As to the place and time of writing this epistle, it seems quite probable that it was written where the former one was, since there is no account or hint whatever of any change in Peter’s external circumstances; and that it was written some months after it, is unquestionable, since its whole tenor requires such a period to have intervened, as would allow the first to reach them and be read by them, and also for the apostle to learn in the course of time the effects ultimately produced by it, and to hear of the rise of new difficulties, requiring new apostolical interference and counsel. The first seems to have been directed mainly to those who were complete Jews, by birth or by proselytism, as appears from the terms in which he repeatedly addresses them in it; but the sort of errors complained of in this epistle seem to have been so exclusively characteristic of Gentile converts, that it must have been written more particularly with reference to difficulties in that part of the religious communities of those regions. He condemns and refutes certain heretics who rejected some of the fundamental truths of the Mosaic law,——errors which no well-trained Jew could ever be supposed to make, but which in motley assemblages of different races, like the Christian churches, might naturally enough arise among those Gentiles, who felt impatient at the inferiority in which they seemed implicated by their ignorance of the doctrines of the Jewish theology, in which their circumcised brethren were so fully versed. It seems to have been more especially aimed at the rising sect of the Gnostics, who are known to have been heretical on some of the very points here alluded to. Its great similarity, in some passages, to the epistle of Jude, will make it the subject of allusion again in the life of that apostle.HIS DEATH.Henceforth the writings of the New Testament are entirely silent as to the chief apostle. Not a hint is given of the few remaining actions of his life, nor of the mode, place, or time of his death; and all these concluding points have been left to be settled by conjecture, or by tradition as baseless. The only passagewhich has been supposed to give any hint of the manner of his death, is that in the last chapter of John’s gospel. “Jesus says to him——‘I most solemnly tell thee, when thou wast young, thou didst gird thyself and walk whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.’ This he said, to make known by what sort of death he should glorify God.” It has been commonly said that this is a distinct and unquestionable prophecy that he should in his old age be crucified,——the expression, “another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not,” referring to his being bound to the cross and borne away to execution, since this was the only sort of death by which an apostle could be said, with much propriety or force, toglorify God. And the long-established authority of tradition coinciding with this view, or rather, suggesting it, no very minute examination into the sense of the passage has ever been made. But the words themselves are by no means decisive. Take a common reader, who has never heard that Peter was crucified, and it would be hard for him to make out such a circumstance from the bare prophecy as given by John. Indeed, such unbiased impressions of the sense of the passage will go far to justify the conclusion that the words imply nothing but that Peter was destined to pass a long life in the service of his Master,——that he should after having worn out his bodily and mental energies in his devoted exertions, attain such an extreme decrepid old age as to lose the power of voluntary motion, and die thus,——at least withoutnecessarilyimplying any bloody martyrdom. Will it be said that by such a quiet death he could not be considered asglorifyingGod? The objection surely is founded in a misapprehension of the nature of those demonstrations of devotion, by which the glory of God is most effectually secured. There are other modes of martyrdom than the dungeon, the sword, the axe, the flame, and the stone; and in all ages since Peter, there have been thousands of martyrs who have, by lives steadily and quietly devoted to the cause of truth, no less glorified God, than those who were rapt to heaven in flame, in blood, and in tortures inflicted by a malignant persecution. Was not God truly glorified in the deaths of the aged Xavier, and Eliot, and Swartz, or the bright, early exits of Brainerd, Mills, Martyn, Parsons, Fisk, and hundreds whom the apostolic spirit of modern missions has sent forth to labors as devoted, and to deaths as glorious to God, as those of any who swell the deified lists of the ancient martyrologies?The whole notion of a bloody martyrdom as an essential termination to the life of a saint, grew out of a papistical superstition; nor need the enlightened minds of those who can better appreciate the manner in which God’s highest glory is secured by the lives and deaths of his servants, seek any such superfluous aids to crown the mighty course of the great apostolic chief, whose solid claims to the name and honors ofMartyrrest on higher grounds than so insignificant an accident as the manner of his death. All those writers who pretend to particularize the mode of his departure, connect it also with the utterly impossible fiction of his residence at Rome, on which enough has been already said. Who will undertake to say, out of such a mass of matters, what is truth and what is falsehood? And if the views above given, on the high authority of the latest writers of even the Romish church, are of any value for any purpose whatever, they are perfectly decisive against the notion of Peter’s martyrdom at Rome, in the persecution under Nero, since Peter was then in Babylon, far beyond the vengeance of the Caesar; nor was he so foolish as ever after to have trusted himself in the reach of a perfectly unnecessary danger. The command of Christ was, “When you are persecuted in one city, flee into another,”——the necessary and unquestionable inference from which, was, that when out of the reach of persecution they should not wilfully go into it. This is a simple principle of Christian action, with which papist fable-mongers were totally unacquainted, and they thereby afford the most satisfactory proof of the utter falsity of the actions and motives which they ascribe to the apostles. One of these stories thus disproved is connected with another adventure with that useful character, Simon Magus, who, as the tale runs, after being first vanquished so thoroughly by Peter in the reign of Claudius, returned to Rome, in the reign of Nero, and made such progress again in his magical tricks, as to rise into the highest favor with this emperor, as he had with the former. This of course required a new effort from Peter, which ended in the disgrace and death of the magician, who, attempting to fly through the air in the presence of the emperor and people in the theater, was by the prayer of Peter caused to fall from his aspiring course, to the ground, by which he was so much injured as to die soon after. The emperor being provoked at the loss of his favorite, turned all his wrath against the apostle who had been directly instrumental in his ruin, and imprisoned him with the design of executinghim as soon as might be convenient. While in these circumstances, or as others say, before he was imprisoned, he was earnestly exhorted by the disciples in Rome, to make his escape. He accordingly, though very desirous of being killed, (a most abominably irreligious wish, by the way,) began to move off, one dark night; but had hardly got beyond the walls of the city,——indeed he was just passing out of the gate-way,——when, whom should he meet but Jesus Christ himself, coming towards Rome. Peter asked, with some reasonable surprise, “Lord! where are you going?” Christ answered, “I am coming to Rome, to be crucified again.” Peter at once took this as a hint that he ought to have stayed, and that Christ meant to be crucified again in the crucifixion of his apostle. He accordingly turned right about, and went back into the city, where, having given to the wondering brethren an account of the reasons of his return, he was immediately seized, and was crucified, to the glory of God. Now it is a sufficient answer to this or any similar fable, to judge the blasphemous inventor out of his own mouth, and out of the instructions given by Christ himself to his servants, for their conduct, in all cases where they were threatened with persecution, as above quoted.Referring to his being bound to the cross.