupefaction, in which he had mechanically followed on from the prison. With the first burst of reflection, he broke out in the exclamation, “Now I know of a truth, that the Lord has sent forth his messenger, and has rescued me out of the hand of Herod, in spite of all the expectation of the Jewish people.” Refreshed and encouraged by this impression, he now used his thoroughly awakened senses to find his exact situation, and after looking about him, he made his way through the dark streets to a place where he knew he should find those whose despairing hearts would be inexpressibly rejoiced by the news of his deliverance. This was the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where the disciples were accustomed to assemble. Going up to the gate-way, he rapped on the door, and at once aroused those within; for in their sleepless distress for the imprisoned apostle, several of the brethren had given up all thoughts of sleep, and,as Peter had suspected, were now watching in prayer within this house. The noise of a visitant at this unseasonable hour of the night, immediately brought to the door a lively damsel, named Rhoda; who, according to the Jewish custom of employing females in this capacity, acted as portress of the mansion of Mary. Prudently requiring some account of the person who made this late call, before she opened the door of the persecuted Christians to an unknown and perhaps an ill-disposed character, she was struck with almost frantic joy at hearing the well-known voice of the much mourned Peter, craving admittance. In the highth of her thoughtless gladness, she ran off at once to make known the delightful fact to the disciples in the house, without even seeming to think of the desirableness of admitting the apostle, perhaps because she very naturally wanted to tell such pleasant news first herself. Bursting into the room where the disciples were at prayer for their lamented leader, whom they supposed to be then fast bound for death in the dungeon of Antonia, she communicated the joyful fact, that “Peter was before the gate.” A declaration so extravagantly improbable, at once suggested the idea of her having lost her wits through her affectionate sorrow for the sufferings and anticipated death of the great apostle, and they therefore replied, “Thou art crazy.” Rhoda, somewhat excited by such a provoking expression of incredulity, loudly repeated her slighted piece of good news, and so gravely maintained the truth of it, that some of the more superstitious at last began to think there must be something in it, and seriously suggested, that it must be a supernatural messenger come to give them notice of his certain doom,——“It is his guardian angel.” Peter, however, was all this while standing outside during this grave debate about his real entity, and shivering with the cold of a chilly March night, grew quite impatient at the girl’s inconsiderate folly, and knocked away with might and main, making a noise of most unspiritual character, till at last the disciples determined to cut short the debate by an actual observation; so opening the door to the shivering apostle, the light brought his material existence to a certainty beyond all doubt. Their amazement and joy was bursting forth with a vivacity which quite made up for their previous incredulity; when the apostle, making a hushing sign with his hand,——and with a reasonable fear, too, no doubt, that their obstreperous congratulations might be heard in other houses around, so as to alarm the neighbors and bring out some spitefulJews, who would procure his detection and recapture,——having obtained silence, went on to give them a full account of his being brought out of prison by the Lord, and after finishing his wonderful story, said to them, “Tell these things to James and the brethren.” From this it would seem that the apostles were all somewhere else, probably having found that a temporary concealment was expedient for their safety, but were still not far from the city. His own personal danger was of so imminent a character, however, that Jerusalem could not be a safe place for him during the search that would be immediately instituted after him by his disappointed and enraged persecutors. It was quite worth while, therefore, for him to use the remaining darkness of the night to complete his escape; and without staying to enjoy their outflowing sympathies, he bade them a hasty farewell, and, as the historian briefly says, went toANOTHER PLACE. Where this “other place” was, he does not pretend to tell or know, and the only certain inference to be drawn from the circumstance is, that it was beyond the reach or knowledge of the mighty and far-ruling king, who had taken such particular pains to secure Peter’s death. The probabilities as to the real place of his retirement will, however, be given, as soon as the sequel of events in Jerusalem has been narrated, as far as concerns the discovery of his escape.
Bright light.——Some commentators have attempted to make out an explanation of this phenomenon, by referring the whole affair to the effects of a sudden flash and stroke of lightning, falling on the castle, and striking all the keepers senseless,——meltingPeter’s chains, and illuminating the place, so that Peter, unhurt amid the general crash, saw this opportunity for escaping, and stepping over their prostrate bodies, made his way out of the prison, and was out of sight before theycame to. The most important objection to this ingenious speculation is, that it directly contradicts every verse in Luke’s account of the escape, as well as the general spirit of the narrative. Another weighty reason is, that the whole series of natural causes and effects, proposed as a substitute for the simple meaning, is brought together in such forced and uncommon coincidences, as to require a much greater effort of faith and credulity for its belief, than the miraculous view, which it quite transcends in incredibility. The introduction of explanations of miracles by natural phenomena, is justifiable only so far as these may illustrate theaccompanimentsof the event, by showing the mode in which those things which are actually mentioned as physical results, operated in producing the impressions described. Thus, when thunder and lightning are mentioned in connection with miraculous events, they are to be considered asrealelectrical discharges, made to accompany and manifest the presence of God; and where lambent flames are described as appearing in a storm, they, like thecorpos santos, are plainly also results of electrical discharges. So too, when mighty winds are mentioned, they are most honestly taken to berealwinds, and not deceptive sounds or impressions; and when a cloud is mentioned, it is but fair to consider it a real cloud, made up, like all other clouds, of vapor, and not a mere non-entity, or a delusion existing only in the minds of those who are mentioned as beholding it. But where nothing of this kind is spoken of, and where a distinct personal presence is plainly declared, the attempt to substitute a physical accident for such an apparition, is a direct attack on thehonestyof the statement. Such attempts, too, are devoid of the benefits of such illustrationsas I have alluded to as desirable; they bring in a new set of difficulties with them, without removing any of those previously obstructing the interpretation of the facts. In this case, the only circumstance which could be reasonably made to agree with the idea of lightning, is the mention of the bright light; while throughout the whole account, the presence of a supernaturally mysteriousperson, acting and speaking, is perfectly unquestionable. The violation of all probability, shown in this forced explanation, will serve as a fair instance of the mode in which many modern German critics are in the habit of distorting the simple, manifest sense of the sacred writers, for the sake of dispensing with all supernatural occurrences. (See Kuinoel for an enlarged view and discussion of this opinion. Other views of the nature of the phenomenon are also given by him, and by Rosenmueller, on Actsxii.7.)