ST. PAUL AT ROME.

VERY REV, C, MERtVALE.

YALE
DIVINITY SCHOOL
LIBRARY

Gift of
Stephen J. Chinlund

ST. PAUL AT ROME.

THE HEATHEN WORLD AND
ST. PAUL,

ST. PAUL AT ROME.

BY THE LATE
Very Rev. CHARLES MERIVALE, /"
D.D., D.C.L., Dean of Ely.

published under the direction of
the committee of general literature and education,
appointed by the society for promoting
christian knowledge.

LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS, W.C.
' 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO,

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Diffusion of the Jews throughout the Roman empire at the period
of our Lord's birth and ministry — -Testimony of Philo, and
of the "Acts of the Apostles" — Conflux of the subjects of
the empire to Rome as a great maritime capital — Multitudes
of Gauls and Germans congregated there, as well as of Jews
— The Jews, introduced by Pompeius as slaves, increase
and multiply there — The influence they exert upon the
citizens, and especially upon women — Diffusion of their
Scriptures, and of Jewish religious ideas and usages — The
Pollio of Virgil refers to Isaiah— The Jews occupy a special
locality at Rome  page I

CHAPTER II.
Great numbers of Jews dispersed abroad — Vast multitudes that
came to Jerusalem for the Passover — Miracle of the Day of
Pentecost reported abroad on their return — The Gospel first
brought to Rome by the converts of St. Peter, and his name
associated with the foundation of the Church in that city —
No authority for the tradition that St. Peter founded that
Church himself — Fresh arrival of believers at Rome after the
first persecution at Jerusalem — Early preaching of Jesus
Christ at Rome — Differences among the Jewish residents in
the city — The Christians associate with themselves many
Gentiles  page 19

ST. PAUL AT ROME.

CHAPTER III.

St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, dated from Corinth, a.d. 58 —
The teaching of this epistle, asserting the insufficiency both
of the Jewish and the Moral La"w — Justification by faith —
Acceptance of the Gentiles — Dissatisfaction of the uncon
verted Jews aj Rome — Jewish intrigues against Paul in
Palestine — Proceedings of the Roman government against
him — He appeals to Csesar, and is sent to Rome — His
voyage and arrival at Puteoli — He is conducted to the
city, and kept there in custody in "his own hired house"
• — He confers with members of the Jewish community,
and continues "to preach the Lord Jesus with all
confidence"  page 38

CHAPTER IV.
Succession of Nero on the death of the Emperor Claudius, a.d.
54 — His early dissipation and crimes — Jealousy of the
Roman nobles — The emperor relies on his bodyguard for
protection — Institution of the prjetorians — Augustus had
encouraged the deification of the emperor as a stroke of
policy — The hostility of the nobles kept in check by fear of
their slaves — Outward revival of religion by Augustus —
Restoration of the temples — Symptoms of a corresponding
moral revival  fage 55

CHAPTER V.
The Romans had become familiar with the principle of
monarchical government — Views of the equality and frater
nity of man derived from the Macedonian conquests —
Doctrine of the unity of mankind, and their derivation from
a. common stock — Imperfect conception of the Greek
philosophers, from Pythagoras to Zeno and the Stoics —
Unity of God — Monotheism triumphs over Polytheism 
Augustus revives ceremonial worship as a compromise
between religion and unbelief  page 75

TABLE OF CONTENTS. Vll

CHAPTER VI.

Development of the new Stoicism, or ethical teaching under the
early empire, favoured by Augustus — The two Sextii, father
and son, and other teachers of this school, Celsus, Cras-
sitius, Fabianus, Sotion, Metronax, Attalus — Seneca, the
philosopher, attaches himself to them — Jealousy of Tiberius,
and persecution of the philosophers — Ethical teaching of
Seneca — His imperfect conception of the Deity of Pro
vidence, and of a future state — Man, in his view, remains
independent of God — His moral aspirations are devoid of
any external sanction  page 88

CHAPTER VII.
Confinement of St. Paul at Rome — Epistles from thence to
Philemon, to the Colossians, the Ephesians, and the
Philippians — Different meanings assigned to the word
irpaLTiipiov : the " palace " of the emperor, or his prsetorian
guard — The former to be preferred — Compare the phrase,
" Caesar's household," and the names of attendants dis
covered in the imperial columbaria — Question of St. Paul's
intercourse with Seneca, determined in the negative by
comparison of St. Paul's teaching with Seneca's tenets on
the subject of the divine nature, of the unity of man, and of
sin  page 105

CHAPTER VIII.
Question of St. Paul's release from a first captivity in the year
63 — His supposed journey into Spain of no historical
authority — His later journeys in the East ; and presumed
absence from Rome at the time of the great fire — Burning
of Rome — Destruction caused by it, and moral effect of the
overthrow of the old Pagan temples, compared with the
Fire of London  page 129