——Tertullian seems to have first suggested this rather whimsical interpretation:——“Tunc Petrus ab altero cingitur, quum cruci adstringitur.” (Tertullian, Scorpiace,15.) There seems to be more rhyme than reason in the sentence, however.The rejection of this forced interpretation is by no means a new notion. The critical Tremellius long ago maintained that the verse had no reference whatever to a prophecy of Peter’s crucifixion, though he probably had no idea of denying that Peter did actually die by crucifixion. Among more modern commentators too, the prince of critics, Kuinoel, with whom are quoted Semler, Gurlitt and Schott, utterly deny that a fair construction of the original will allow any prophetical idea to be based on it. The critical testimony of these great commentators on the true and just force of the words, is of the very highest value; because all received the tale of Peter’s crucifixion as true, having never examined the authority of the tradition, and not one of them pretended to deny that he really was crucified. But in spite of this pre-conceived erroneous historical notion, their nice sense of what was grammatically and critically just, would not allow them to pervert the passage to the support of this long-established view; and they therefore pronounce it as merely expressive of the helplessness and imbecility of extreme old age, with which they make every word coincide. But Bloomfield, entirely carried away with the tide of antique authorities, is “surprised that so many recent commentators should deny that crucifixion is here alluded to, though they acknowledge that Peter suffered crucifixion.” Now this last circumstance might well occasion surprise, as it certainly did in me, when I found what mighty names had so disinterestedly supported the interpretation which I had with fear and trembling adopted, in obedience to my own long-established, unaided convictions; but my surprise was of a decidedly agreeable sort.The inventors of fables go on to give us the minute particulars of Peter’s death, and especially note the circumstance that he was crucified with his head downwards and his feet uppermost, he himself having desired that it might be done in that manner,because he thought himself unworthy to be crucified as his Master was. This was a mode sometimes adopted by the Romans, as an additional pain and ignominy. But Peter must have been singularly accommodating to his persecutors, to have suggested this improvement upon his tortures to his malignant murderers; and must have manifested a spirit more accordant with that of a savage defying his enemies to increase his agonies, than with that of the mild, submissive Jesus. And such has been the evident absurdity of the story, that many of the most ardent receivers of fables have rejected this circumstance as improbable, more especially as it is not found among the earliest stories of his crucifixion, but evidently seems to have been appended among later improvements.PETER’S MARTYRDOM.The only authority which can be esteemed worthy of consideration on this point, is that of Clemens Romanus, who, in the latter part of the first century, (about the year 70, or as others say, 96,) in his epistle to the Corinthians, uses these words respecting Peter:——“Peter, on account of unrighteous hatred, underwent not one, or two, but many labors, andhaving thus borne his testimony, departed to the place of glory, which was his due,”——(ὁυτως μαρτυρησας επορευθη εις τον οφειλομενον τοπον δοξης.) Now it is by no means certain that the prominent word (marturesas) necessarily means “bearing testimony by death,” ormartyrdomin the modern sense. The primary sense of this verb is merely “to witness,” in which simple meaning alone, it is used in the New Testament; nor can any passage in the sacred writings be shown, in which this verb means “to bear witness to any cause,by death.” This was atechnicalsense, (if I may so name it,) which the word at last acquired among the Fathers, when they were speaking of those who bore witness to the truth of the gospel of Christ by their blood; and it was a meaning which at last nearly excluded all the true original senses of the verb, limiting it mainly to the notion of a death by persecution for the sake of Christ. Thence our English words,martyrandmartyrdom. But that Clement by this use of the word, in this connection, meant to convey the idea of Peter’s having been killed for the sake of Christ, is an opinion utterly incapable of proof, and moreover rendered improbable by the words joined to it in the passage. The sentence is, “Peter underwent many labors, and having thus borne witness” to the gospel truth, “went to the place of glory which he deserved.” Now the adverb “thus,” (ὁυτως,) seems to me most distinctly to show what was the nature of this testimony, and the manner also in which he bore it. It points out more plainly than any other words could, the fact that his testimony to the truth of the gospel was borne in the zealous labors of a devoted life, andnotby the agonies of a bloody death. There is not in the whole context, nor in all the writings of Clement, any hint whatever that Peter waskilledfor the sake of the gospel; and we are therefore required by every sound rule of interpretation, to stick to the primary sense of the verb, in this passage. Lardner most decidedly mis-translates it in the text of his work, so that any common reader would be grossly deceived as to the expression in the original of Clement,——“Peter underwent many labors,till at lastbeing martyred, he went,”&c.The Greek word,ὁυτως, (houtos,) means always, “in this manner,” “thus,” “so,” and is not a mere expletive, like the English phrase, “andso,” which is a mere form of transition from one part of the narrative to the other.In the similar passage of Clemens which refers toPaul, there is something in the connection which may seem to favor the conclusion that he understood Paul to have been put to death by the Roman officers. His words are,——“and after havingborne his testimonybefore governors, he wasthussent out of the world,”&c.Here the word “thus,” coming after the participle, may perhaps be considered, in view also of its other connections, as implying his removal from the world by a violent death,in consequence ofthe testimony borne by him before the governors. This however, will bear some dispute, and will have a fuller discussion elsewhere.But in respect to the passage which refers to Peter, the burden of proof may fairly be said to lie on those who maintain the old opinion. Here the word is shown to have, in the New Testament, no such application todeathas it has since acquired; and the question is whether Clemens Romanus, a man himself of the apostolic age, who lived and perhaps wrote, before the canon was completed, had already learned to give a new meaning to a verb, before so simple and unlimited in its applications. No person can pretend to trace this meaning to within a century of the Clementine age, nor does Suicer refer to any one who knew of such use before Clement of Alexandria (See his Thesaurus;Μαρτυρ.) Clement himself uses it in the same epistle (§ xvii.) in its unquestionable primary sense, speaking of Abraham as having received an honorable testimony,——(εμαρτυρηθη;) for who will say that Abraham wasmartyred, in the modern sense? The fact too that Clement nowhere else gives the least glimmer of a hint that Peter died any where but in his bed, fixes the position here taken, beyond all possibility of attack, except by its being shown that he uses this verb somewhere else, with the sense ofdeathunquestionably attached to it.There is no otherearlywriter who can be said to speak of the manner of Peter’s death, before Dionysius of Corinth, who says that “Peter and Paul having taught in Italy together,bore their testimony” (by death, if you please,) “about the same time.” An argument might here also be sustained on the wordεμαρτυρησαν, (emarturesan,) but the evidence of Dionysius, mixed as it is with a demonstrated fable, is not worth averbalcriticism. The same may be said of Tertullian and the rest of the later Fathers, as given in the note on pages 228–233.An examination of the wordΜαρτυρ, in Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, will show the critical, that even in later times, this word did not necessarily imply “one who bore his testimony to the truth at the sacrifice of life.” Even Chrysostom, in whose time the peculiar limitation of the term might be supposed to be very well established, uses the word in such applications as to show that its original force was not wholly lost. By Athanasius too, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are styledmartyrs. Gregory Nazianzen also speaks of “living martyrs.” (ζωντες μαρτυρες.) Theophylact calls the apostle John amartyr, though he declares him to have passed through the hands of his persecutors unhurt, and to have died by the course of nature. Clemens Alexandrinus has similar uses of the term; and the Apostolical Constitutions, of doubtful date, but much later than the first century, also give it in such applications. Suicer distinctly specifies several classes of persons, not martyrs in the modern sense, to whom the Greek word is nevertheless applied in the writings of even the later Fathers; as “those who testified the truth of the gospel of Christ, at the peril of life merely, without the loss of it,”——“those who obeyed the requirements of the gospel, by restraining passion,”&c.In some of these instances however, it is palpable that the application of the word to such persons is secondary, and made in rather a poetical way, with a reference to the more common meaning of loss of life for the sake of Christ, since there is always implied atestimonyat the risk or loss of something; still the power of these instances to render doubtful the meaning of the term, is unquestionable. (See Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus,Μαρτυρ,III.2, 5, 6.)Perhaps it is hardly worth while to dismiss these fables altogether, without first alluding to the rather ancient one, first given by Clemens Alexandrinus. (Stromata,7.p.736.) and copied verbatim by Eusebius, (Church History,III.30.) Both the reverend Fathers however, introduce the story as a tradition, a mereon dit, prefacing it with the expressive phrase, “They say,”&c.(Φασι.) “The blessed Peter seeing his wife led to death, was pleased with the honor of her being thus called by God to return home, and thus addressed her in words of exhortation and consolation, calling her by name,——‘O woman! remember the Lord.’” The story comes up from the hands of tradition rather too late however, to be entitled to any credit whatever, being recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, full 200 years after Christ. It was probably invented in the times when it was thought worth while to cherish the spirit of voluntary martyrdom, among even the female sex; for which purpose instances were sought out or invented respecting those of the apostolic days. That Peter had a wife is perfectly true; and it is also probable that she accompanied him about on his travels, as would appear from a passage in Paul’s writings; (1 Corinthiansix.5;) but beyond this, nothing is known of her life or death. Similar fables might be endlessly multiplied from papistical sources; more especially from the Clementine novels, and the apostolical romances of Abdias Babylonius; but the object of the present work is true history, and it would require a whole volume like this to give all the details of Christian mythology.In justification of the certainty with which sentence is pronounced against the whole story of Peter’s ever having gone to Rome, it is only necessary to refer to the decisive argument on pages 228–233, in which the whole array of ancient evidence on the point, is given byDr.Murdock. If the support of great names is needed, those of Scaliger, Salmasius, Spanheim, and Bower, all mighty minds in criticism, are enough to justify the boldness of the opinion, that Peter never went west of the Hellespont, and probably never embarked on the Mediterranean. In conclusion of the whole refutation of this long-established error, the matter cannot be more fairly presented, than in the words with which the critical and learned Bower opens his Lives of the Popes:“To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity. If it is affirmed by him alone, we can at most but suspend our belief, not rejecting it as false, because a liar may sometimes speak truth; but we cannot, upon his bare authority, admit it as true. Now thatSt.Peter was at Rome, that he was bishop of Rome, we are told by tradition alone, which, at the same time tells us of so many strange circumstances attending his coming to that metropolis, his staying in it, his withdrawing from it,&c., that in the opinion of every unprejudiced man, the whole must savor strongly of romance. Thus we are told thatSt.Peter went to Rome chiefly to oppose Simon, the celebrated magician; that at their first interview, at which Nero himself was present, he flew up into the air, in the sight of the emperor and the whole city; but that the devil, who had thus raised him, struck with dread and terror at the name of Jesus, whom the apostle invoked, let him fall to the ground, by which fall he broke his legs. Should you question the truth of this tradition at Rome, they would show you the prints ofSt.Peter’s knees in the stone, on which he kneeled on this occasion, and another stone still dyed with the blood of the magician. (This account seems to have been borrowed from Suetonius, who speaks of a person that, in the public sports, undertook to fly, in the presence of the emperor Nero; but on his first attempt, fell to the ground; by which fall his blood sprung out with such violence that it reached the emperor’s canopy.)“The Romans, as we are told, highly incensed against him for thus maiming and bringing to disgrace one to whom they paid divine honors, vowed his destruction; whereupon the apostle thought it advisable to retire for a while from the city, and had already reached the gate, when to his great surprise, he met our Savior coming in, as he went out, who, uponSt.Peter’s asking him where he was going, returned this answer: ‘I am going to Rome, to be crucified anew;’ which, asSt.Peter understood it, was upbraiding him with his flight; whereupon he turned back, and was soon after seized by the provoked Romans, and, by an order from the emperor, crucified.”Nor do the fables about Peter, by the inveterate papists, cease with his death. In regard to the place of his tomb, a new story was needed, and it is accordingly given with the usual particularity. It is said that he was buried at Rome in the Vatican plain, in the district beyond the Tiber, in which he was said to have first preached among the Jews, and where stood the great circus of Nero, in which the apostle is said to have been crucified. Over this bloody spot, a church was afterwards raised, by Constantine the Great, who chose for its site part of the ground that had been occupied by the circus, and the spaces where the temples of Mars and Apollo had stood. The church, though of no great architectural beauty, was a building of great magnitude, being three hundred feet long, and more than one hundred and fifty feet wide. This building stood nearly twelve hundred years, when becoming ruinous in spite of all repairs, it was removed to give place to thepresent cathedral church ofSt.Peter, now the most immense and magnificent building in the world,——not too much praised in the graphic verse in which the pilgrim-poet sets it beyond all comparison with the greatest piles of ancient or modern art:“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;——Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.——I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwellThe hyena and the jackall in their shade.I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swellTheir glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyedIts sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!Since Zion’s desolation, when that HeForsook his former city, what could beOf earthly structures in his honor piled,Of a sublimer aspect?”——Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,——beneath the very center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it, than of the God whose altar it covers,——in the vaulted crypt which lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily rising. This iscalledthe tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain, blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement of the kingdom of his Master,——the inculcation of a pure spiritual faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors werepointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,——the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,——spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,——what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,——but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!——(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,——and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,——from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! Howearnestly would he long for the high temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as Lord and Savior, millions on millions,——and vast numbers too, even in the lands of a reformed faith,——would be found still clinging to the vain support of forms, and names, and observances,——and but a few, a precious few, who had learned whatthatmeans——“I will have mercy and not sacrifice”——works and not words,——deeds and not creeds,——high, simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered reverence,——chanceled worship,——or soul-wearying rituals. Would not the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection, and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such an evangelization?——“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise. Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slackconcerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,——living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,——lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,——henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,——intellectual as well as moral.This was the spirit which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof? There is a glory that shall outlast all“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——Yea all which it inherit;”——a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day; for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, andthey that turn many to righteousnessas the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in this the apostle rejoices not;——not that adoring millions lift his name in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,——not even that over all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with time,——till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;——he “rejoices not that the spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,——but thatHIS NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”