VIII ST. PAUL AT ROME.
CHAPTER IX.
Nero suspected of causing the fire— His attempts to avert the
suspicion, and persecution of the Christians— Question
whether the persecution was directed, in the first instance,
against the Christians or the Jewish residents generally —
Obscurity of the Christian sect at Rome at this period —
Supposed conversion of Pomponia Grtecina, and of Martial's
Pudens and Claudia not to be relied on— Evidence of
Tacitus and Suetonius considered — Statement in the pre
tended correspondence of Paul and Seneca, that Jews and
Christians were both included in the persecution — No
authority for a general persecution of Christians throughout
the empire  page 147

CHAPTER X.
Conspiracy of the nobles against Nero, and death of Seneca,
A.D. 65 — Rebellion of the Jews in Palestine, A.D. 6(5 — St.
Paul at this time in Spain or Asia — Nero in Greece — St.
Paul arrested possibly at Nicopolis in Epirus and sent to
Rome — No indications from his Epistles to Timothy and
Titus, nor from St. Peter's Epistle, of a general persecution
—Question of St. Peter visiting Rome, and meaning of his
date, "Babylon"- — Tradition of the martyrdom of St. Peter
and St. Paul on the same day at Rome, i.e., in June (9th or
1 1 tli), A.D. 68 — Little reliance to be placed on it — Con
cluding reflections on the effect of St. Paul's preaching at
Rome  page 157

Note on St. Paul's acquaintance with Roman law .. page 172

ST. PAUL AT ROME.

CHAPTER I.
CONDITION OF THE JEWS AT ROME AT THE PERIOD
OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY.
We have been accustomed to remark in modern
times upon the vigour and activity of the Anglo-
Saxon race, as evinced in its wide diffusion, and the
deep root it has taken in so many regions of the
habitable globe. The English people, we say, has
developed a special facility in accommodating itself
to all climates, and in taking the lead both in mental
and physical capacity among all the nations with
which it has come in contact. What may have been
thus recently remarked of our own race was no less
worthy of note with regard to three of the most
famous peoples of antiquity. The Greeks, the Ro
mans, and the Jews spread themselves, in the cen
turies next before and after the Christian era, with
the same irrepressible activity over all the countries
to which they could penetrate, and displayed, each in
its turn, no less superiority of character and power of
self-assertion. The Greeks had planted their colonies
on many coasts from very early times ; their com
mercial activity had especially developed itself during
B

2 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
the flourishing period of their freedom ; but the far-
extending conquests of Alexander had tended to give
them still furtLer expansion. Hundreds of cities in
Asia and Africa, no less than in Europe, had been
founded by then. , their language had become the
ordinary medium of communication between many
distant nations of widely different origin ; their litera
ture was accepted as the common heritage of all the
cultivated portion of the human race. Again, the
Grecian conquests had been succeeded by the Ro
man. The language and laws of the imperial city
had been diffused throughout the world by more than
one Roman Alexander, they had been diffused over a
wider space, and impressed upon it even more firmly
and permanently. First the Greeks, and after them
the Romans had been to the ancient world, as colo
nists and civilizers, much what the English race has
proved itself to the modern.
But in the ancient times there was also a third
race which exercised a more subtle, but hardly a less
potent, influence upon mankind around it than either
the Greeks or the Romans. The Jews exhibited quite
as much of what we may call the instinct of peopling
and settling as either of these dominant nations ; and
Ihough their capacity for conquering and civilizing
was less marked, they left, from the peculiar moral
force of their character, a deeper, if not a wider, im-
pre jsion than either. The spiritual influence of the
Jews, as the race through which the Christian religion
has been transmitted to all succeeding generations
must ever give them the first place among all the na
tions, in the estimation of those whose faith is fixed

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 3
on the promises of the Gospel. The Jews have not,
indeed, been generally disposed to cultivate the inti
macy of the strangers among whom they have domi
ciled themselves ; nevertheless the power they showed
of old, and still continue to show, of planting them
selves in the midst of all other nations, and securing
a peculiar position among them, through their own
marvellous power of adaptation to all climates and to
all conditions of life, constitutes a social phenomenon
worthy to be classed with the kindred development
of the Greeks, the Romans, and the English.
The diffusive energy of this wonderful people was
never more strongly marked than in the critical period
of the fall of the Roman Free-state and the foundation
of the Empire. Philo the Jew, writing in the time
of the emperor Caligula about A.D. 40, bears testi
mony to the wide diffusion of his countrymen long
before the great dispersion more familiarly known to
us which followed upon the fall of Jerusalem. This
patriotic writer speaks boastfully of the ancient capital
of Judaea as then standing in all its pride and splen
dour as the acknowledged head of an illustrious and
long-settled nation. " Jerusalem/' he says, " is the
city of my ancestors, the metropolis, not of Judaea
only, but of many other lands, in consequence of the
colonies she has at various times sent out into the
neighbouring countries, such as Egypt, Phoenicia,
Syria, and Ccele-Syria; and into more distant regions
also, Pamphylia, Cilicia, the greatest part of Asia
Minor as far as Bithynia, and the remotest shores of
the Euxine ; nor less into Europe, into Thessaly,
Bceotia, Macedonia, ^Etolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth,
b 2