As to the place and time of writing this epistle, it seems quite probable that it was written where the former one was, since there is no account or hint whatever of any change in Peter’s external circumstances; and that it was written some months after it, is unquestionable, since its whole tenor requires such a period to have intervened, as would allow the first to reach them and be read by them, and also for the apostle to learn in the course of time the effects ultimately produced by it, and to hear of the rise of new difficulties, requiring new apostolical interference and counsel. The first seems to have been directed mainly to those who were complete Jews, by birth or by proselytism, as appears from the terms in which he repeatedly addresses them in it; but the sort of errors complained of in this epistle seem to have been so exclusively characteristic of Gentile converts, that it must have been written more particularly with reference to difficulties in that part of the religious communities of those regions. He condemns and refutes certain heretics who rejected some of the fundamental truths of the Mosaic law,——errors which no well-trained Jew could ever be supposed to make, but which in motley assemblages of different races, like the Christian churches, might naturally enough arise among those Gentiles, who felt impatient at the inferiority in which they seemed implicated by their ignorance of the doctrines of the Jewish theology, in which their circumcised brethren were so fully versed. It seems to have been more especially aimed at the rising sect of the Gnostics, who are known to have been heretical on some of the very points here alluded to. Its great similarity, in some passages, to the epistle of Jude, will make it the subject of allusion again in the life of that apostle.HIS DEATH.Henceforth the writings of the New Testament are entirely silent as to the chief apostle. Not a hint is given of the few remaining actions of his life, nor of the mode, place, or time of his death; and all these concluding points have been left to be settled by conjecture, or by tradition as baseless. The only passagewhich has been supposed to give any hint of the manner of his death, is that in the last chapter of John’s gospel. “Jesus says to him——‘I most solemnly tell thee, when thou wast young, thou didst gird thyself and walk whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.’ This he said, to make known by what sort of death he should glorify God.” It has been commonly said that this is a distinct and unquestionable prophecy that he should in his old age be crucified,——the expression, “another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not,” referring to his being bound to the cross and borne away to execution, since this was the only sort of death by which an apostle could be said, with much propriety or force, toglorify God. And the long-established authority of tradition coinciding with this view, or rather, suggesting it, no very minute examination into the sense of the passage has ever been made. But the words themselves are by no means decisive. Take a common reader, who has never heard that Peter was crucified, and it would be hard for him to make out such a circumstance from the bare prophecy as given by John. Indeed, such unbiased impressions of the sense of the passage will go far to justify the conclusion that the words imply nothing but that Peter was destined to pass a long life in the service of his Master,——that he should after having worn out his bodily and mental energies in his devoted exertions, attain such an extreme decrepid old age as to lose the power of voluntary motion, and die thus,——at least withoutnecessarilyimplying any bloody martyrdom. Will it be said that by such a quiet death he could not be considered asglorifyingGod? The objection surely is founded in a misapprehension of the nature of those demonstrations of devotion, by which the glory of God is most effectually secured. There are other modes of martyrdom than the dungeon, the sword, the axe, the flame, and the stone; and in all ages since Peter, there have been thousands of martyrs who have, by lives steadily and quietly devoted to the cause of truth, no less glorified God, than those who were rapt to heaven in flame, in blood, and in tortures inflicted by a malignant persecution. Was not God truly glorified in the deaths of the aged Xavier, and Eliot, and Swartz, or the bright, early exits of Brainerd, Mills, Martyn, Parsons, Fisk, and hundreds whom the apostolic spirit of modern missions has sent forth to labors as devoted, and to deaths as glorious to God, as those of any who swell the deified lists of the ancient martyrologies?The whole notion of a bloody martyrdom as an essential termination to the life of a saint, grew out of a papistical superstition; nor need the enlightened minds of those who can better appreciate the manner in which God’s highest glory is secured by the lives and deaths of his servants, seek any such superfluous aids to crown the mighty course of the great apostolic chief, whose solid claims to the name and honors ofMartyrrest on higher grounds than so insignificant an accident as the manner of his death. All those writers who pretend to particularize the mode of his departure, connect it also with the utterly impossible fiction of his residence at Rome, on which enough has been already said. Who will undertake to say, out of such a mass of matters, what is truth and what is falsehood? And if the views above given, on the high authority of the latest writers of even the Romish church, are of any value for any purpose whatever, they are perfectly decisive against the notion of Peter’s martyrdom at Rome, in the persecution under Nero, since Peter was then in Babylon, far beyond the vengeance of the Caesar; nor was he so foolish as ever after to have trusted himself in the reach of a perfectly unnecessary danger. The command of Christ was, “When you are persecuted in one city, flee into another,”——the necessary and unquestionable inference from which, was, that when out of the reach of persecution they should not wilfully go into it. This is a simple principle of Christian action, with which papist fable-mongers were totally unacquainted, and they thereby afford the most satisfactory proof of the utter falsity of the actions and motives which they ascribe to the apostles. One of these stories thus disproved is connected with another adventure with that useful character, Simon Magus, who, as the tale runs, after being first vanquished so thoroughly by Peter in the reign of Claudius, returned to Rome, in the reign of Nero, and made such progress again in his magical tricks, as to rise into the highest favor with this emperor, as he had with the former. This of course required a new effort from Peter, which ended in the disgrace and death of the magician, who, attempting to fly through the air in the presence of the emperor and people in the theater, was by the prayer of Peter caused to fall from his aspiring course, to the ground, by which he was so much injured as to die soon after. The emperor being provoked at the loss of his favorite, turned all his wrath against the apostle who had been directly instrumental in his ruin, and imprisoned him with the design of executinghim as soon as might be convenient. While in these circumstances, or as others say, before he was imprisoned, he was earnestly exhorted by the disciples in Rome, to make his escape. He accordingly, though very desirous of being killed, (a most abominably irreligious wish, by the way,) began to move off, one dark night; but had hardly got beyond the walls of the city,——indeed he was just passing out of the gate-way,——when, whom should he meet but Jesus Christ himself, coming towards Rome. Peter asked, with some reasonable surprise, “Lord! where are you going?” Christ answered, “I am coming to Rome, to be crucified again.” Peter at once took this as a hint that he ought to have stayed, and that Christ meant to be crucified again in the crucifixion of his apostle. He accordingly turned right about, and went back into the city, where, having given to the wondering brethren an account of the reasons of his return, he was immediately seized, and was crucified, to the glory of God. Now it is a sufficient answer to this or any similar fable, to judge the blasphemous inventor out of his own mouth, and out of the instructions given by Christ himself to his servants, for their conduct, in all cases where they were threatened with persecution, as above quoted.
As to the place and time of writing this epistle, it seems quite probable that it was written where the former one was, since there is no account or hint whatever of any change in Peter’s external circumstances; and that it was written some months after it, is unquestionable, since its whole tenor requires such a period to have intervened, as would allow the first to reach them and be read by them, and also for the apostle to learn in the course of time the effects ultimately produced by it, and to hear of the rise of new difficulties, requiring new apostolical interference and counsel. The first seems to have been directed mainly to those who were complete Jews, by birth or by proselytism, as appears from the terms in which he repeatedly addresses them in it; but the sort of errors complained of in this epistle seem to have been so exclusively characteristic of Gentile converts, that it must have been written more particularly with reference to difficulties in that part of the religious communities of those regions. He condemns and refutes certain heretics who rejected some of the fundamental truths of the Mosaic law,——errors which no well-trained Jew could ever be supposed to make, but which in motley assemblages of different races, like the Christian churches, might naturally enough arise among those Gentiles, who felt impatient at the inferiority in which they seemed implicated by their ignorance of the doctrines of the Jewish theology, in which their circumcised brethren were so fully versed. It seems to have been more especially aimed at the rising sect of the Gnostics, who are known to have been heretical on some of the very points here alluded to. Its great similarity, in some passages, to the epistle of Jude, will make it the subject of allusion again in the life of that apostle.
HIS DEATH.
Henceforth the writings of the New Testament are entirely silent as to the chief apostle. Not a hint is given of the few remaining actions of his life, nor of the mode, place, or time of his death; and all these concluding points have been left to be settled by conjecture, or by tradition as baseless. The only passagewhich has been supposed to give any hint of the manner of his death, is that in the last chapter of John’s gospel. “Jesus says to him——‘I most solemnly tell thee, when thou wast young, thou didst gird thyself and walk whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not.’ This he said, to make known by what sort of death he should glorify God.” It has been commonly said that this is a distinct and unquestionable prophecy that he should in his old age be crucified,——the expression, “another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldst not,” referring to his being bound to the cross and borne away to execution, since this was the only sort of death by which an apostle could be said, with much propriety or force, toglorify God. And the long-established authority of tradition coinciding with this view, or rather, suggesting it, no very minute examination into the sense of the passage has ever been made. But the words themselves are by no means decisive. Take a common reader, who has never heard that Peter was crucified, and it would be hard for him to make out such a circumstance from the bare prophecy as given by John. Indeed, such unbiased impressions of the sense of the passage will go far to justify the conclusion that the words imply nothing but that Peter was destined to pass a long life in the service of his Master,——that he should after having worn out his bodily and mental energies in his devoted exertions, attain such an extreme decrepid old age as to lose the power of voluntary motion, and die thus,——at least withoutnecessarilyimplying any bloody martyrdom. Will it be said that by such a quiet death he could not be considered asglorifyingGod? The objection surely is founded in a misapprehension of the nature of those demonstrations of devotion, by which the glory of God is most effectually secured. There are other modes of martyrdom than the dungeon, the sword, the axe, the flame, and the stone; and in all ages since Peter, there have been thousands of martyrs who have, by lives steadily and quietly devoted to the cause of truth, no less glorified God, than those who were rapt to heaven in flame, in blood, and in tortures inflicted by a malignant persecution. Was not God truly glorified in the deaths of the aged Xavier, and Eliot, and Swartz, or the bright, early exits of Brainerd, Mills, Martyn, Parsons, Fisk, and hundreds whom the apostolic spirit of modern missions has sent forth to labors as devoted, and to deaths as glorious to God, as those of any who swell the deified lists of the ancient martyrologies?The whole notion of a bloody martyrdom as an essential termination to the life of a saint, grew out of a papistical superstition; nor need the enlightened minds of those who can better appreciate the manner in which God’s highest glory is secured by the lives and deaths of his servants, seek any such superfluous aids to crown the mighty course of the great apostolic chief, whose solid claims to the name and honors ofMartyrrest on higher grounds than so insignificant an accident as the manner of his death. All those writers who pretend to particularize the mode of his departure, connect it also with the utterly impossible fiction of his residence at Rome, on which enough has been already said. Who will undertake to say, out of such a mass of matters, what is truth and what is falsehood? And if the views above given, on the high authority of the latest writers of even the Romish church, are of any value for any purpose whatever, they are perfectly decisive against the notion of Peter’s martyrdom at Rome, in the persecution under Nero, since Peter was then in Babylon, far beyond the vengeance of the Caesar; nor was he so foolish as ever after to have trusted himself in the reach of a perfectly unnecessary danger. The command of Christ was, “When you are persecuted in one city, flee into another,”——the necessary and unquestionable inference from which, was, that when out of the reach of persecution they should not wilfully go into it. This is a simple principle of Christian action, with which papist fable-mongers were totally unacquainted, and they thereby afford the most satisfactory proof of the utter falsity of the actions and motives which they ascribe to the apostles. One of these stories thus disproved is connected with another adventure with that useful character, Simon Magus, who, as the tale runs, after being first vanquished so thoroughly by Peter in the reign of Claudius, returned to Rome, in the reign of Nero, and made such progress again in his magical tricks, as to rise into the highest favor with this emperor, as he had with the former. This of course required a new effort from Peter, which ended in the disgrace and death of the magician, who, attempting to fly through the air in the presence of the emperor and people in the theater, was by the prayer of Peter caused to fall from his aspiring course, to the ground, by which he was so much injured as to die soon after. The emperor being provoked at the loss of his favorite, turned all his wrath against the apostle who had been directly instrumental in his ruin, and imprisoned him with the design of executinghim as soon as might be convenient. While in these circumstances, or as others say, before he was imprisoned, he was earnestly exhorted by the disciples in Rome, to make his escape. He accordingly, though very desirous of being killed, (a most abominably irreligious wish, by the way,) began to move off, one dark night; but had hardly got beyond the walls of the city,——indeed he was just passing out of the gate-way,——when, whom should he meet but Jesus Christ himself, coming towards Rome. Peter asked, with some reasonable surprise, “Lord! where are you going?” Christ answered, “I am coming to Rome, to be crucified again.” Peter at once took this as a hint that he ought to have stayed, and that Christ meant to be crucified again in the crucifixion of his apostle. He accordingly turned right about, and went back into the city, where, having given to the wondering brethren an account of the reasons of his return, he was immediately seized, and was crucified, to the glory of God. Now it is a sufficient answer to this or any similar fable, to judge the blasphemous inventor out of his own mouth, and out of the instructions given by Christ himself to his servants, for their conduct, in all cases where they were threatened with persecution, as above quoted.