4 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
and into most, and those the best, parts of the Pelo
ponnesus. And not only are the continents full of
Jewish colonies, but so likewise are the principal
islands, Eubcea, Cyprus, and Crete. I say nothing of
the countries beyond the Euphrates ; but all these
too, a small portion excepted, abound with Jewish
inhabitants, and particularly Babylon and the satrapies
of the rich districts adjacent thereto." 1
It is singular, perhaps, that the writer should, in
this ample enumeration, make no mention of the Jews
sojourning in many parts of western Europe, of which
there are undoubted, though perhaps less striking,
traces to be discovered ; but the place of Rome itself
on the list is supplied by the well-known text in the
second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which sig
nalizes among thft multitudes of many countries and
languages who heard the Apostles speak under the in
fluence of the miraculous gift of tongues, " strangers
of Rome, Jews, and proselytes." It is generally ad
mitted that the men of diverse race and speech who
were assembled at Jerusalem on the great day of
Pentecost, — " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites.
and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea and
Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and
Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about
Cyrene, Cretes, and Arabians,"- — were men of Jewish
oiigin, or proselytes at least from other nations con
verted to the Jewish faith, and initiated into Jewish
1 Philo, Leg. ad Caium, 36. Comp. Josephus, Bell.
Jud., ii. 16, § 4; vii. 3. Milman, History of the Jews, ii.
448.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 5
usages. The two passages above cited, which might
be further corroborated by others, show in a striking
manner how widely the Jewish creed was dissemi
nated throughout the Gentile world at the period of
the first preaching of the Gospel.
But further: there exists abundant evidence to
show that Rome, as the capital of the empire, and
of the civilized world at that era, constituted the
great point of attraction to the nations around her ;
and of these more particularly to the Jews. The
Roman dominion has been described as a narrow
fringe of soil round the central or Mediterranean
sea. Down to the era of Augustus the colonization
of the Romans had penetrated far inland in a few
quarters only. Spain had been long conquered ; but
the interior of this broad peninsula had been aban
doned almost wholly to its native barbarians. Gaul
had recently succumbed ; but in Gaul also the effects
of Roman culture had extended but little beyond the
limits of its Mediterranean districts. The interior
of Macedonia and Maesia was still left in its primitive
rudeness ; the interior of Asia Minor was to a great
extent desolate and trackless. The subjects of Rome,
east and west, north and south, congregated together
on the verge of the midland sea, which ran from one
end of the empire to the other, and constituted the
common thoroughfare of all; while Rome herself,
seated almost on the coast of Italy, and accessible by
a broad and navigable stream, was actually the mari
time capital of a great maritime association. As such,
indeed, she is vividly described in the book of Reve
lation : " The great whore [or trafficker] that sitteth

6 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
upon many waters." ... " Alas ! alas ! that great
city Babylon." ... " The merchants of the earth
shall weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth
of her merchandise any more." ... " That great
city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the
sea." ' By the native Jew this magnificent centre of
law, government, and culture was still chiefly re
garded as an emporium of universal commerce.
Rome was the western Babylon, the home of mer
chant princes, the caravanserai of the nations.
Many as were the different peoples that settled
around the world's central basin, they could for the
most part hold communication with one another by
means either of the Greek or of the Latin language.
We may imagine, indeed, that the Greek, the Roman,
the Syrian, the Moor, the Gaul, and theThracian may
have formed a common lingua franca among them
selves for their daily intercourse ; but, if so, it was
never inscribed in letters, and all traces of it have
utterly vanished. Under the pressure, however, of
the Roman domination there existed no great variety
of political life among these peoples ; the many-sided
Paganism which prevailed throughout them all was
tolerant at least, if not sympathetic ; all denizens, as
they were, of one zone, and confined within at
most twelve degrees of latitude, there was but little
marked distinction among them either of form or
colour ; there was little to keep them apart from one
another except distance and the ordinary difficulties
of travel. These obstructions were smoothed away
1 Rev. xvii. xviii.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 7
for them in a remarkable degree. The roads, indeed,
with which the government had bound the provinces
together, though admirably adapted to the rnib'tary
purposes for which they were principally intended,
seem to have been comparatively little used for mere
social communication. There was, however, an easier
and perhaps a more rapid means of communicatior,
at hand. The sea became the great highway of com
merce. The sea, though closed to timid navigators for
four months of the year, was open for the remaining and
far larger portion ; and for eight months the sea from
Gades to Alexandria was alive with vessels engaged
in the transport of merchandise, the product of the
various soils and climates which skirted its borders.
During all that period the water was generally calm,
and the movement of craft propelled by oars, when
ever the breeze was deficient or adverse, approached
more nearly to the speed and security of our own
days than we might at first sight imagine. Though
costly, it was both swift and certain. The provisioning
of Rome herself, and of the many populous cities on
the coast, was confided to the punctuality of the
corn vessels from Africa and the islands ; and though
this machinery was sometimes sorely tried, it was
never found wholly to fail.
This facility of communication attracted a vast
concourse of foreigners to Rome from all parts of
her dominion, some for the purposes of traffic,
many with a view to permanent residence. The
great officers of the Republic brought back with
them year by year The friends and clients whom they
had attached to themselves in the provinces. These

8 ST. TAUL AT ROME.
people, no doubt, held out to their kinsmen at home
the advantages they had themselves attained at the
centre of all business, luxury, and pleasure, where
the natives, with all their special capacity for
government and administration, were singularly de
pendent upon strangers for the arts and appliances
of the culture they admired. In the well-known
passage of Horace we are told how conquered Greece
had subdued her rude conqueror, and introduced
the arts into still rustic Latium. Roman literature
abounds in illustrations of this familiar saying. Nor
are we less familiar with similar statements of the
irruption of the Syrians into Latium, or the " influx
of the Orontes into the Tiber." Gauls and Germans
also penetrated into Rome in considerable numbers.
At a moment when the city was affected by a panic
upon the defeat of Varus by the Cheruscans, an
order was issued to expel all the residents of German
origin ; as if the stragglers from this single nation
ality were numerous enough to cause serious disquiet
even amidst the vast population of the world's
metropolis. Of the multitude of Jews who had at
this period taken up their abode in Rome we possess
some more distinct statements. Thus, for instance,
whereas every Jew was required by the law of his
own nation to contribute a didrachm (2od.) annuall}
to the service of the Temple, whether he resided at
home or abroad, the Romans could make it matkv
of serious complaint that so large an amount of specie
should be constantly withdrawn from the circulation
of the capitak and transmitted tcf a foreign country,
thus weakening, as they imagined, their own re-

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 9
sources, and augmenting those of their subjects who
might at any moment become their enemies.1 When
the Jews sent a deputation of their people to Rome to
plead with Augustus for the restoration of their inde
pendence, after the death of Herod, their envoys were
met, as Josephus assures us, by a body of no less than
8,000 of slieir countrymen from the city, and accom
panied Dy this imposing escort to the temple at which
the Emperor consented to confer with them.3 The
numbers, indeed, which the Jewish historian presents
to us throughout his works are too commonly and
too wildly exaggerated to allow us to depend upon
his exactness in this instance : nevertheless, the
assertion is supported in the main by other corrobo
rative testimony. We are informed, for instance, on
the weightier authority of Tacitus, that the Jewish
Libertini, or freed slaves, who inhabited Rome in the
time of Tiberius, and were expelled and transported
to Sardinia, to check the dangerous turbulence of
their countrymen in the city, alone amounted to
4,000. Great, however, must have been the numbers
still left within the walls ; for Caligula judged it ex
pedient for the peace of the community to restrain
these too by special enactment, and Claudius issued
decrees for their entire expulsion. This violent mea
sure, indeed, was not, we are assured, actually en
forced, because the numbers of their people were so
great that the attempt to put it in execution would
have caused a serious disturbance. So it was that

1 Cicero, pro Flacco, 28.
1 Josephus, Antiq., xvii. 11, § 12.

10 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
about this period Seneca could speak of the Jews at
Rome almost in the same language which Horace had
applied to the Greeks. Their peculiar usages had
become so familiarly known, and were latterly found
so acceptable in the city, that the conquered might
be said to have imposed their laws upon the con
querors.1 Various causes concurred to produce .this great
infusion of the Jewish element into the population
of the imperial metropolis. Some traces there may
be, however indistinct and doubtful, of an earlier
connection of the Jews with Rome ; but their historic
introduction into the city may be referred to the re
turn of Pompeius from the East, with the numerous
train of captives of many nations, and especially of
Jews, which he brought from that quarter in the year
61 before our era. This great conqueror had inflicted
a cruel blow upon the Jewish people in their own
homes. By the use both of craft and violence, he had
effected his entrance into their city and their temple,
and thrust himself even within the Holy of Holies. He
had provoked them to a desperate resistance, and this
resistance he had put down with ruthless barbarity.
Pompeius had set up the family of a foreigner, the
Idumaean Antipater, in the place of the national stock
of the Maccabees, and had plainly prepared the way
for the entire overthrow of the national independence,
which followed in the reign of Augustus. He had
slaughtered thousands of the people, and of the rem-
1 Tac, Ann., ii. 85 ; Suet., Claud., 25 ; Dion Cass., Ix. 6 ;
Seneca, quoted by St. Augustine, de Civ. Dei, vi. n.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. tl
nant he had carried off vast numbers, and sold them
as slaves at Rome. Nevertheless, dreadful as was the
condition of the slave at Rome, his lot was practically
alleviated by a great facility of recovering his freedom.
The ability and artifices of the Jews often won them
the favour of their masters. The rude and rigid stock
of Italy was singularly dependent upon the subtle
genius of Greeks and Asiatics for every appliance of
art, science, and amusement. The Jews became the
pet familiars of the men, and still more of the women
of Rome. Thus, for instance, the Valerii, to which
gens the empress Messalina belonged, seem to have
attached to themselves many Jewish slaves and freed-
men. Among the inscriptions in a columbarium or
burial-place on the Appian Way, we find such Hebrew
names as Baricha, Zabda, Achiba, Giddo, and Sab-
batis, all combined with the gentile name Valerius.
The Jews profited, no doubt, largely by the habit of
the Roman master manumitting his household slaves
on his death-bed. They were themselves devotedly
attached to one another ; and we may be further sure
that any Jew who attained a position of wealth on his
own account would make it one of his first duties to
purchase the freedom of many of his countrymen.
It should be noted, moreover, that at the period
of our Lord's ministry the Jews were held in excep
tional favour by the Roman Government in their own
country of Palestine, and were recommended thereby
to the sympathy of the ruling race at home. The
government which had displaced the Asmonean dy
nasty, and elevated the stranger Antipater to the
throne of Judaea, had apparently found it conducive