Referring to his being bound to the cross.——Tertullian seems to have first suggested this rather whimsical interpretation:——“Tunc Petrus ab altero cingitur, quum cruci adstringitur.” (Tertullian, Scorpiace,15.) There seems to be more rhyme than reason in the sentence, however.
The rejection of this forced interpretation is by no means a new notion. The critical Tremellius long ago maintained that the verse had no reference whatever to a prophecy of Peter’s crucifixion, though he probably had no idea of denying that Peter did actually die by crucifixion. Among more modern commentators too, the prince of critics, Kuinoel, with whom are quoted Semler, Gurlitt and Schott, utterly deny that a fair construction of the original will allow any prophetical idea to be based on it. The critical testimony of these great commentators on the true and just force of the words, is of the very highest value; because all received the tale of Peter’s crucifixion as true, having never examined the authority of the tradition, and not one of them pretended to deny that he really was crucified. But in spite of this pre-conceived erroneous historical notion, their nice sense of what was grammatically and critically just, would not allow them to pervert the passage to the support of this long-established view; and they therefore pronounce it as merely expressive of the helplessness and imbecility of extreme old age, with which they make every word coincide. But Bloomfield, entirely carried away with the tide of antique authorities, is “surprised that so many recent commentators should deny that crucifixion is here alluded to, though they acknowledge that Peter suffered crucifixion.” Now this last circumstance might well occasion surprise, as it certainly did in me, when I found what mighty names had so disinterestedly supported the interpretation which I had with fear and trembling adopted, in obedience to my own long-established, unaided convictions; but my surprise was of a decidedly agreeable sort.
The inventors of fables go on to give us the minute particulars of Peter’s death, and especially note the circumstance that he was crucified with his head downwards and his feet uppermost, he himself having desired that it might be done in that manner,because he thought himself unworthy to be crucified as his Master was. This was a mode sometimes adopted by the Romans, as an additional pain and ignominy. But Peter must have been singularly accommodating to his persecutors, to have suggested this improvement upon his tortures to his malignant murderers; and must have manifested a spirit more accordant with that of a savage defying his enemies to increase his agonies, than with that of the mild, submissive Jesus. And such has been the evident absurdity of the story, that many of the most ardent receivers of fables have rejected this circumstance as improbable, more especially as it is not found among the earliest stories of his crucifixion, but evidently seems to have been appended among later improvements.
The inventors of fables go on to give us the minute particulars of Peter’s death, and especially note the circumstance that he was crucified with his head downwards and his feet uppermost, he himself having desired that it might be done in that manner,because he thought himself unworthy to be crucified as his Master was. This was a mode sometimes adopted by the Romans, as an additional pain and ignominy. But Peter must have been singularly accommodating to his persecutors, to have suggested this improvement upon his tortures to his malignant murderers; and must have manifested a spirit more accordant with that of a savage defying his enemies to increase his agonies, than with that of the mild, submissive Jesus. And such has been the evident absurdity of the story, that many of the most ardent receivers of fables have rejected this circumstance as improbable, more especially as it is not found among the earliest stories of his crucifixion, but evidently seems to have been appended among later improvements.
PETER’S MARTYRDOM.
The only authority which can be esteemed worthy of consideration on this point, is that of Clemens Romanus, who, in the latter part of the first century, (about the year 70, or as others say, 96,) in his epistle to the Corinthians, uses these words respecting Peter:——“Peter, on account of unrighteous hatred, underwent not one, or two, but many labors, andhaving thus borne his testimony, departed to the place of glory, which was his due,”——(ὁυτως μαρτυρησας επορευθη εις τον οφειλομενον τοπον δοξης.) Now it is by no means certain that the prominent word (marturesas) necessarily means “bearing testimony by death,” ormartyrdomin the modern sense. The primary sense of this verb is merely “to witness,” in which simple meaning alone, it is used in the New Testament; nor can any passage in the sacred writings be shown, in which this verb means “to bear witness to any cause,by death.” This was atechnicalsense, (if I may so name it,) which the word at last acquired among the Fathers, when they were speaking of those who bore witness to the truth of the gospel of Christ by their blood; and it was a meaning which at last nearly excluded all the true original senses of the verb, limiting it mainly to the notion of a death by persecution for the sake of Christ. Thence our English words,martyrandmartyrdom. But that Clement by this use of the word, in this connection, meant to convey the idea of Peter’s having been killed for the sake of Christ, is an opinion utterly incapable of proof, and moreover rendered improbable by the words joined to it in the passage. The sentence is, “Peter underwent many labors, and having thus borne witness” to the gospel truth, “went to the place of glory which he deserved.” Now the adverb “thus,” (ὁυτως,) seems to me most distinctly to show what was the nature of this testimony, and the manner also in which he bore it. It points out more plainly than any other words could, the fact that his testimony to the truth of the gospel was borne in the zealous labors of a devoted life, andnotby the agonies of a bloody death. There is not in the whole context, nor in all the writings of Clement, any hint whatever that Peter waskilledfor the sake of the gospel; and we are therefore required by every sound rule of interpretation, to stick to the primary sense of the verb, in this passage. Lardner most decidedly mis-translates it in the text of his work, so that any common reader would be grossly deceived as to the expression in the original of Clement,——“Peter underwent many labors,till at lastbeing martyred, he went,”&c.The Greek word,ὁυτως, (houtos,) means always, “in this manner,” “thus,” “so,” and is not a mere expletive, like the English phrase, “andso,” which is a mere form of transition from one part of the narrative to the other.
In the similar passage of Clemens which refers toPaul, there is something in the connection which may seem to favor the conclusion that he understood Paul to have been put to death by the Roman officers. His words are,——“and after havingborne his testimonybefore governors, he wasthussent out of the world,”&c.Here the word “thus,” coming after the participle, may perhaps be considered, in view also of its other connections, as implying his removal from the world by a violent death,in consequence ofthe testimony borne by him before the governors. This however, will bear some dispute, and will have a fuller discussion elsewhere.
But in respect to the passage which refers to Peter, the burden of proof may fairly be said to lie on those who maintain the old opinion. Here the word is shown to have, in the New Testament, no such application todeathas it has since acquired; and the question is whether Clemens Romanus, a man himself of the apostolic age, who lived and perhaps wrote, before the canon was completed, had already learned to give a new meaning to a verb, before so simple and unlimited in its applications. No person can pretend to trace this meaning to within a century of the Clementine age, nor does Suicer refer to any one who knew of such use before Clement of Alexandria (See his Thesaurus;Μαρτυρ.) Clement himself uses it in the same epistle (§ xvii.) in its unquestionable primary sense, speaking of Abraham as having received an honorable testimony,——(εμαρτυρηθη;) for who will say that Abraham wasmartyred, in the modern sense? The fact too that Clement nowhere else gives the least glimmer of a hint that Peter died any where but in his bed, fixes the position here taken, beyond all possibility of attack, except by its being shown that he uses this verb somewhere else, with the sense ofdeathunquestionably attached to it.
There is no otherearlywriter who can be said to speak of the manner of Peter’s death, before Dionysius of Corinth, who says that “Peter and Paul having taught in Italy together,bore their testimony” (by death, if you please,) “about the same time.” An argument might here also be sustained on the wordεμαρτυρησαν, (emarturesan,) but the evidence of Dionysius, mixed as it is with a demonstrated fable, is not worth averbalcriticism. The same may be said of Tertullian and the rest of the later Fathers, as given in the note on pages 228–233.
An examination of the wordΜαρτυρ, in Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, will show the critical, that even in later times, this word did not necessarily imply “one who bore his testimony to the truth at the sacrifice of life.” Even Chrysostom, in whose time the peculiar limitation of the term might be supposed to be very well established, uses the word in such applications as to show that its original force was not wholly lost. By Athanasius too, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are styledmartyrs. Gregory Nazianzen also speaks of “living martyrs.” (ζωντες μαρτυρες.) Theophylact calls the apostle John amartyr, though he declares him to have passed through the hands of his persecutors unhurt, and to have died by the course of nature. Clemens Alexandrinus has similar uses of the term; and the Apostolical Constitutions, of doubtful date, but much later than the first century, also give it in such applications. Suicer distinctly specifies several classes of persons, not martyrs in the modern sense, to whom the Greek word is nevertheless applied in the writings of even the later Fathers; as “those who testified the truth of the gospel of Christ, at the peril of life merely, without the loss of it,”——“those who obeyed the requirements of the gospel, by restraining passion,”&c.In some of these instances however, it is palpable that the application of the word to such persons is secondary, and made in rather a poetical way, with a reference to the more common meaning of loss of life for the sake of Christ, since there is always implied atestimonyat the risk or loss of something; still the power of these instances to render doubtful the meaning of the term, is unquestionable. (See Suicer’s Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus,Μαρτυρ,III.2, 5, 6.)
Perhaps it is hardly worth while to dismiss these fables altogether, without first alluding to the rather ancient one, first given by Clemens Alexandrinus. (Stromata,7.p.736.) and copied verbatim by Eusebius, (Church History,III.30.) Both the reverend Fathers however, introduce the story as a tradition, a mereon dit, prefacing it with the expressive phrase, “They say,”&c.(Φασι.) “The blessed Peter seeing his wife led to death, was pleased with the honor of her being thus called by God to return home, and thus addressed her in words of exhortation and consolation, calling her by name,——‘O woman! remember the Lord.’” The story comes up from the hands of tradition rather too late however, to be entitled to any credit whatever, being recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, full 200 years after Christ. It was probably invented in the times when it was thought worth while to cherish the spirit of voluntary martyrdom, among even the female sex; for which purpose instances were sought out or invented respecting those of the apostolic days. That Peter had a wife is perfectly true; and it is also probable that she accompanied him about on his travels, as would appear from a passage in Paul’s writings; (1 Corinthiansix.5;) but beyond this, nothing is known of her life or death. Similar fables might be endlessly multiplied from papistical sources; more especially from the Clementine novels, and the apostolical romances of Abdias Babylonius; but the object of the present work is true history, and it would require a whole volume like this to give all the details of Christian mythology.
In justification of the certainty with which sentence is pronounced against the whole story of Peter’s ever having gone to Rome, it is only necessary to refer to the decisive argument on pages 228–233, in which the whole array of ancient evidence on the point, is given byDr.Murdock. If the support of great names is needed, those of Scaliger, Salmasius, Spanheim, and Bower, all mighty minds in criticism, are enough to justify the boldness of the opinion, that Peter never went west of the Hellespont, and probably never embarked on the Mediterranean. In conclusion of the whole refutation of this long-established error, the matter cannot be more fairly presented, than in the words with which the critical and learned Bower opens his Lives of the Popes:
“To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit unless what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted veracity. If it is affirmed by him alone, we can at most but suspend our belief, not rejecting it as false, because a liar may sometimes speak truth; but we cannot, upon his bare authority, admit it as true. Now thatSt.Peter was at Rome, that he was bishop of Rome, we are told by tradition alone, which, at the same time tells us of so many strange circumstances attending his coming to that metropolis, his staying in it, his withdrawing from it,&c., that in the opinion of every unprejudiced man, the whole must savor strongly of romance. Thus we are told thatSt.Peter went to Rome chiefly to oppose Simon, the celebrated magician; that at their first interview, at which Nero himself was present, he flew up into the air, in the sight of the emperor and the whole city; but that the devil, who had thus raised him, struck with dread and terror at the name of Jesus, whom the apostle invoked, let him fall to the ground, by which fall he broke his legs. Should you question the truth of this tradition at Rome, they would show you the prints ofSt.Peter’s knees in the stone, on which he kneeled on this occasion, and another stone still dyed with the blood of the magician. (This account seems to have been borrowed from Suetonius, who speaks of a person that, in the public sports, undertook to fly, in the presence of the emperor Nero; but on his first attempt, fell to the ground; by which fall his blood sprung out with such violence that it reached the emperor’s canopy.)