12 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
to its interest, after the consummation of this revo
lution, to attach the nation to the new regime by
conferring upon it many special privileges. Pompeius
had made himself pre-eminently hateful to the Jews
by his violence and his insolence. It has been con
jectured that his rival, Cassar, was induced on that
very account to cultivate their friendship the more
assiduously. The historian Josephus has enumerated
the various decrees which the victor in the civil wars
promulgated in the interest of the members of this
nation resident in the cities of Asia Minor ; such,
for instance, as the grant of exemption from the
military conscription, in consideration of their abhor
rence of the meats and usages of the pagans ; together
with permission to pay their accustomed tribute to
their own national Temple, instead of to the Roman
treasury. From this or from other causes, the Jews
at Rome displayed the most poignant concern at the
death of the Dictator. While the foreigners in the
city very generally marked their grateful sense of
Caesar's services to the provincials, the Jews, it is said,
exceeded them all in zeal and vehemence. They
attended in great numbers at the solemn ceremony
of his obsequies in the Forum, and continued for
days and nights to crowd about the spot and utter
loud lamentations. This demonstration marks very
strongly the impression which the great founder of
the Empire had made upon the conquered and
oppressed dependents of so many generations of
Roman oligarchs.
The Idumaean dynasty at Jerusalem had studied,
and had perhaps been prompted, to effect the disin-

ST. PAUL AT ROME. T$
tegration of the Jewish national sentiment by sapping
the religious prejudices of their people. Herod had
made it a leading principle of his policy to introduce
among the pure monotheists of Judaea the notions of
hero worship prevalent among the heathen, especially
in the East While Caesar and Augustus affected to
repudiate the cult which their countrymen, even at
Rome and in Italy, were only too prone to accord to
them, both Romans and foreigners abroad insisted
upon elevating them into present divinities in more
distant countries. The premature decease of the first
of the Caesars interrupted the progress of this homage
to a living man ; but it was promptly followed by the
deification of the deceased emperor, and thus the
example of an imperial apotheosis was deliberately
set, to be repeated again and again through several
centuries. In many of the provinces, and notably in
Gaul and Judaea, the two which had been latest con
quered, the loyalty of which was least assured, the
living emperor Augustus was flattered with divine
honours. Herod led the way in Judaea by erecting
temples to the divinity both of Julius and Augustus
in various localities, though he abstained from thrust
ing this offensive worship into Jerusalem itself. In
the jealous capital of the Jewish nation, degraded
though it was, the Romans still maintained, and
doubtless required their dependents to maintain, some
show of respect for the national Temple.
At these invidious assaults upon their most
cherished principles, covert though they were, the
Jews constantly expressed the deepest alarm and re
sentment. Divided indeed they were among them-

14 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
selves into sects and factions ; nevertheless, it was in
vain that Herod, and the party called after him
Herodians, because of the homage and, eventually,
the divine honours with which they magnified him,
tried to wean them from their national prejudices by
introducing among them the seductive brilliancy of
Hellenic civilization, with its religious shows and eim-
bellishments. The spirit of the Jewish people revolted
all the more strongly against these fascinations ; the
party of the Pharisees cultivated the strictest bond of
union among themselves, as the upholders of all the
ideas and institutions of their ancestors, both civil and
religious. Nor did the Jews in their remoter domir
ciles abroad abstain from retaliation. They carried
the war of conversion and proselytism into the camp
of the enemy. Shaking off the pride of isolation in
which, as the chosen of Jehovah, they had for ages
enshrouded themselves, they deliberately undertook
in many quarters the work of making their own
religious principles widely comprehended, and of
recommending them assiduously to those around
them. It was, perhaps, the translation of their holy
books into the Greek language, the common speech
of all the civilized East, and of no small portion of
the West also, that first brought the creed of Judaism
prominently before the world, while it inflamed among
the Jews themselves an overweening pride and confi
dence in their spiritual resources. They began to feel
that a sacred trust was committed to their keeping,
and that it had become their duty to make their own
special advantages known and valued in all quarters.
Under the rule of the Maccabees or Asmonaeans, in

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 5
the most flourishing period of their religion, they had
converted to Judaism the neighbouring people of
Galilee and Idumaea, while they had made a deep
impression upon the spiritual life both of Babylon
and of Alexandria. The Pharisees, we are told, com
passed sea and land to make proselytes. We may
believe that their efforts were not single and desultory,
but that they established in every region a regular
propaganda of their faith. The agents of Jewish
commerce were not less active in disseminating their
national ideas, and succeeded in making the law of
Moses known from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of
Gibraltar. Thus we read of Izates, a king of Adia-
bene, in Assyria, becoming converted, together with
his family and many of his chiefs. At Damascus
the women were noted for their devotion to the insti
tutes of the Hebrew lawgiver. Wherever there was
a commercial entrepot, there was planted a centre of
Jewish proselytism. The literature of Rome at this
period abounds with notices of the propensity of her
citizens, and still more of their women, to adopt the
usages, together with some at least of the dogmas, of
the Jewish people. Many practised the Jewish fasts,
more, no doubt, observed their festivals and Sabbaths.
Some, it is said, such as Izates himself, submitted
tothe rite of circumcision, even against the remon
strance of their families. From this period the division
of time by weeks, after the Jewish fiashion, became
commonly recognised throughout all parts of the
world wherever the Jews had penetrated. It may be
observed that, though the creed and customs of the
Jews excited some contempt and some hostility

1 6 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
among the pagans, even at this period, this singular
people had by no means come as yet to be regarded
with the general odium which it incurred a few years
later. The disturbances they created at Rome by
their unbridled quarrelsomeness, and especially by
the violence with which they assailed the sect of
Christians which sprang up among them, began, soon
after our Lord's death to make them objects of distrust
to the authorities ; but it was not till after the desperate
contest between Rome and Palestine, which ended in
the destruction of Je> usalem itself, that the Jew came
to be regarded with inveterate distrust and hatred.
From the tone of Cicero and Horace respecting
them to that of Juvenal and Tacitus, there is a
change which marks the growth of a century of
hostility. The diffusion of the Jewish Scriptures through the
translation of the Septuagint is eminently signalized
by the indisputable reference of Virgil's well-known
eclogue to the prophecy of Isaiah. The imagery of
that striking poem may be paralleled generally from
other heathen sources, but the reference made therein
to a wonderful Child, a prince of peace, a restorer
of pristine felicity, can be derived only from the
iVIessianic vaticinations of the Hebrew prophet. It
seems indeed impossible to trace any other consistent
meaning in this most curious and interesting effusion
of the Roman »poet. We cannot lay our hands pre
cisely upon any national personage to whom its
glowing anticipations can be said to point ; nor can
we connect its sublime, but vague, aspirations with
any definite object of mere human realization. The

ST. PAUL AT ROME. ij
so-called Sybilline oracles which had obtained cur
rency at the period were themselves imbued with a
tinge of Oriental and even of Jewish feeling. They
might serve to introduce the Roman poet to the
more distinct visions of the Hebrew prophet, and
give a point to his utterances which they would not
otherwise have attained. It is not in its imagery but
in its personal scope that the " Pollio " seemed so
plainly to reflect the teaching of Isaiah. It would seem
as if a deeply religious mind had come in collision
in the dark with a genuine spiritual inspiration ; and
the result has served to show to all time the effect
which the Jewish Scriptures were beginning to exercise
and were destined to exercise more and more upon
the soul of the natural man. The mere fact, however,
that these Scriptures were becoming more and more
familiar to the minds of the pagans, appears also in
some parts of the Metamorphoses of Ovid ; such, for in
stance, as his account of the creation, and of the original
blessedness and subsequent wickedness of man, of
the universal deluge, and again, of the pride and fall
of Phaethon, akin to Lucifer Son of the Morning.
Doubtless all these stories were known well enough
before ; but, in Ovid's hands, they seem to assume a
greater prominence than ever, and a deeper signifi
cance, as well as a closer relation to their Scriptural
counterparts. We are naturally interested in inquiring into what
classes of Roman society this Jewish element chieflj.'
penetrated. The Jews seem to have had at all times
a natural propensity to herd together. Whether rich
or poor they have been found, even in modern times,
c