“The Romans, as we are told, highly incensed against him for thus maiming and bringing to disgrace one to whom they paid divine honors, vowed his destruction; whereupon the apostle thought it advisable to retire for a while from the city, and had already reached the gate, when to his great surprise, he met our Savior coming in, as he went out, who, uponSt.Peter’s asking him where he was going, returned this answer: ‘I am going to Rome, to be crucified anew;’ which, asSt.Peter understood it, was upbraiding him with his flight; whereupon he turned back, and was soon after seized by the provoked Romans, and, by an order from the emperor, crucified.”
Nor do the fables about Peter, by the inveterate papists, cease with his death. In regard to the place of his tomb, a new story was needed, and it is accordingly given with the usual particularity. It is said that he was buried at Rome in the Vatican plain, in the district beyond the Tiber, in which he was said to have first preached among the Jews, and where stood the great circus of Nero, in which the apostle is said to have been crucified. Over this bloody spot, a church was afterwards raised, by Constantine the Great, who chose for its site part of the ground that had been occupied by the circus, and the spaces where the temples of Mars and Apollo had stood. The church, though of no great architectural beauty, was a building of great magnitude, being three hundred feet long, and more than one hundred and fifty feet wide. This building stood nearly twelve hundred years, when becoming ruinous in spite of all repairs, it was removed to give place to thepresent cathedral church ofSt.Peter, now the most immense and magnificent building in the world,——not too much praised in the graphic verse in which the pilgrim-poet sets it beyond all comparison with the greatest piles of ancient or modern art:“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;——Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.——I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwellThe hyena and the jackall in their shade.I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swellTheir glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyedIts sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!Since Zion’s desolation, when that HeForsook his former city, what could beOf earthly structures in his honor piled,Of a sublimer aspect?”——Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,——beneath the very center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it, than of the God whose altar it covers,——in the vaulted crypt which lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily rising. This iscalledthe tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain, blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement of the kingdom of his Master,——the inculcation of a pure spiritual faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors werepointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,——the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,——spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,——what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,——but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!——(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,——and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,——from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! Howearnestly would he long for the high temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as Lord and Savior, millions on millions,——and vast numbers too, even in the lands of a reformed faith,——would be found still clinging to the vain support of forms, and names, and observances,——and but a few, a precious few, who had learned whatthatmeans——“I will have mercy and not sacrifice”——works and not words,——deeds and not creeds,——high, simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered reverence,——chanceled worship,——or soul-wearying rituals. Would not the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection, and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such an evangelization?——“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise. Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slackconcerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,——living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,——lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,——henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,——intellectual as well as moral.This was the spirit which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof? There is a glory that shall outlast all“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——Yea all which it inherit;”——a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day; for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, andthey that turn many to righteousnessas the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in this the apostle rejoices not;——not that adoring millions lift his name in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,——not even that over all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with time,——till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;——he “rejoices not that the spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,——but thatHIS NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”
Nor do the fables about Peter, by the inveterate papists, cease with his death. In regard to the place of his tomb, a new story was needed, and it is accordingly given with the usual particularity. It is said that he was buried at Rome in the Vatican plain, in the district beyond the Tiber, in which he was said to have first preached among the Jews, and where stood the great circus of Nero, in which the apostle is said to have been crucified. Over this bloody spot, a church was afterwards raised, by Constantine the Great, who chose for its site part of the ground that had been occupied by the circus, and the spaces where the temples of Mars and Apollo had stood. The church, though of no great architectural beauty, was a building of great magnitude, being three hundred feet long, and more than one hundred and fifty feet wide. This building stood nearly twelve hundred years, when becoming ruinous in spite of all repairs, it was removed to give place to thepresent cathedral church ofSt.Peter, now the most immense and magnificent building in the world,——not too much praised in the graphic verse in which the pilgrim-poet sets it beyond all comparison with the greatest piles of ancient or modern art:
“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;——Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.——I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwellThe hyena and the jackall in their shade.I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swellTheir glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyedIts sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!Since Zion’s desolation, when that HeForsook his former city, what could beOf earthly structures in his honor piled,Of a sublimer aspect?”——
“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;——Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.——I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwellThe hyena and the jackall in their shade.I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swellTheir glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyedIts sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!Since Zion’s desolation, when that HeForsook his former city, what could beOf earthly structures in his honor piled,Of a sublimer aspect?”——
“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,
To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;——
Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.——
I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyena and the jackall in their shade.
I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell
Their glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyed
Its sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.
“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!
Since Zion’s desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be
Of earthly structures in his honor piled,
Of a sublimer aspect?”——
Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,——beneath the very center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it, than of the God whose altar it covers,——in the vaulted crypt which lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily rising. This iscalledthe tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain, blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement of the kingdom of his Master,——the inculcation of a pure spiritual faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors werepointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,——the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,——spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,——what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,——but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!——(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,——and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!
These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,——from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! Howearnestly would he long for the high temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as Lord and Savior, millions on millions,——and vast numbers too, even in the lands of a reformed faith,——would be found still clinging to the vain support of forms, and names, and observances,——and but a few, a precious few, who had learned whatthatmeans——“I will have mercy and not sacrifice”——works and not words,——deeds and not creeds,——high, simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered reverence,——chanceled worship,——or soul-wearying rituals. Would not the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection, and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such an evangelization?——“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise. Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slackconcerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”
What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,——living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,——lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,——henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,——intellectual as well as moral.This was the spirit which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.
Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof? There is a glory that shall outlast all
“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——Yea all which it inherit;”
“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——Yea all which it inherit;”
“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——
Yea all which it inherit;”
——a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day; for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, andthey that turn many to righteousnessas the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in this the apostle rejoices not;——not that adoring millions lift his name in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,——not even that over all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with time,——till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;——he “rejoices not that the spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,——but thatHIS NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”