1 8 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
warmly to acknowledge their common tie both of
blood and of spiritual affinity. In London at the pre
sent day, where the Jewish race permeates both the
higher and the lower grades of society, the poorer Jews
are mostly to be found, indeed, in certain well-known
localities, and the wealthy apart from them in others ;
but in each case they are equally gregarious. In
modern Rome they have been actually confined by
police regulations to a specific district ; but in the Rome
of Augustus their local habitat was no less distinctly
marked. The Jews dwelt there for the most part to
gether in a suburban region beyond the Tiber, a squalid
and despicable quarter of the city; and it has been in
ferred from this circumstance, and from the petty
traffic in refuse and second-hand articles which was ap
propriated to them, that they belonged exclusively to
the lowest classes of the population. We shall see in
another place to what extent this idea requires to be
qualified.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 9

CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST RECEPTION OF THE GOSPEL AT ROME.
The extent to which the Jews abroad kept up a
communication with their brethren at home is strongly
marked by several notices of antiquity. The temple-
tribute of the didrachmon, already mentioned, was
discharged in specie, and it must have required many
hands to convey so valuable a treasure from all the
numerous residences to which they had betaken
themselves. The readiness, indeed, with which people
moved about in those days may be illustrated, per
haps, by the decree that every one should go to his
own city to be taxed, whether near at hand or at
a distance. So Joseph and Mary went up from Naza
reth to Bethlehem. But the chief communication
between the Jews abroad and their metropolis was on
the recurrence of the three principal feasts, at each of
which they attended in great numbers, though of all
these the Passover had the highest claim upon them.
We have already observed that the figures which
Josephus specifies throughout his history so abun
dantly, and with such apparent confidence, must
generally be regarded as wildly exaggerated ; never
theless, in the particular case of the attendance at the
Passover, his details are too precise to be set aside
altogether. This authority, with the best information
c 2

20 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
open to him, computes the number of lambs slain in
sacrifice at exactly 256,500. He proceeds to say that
ten was the regular quota that partook of each victim,
though there were often more, sometimes as many as
twenty. Accordingly, the estimate he makes when he
calculates the whole number of partakers at 2,700,000,
would seem to be strictly moderate. All these he
designates as " men," though a subsequent statement
may be taken to correct this, and we may fairly in
clude in it women, and probably children also. To
this total, however, not a few must be added for those
who were suffering from any legal impurity, and were
accordingly excluded from the feast. Of this enor
mous number the proportion of Jews resident in the
city can have been but small ; perhaps we may place
it at 200,000 ; and this will leave as many as some two
and a half millions for the crowds that flocked every
year to the city at the season of the Passover. The pil
grimage to Jerusalem may be compared, in this respect,
with the pilgrimages of more modern days to Mecca.1
It is probable that the influx of strangers at the
Passover was much greater than at Pentecost, a fes
tival which ranked, no doubt, far below it in interest
and importance. Yet the season of early summer was
more favourable for transit by sea than that of early
or mid-spring, if less so Tor journeying by land in so
hot a climate. At all events, we may well believe that
on the feast of Pentecost which followed next after
our Lord's crucifixion, very great was the concourse
of Jews and proselytes from among the many nations
1 Josephus, Bell. Jud,, vi. 9, \ %.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. ^1
which are enumerated in the well-known passage of
the Acts of the Apostles. The signal miracle which
is there recorded could not fail to be published by all
who witnessed it, on their return home, to the still
larger number of fellow-believers whom they had left
behind. The residents at Rome brought back with
them, together with the account of the miracle itself,
some notices of the preaching of St. Peter, and of the
faith in the resurrection of Jesus, whom he had de
clared to be the Messiah. Peter had taken the lead
as chief spokesman on that solemn occasion. He had
addressed himself to the " men of Israel '"' and the
" dwellers in Jerusalem," and together with them to
all who were then present, being spiritually of the
seed of Abraham. " This Jesus," he had said, " hath
God raised up '' ; and he called upon the disciples
around him as witnesses to the fact of the resurrec
tion ; and he had added, " Therefore let all Israel" —
that is, every heir of the promise to the chosen seed
of Abraham, of whatever nation he be born, and
wheresoever he reside — " know assuredly that God
hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified
both Lord and Christ." The narrative continues :—
" Now when they heard this," — that is, the crowd of
visitors, — " they were pricked in their heart, and
said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles,"
Peter being evidently the most prominent among
them, " Men and brethren, what shall we do ? Then
Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized every
one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the
remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the
Holy Ghost. For the promise," that is, the promise

2 2 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
of the new covenant, " is unto you and to your
children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as
the Lord our God shall call. And with many other
words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save your
selves from this untoward generation." l
The foreign Jews, from a distance, who heard this
appeal, must have considered it as a call to them
selves to accept the promise of salvation thus miracu
lously attested, and to convey it to their homes,
whither they were about to return. Accordingly we-
may assume it as highly probable that the Church of
Rome actually dates from the return of the Jews who.
had visited Jerusalem at the Pentecost next after the
crucifixion, which we may place in the year 33 of the
vulgar era. Hitherto the distinction between the Jew
and the Christian believer had lain in the heart and
conscience only. Outward distinction, as yet, there.
was none. If such were the .case at Jerusalem itself,
still more would it be so for a time at a distance such
as Rome. They who had been witnesses of the
descent of the Holy Ghost and of the miraculous gift
of tongues would, doubtless, inquire of the disciples,
before they left the Jewish capital, respecting the cha
racter of the works and preaching of Jesus whom these
affirmed to be risen from the dead. They would ex
amine, under the guidance of the most eloquent
of the Apostles, the Scriptures which predicted the
coming of the Messiah and announced beforehand
what manner of man He should be, and the kind of
works by which He should be made known. They
1 Acts ii. 40.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 23
would ponder these matters in their hearts, and, under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, many would, doubt
less, be led to an understanding of them, and to the
conviction that the long-expected Saviour had really
appeared under the form of Jesus of Nazareth. But
no provision had as yet been made for the regular
preaching of Christ beyond the injunction to the
Apostles to declare the Gospel unto every creature,
after they should first have made it known at Jerusa
lem and in Judea. All that the new disciples who
returned as converts to Rome had yet learnt was the
duty of communicating to the brethren whom they
revisited the wonderful things which they had them
selves seen and heard, and the grace which, as their
excited imaginations might so well hope and believe,
had so lately fallen upon Israel.
It was to the followers of the Law, to the Jews of
the synagogue at Rome, the same Jews who had been
labouring, not without marked success, to make the
law of Moses known to the Gentiles at the great
metropolis, that this new development of Jewish doc
trine was to be announced. The success which had
hitherto attended Jewish teaching might encourage
the new converts to expect a frank reception of this
message also. A glorious vista of spiritual triumphs
might suddenly offer itself to their anticipation. The
religion of the Jews was regularly organized at Rome.
As a nation their cult was recognised by the Roman
law, and placed on the footing of the various foreign
superstitions which were sanctioned by Roman policy.
The Roman magistrate had hitherto evinced no
jealousy of Jewish rites, while the fashion of the

24 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
day had pronounced unequivocally in their favour.
But the Jews at Rome, as well as elsewhere,
were exceedingly jealous of any innovations upon
their established institutions; any reform from
within they denounced no less pertinaciously than
an external attack. We may naturally suppose, in
deed, that they would be even more prone to resist
such innovations in the land of the stranger, where
their position had to be maintained by unanimous and
steadfast co-operation among themselves, than in their
own country, where their influence was already ac
knowledged and paramount. Under such circum
stances the position of the little band of primitive
believers in the pagan capital was, no doubt, especially
critical. They had more determined hostility to expect,
while they had less support to depend upon. They
were cut off from the more favoured band of disciples
at home, who could appeal to their own actual witness,
or to that of their neighbours and associates. They
had no support in the natural eloquence or supernatural
powers of the Apostles themselves, who still persisted
in fixing their abode at the centre of their faith; they
were destitute as yet of the organization which was
only just beginning to spring up among the believers
m Judaea, to encourage and confirm the scattered
members of the faith which might gather round it.
We may readily believe that the first nucleus of the
Christian order and discipline which was about to de
velop itself would be the declaration of Peter, " that
God hath made this same Jesus, whom ye "  (the
Jews at Jerusalem)—" have crucified, both Lord and
Christ"; that same declaration or confession upon

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 25
which Christ had said that He would build his Church
as upon a rock. This, they would say one to another, is
the faith we have learnt from Peter, who seemed to bt
the mightiest among the little band of disciples whom
we met on the day of Pentecost ; in whose company
we witnessed so notable a miracle, whose preaching was
confirmed to us by the extraordinary gift of tongues.
The name of Peter would still stand first and fore
most in their minds, and occupy the chief place in
their accounts of what they had discovered. To him
they would refer as the author of their faith. As
their internal organization began to assume a form,
they would recognise in him the founder of their
Church. Such, we may presume, would be the natural
progress of ideas among them. Even if Peter never
came to Rome at all, if he never came to found a
Church by his own preaching on the spot, if he
never assumed any authority or oversight of the
Church which then came into being, nevertheless, it
was natural that to him such a foundation should be
attributed, that an ecclesiastical legend should grow
up around it, and that it should become, in the course
of ages, an established article of popular belief that
Peter was the founder of the Roman Church, and
the first bishop of Rome.
Such, indeed, we know to have been the case; but
the historical testimony on which this development is
founded is absolutely worthless. Whether at a later
period St. Peter actually visited Rome; whether it was
from Rome that he wrote the epistle which he pro
fesses to date from "Babylon"; whether he was joined
in hjs. last year with St. Paul in the preaching of the

26 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Gospel in the great metropolis of the heathen world ;
and whether it was there that he underwent the
martyrdom which was plainly predicted for him;
these are questions to which we shall have occasion
to refer further on, but they are altogether indepen
dent of the question now before us, whether St.
Peter was the founder of the Church at Rome from
the beginning. It is upon this assertion that the
modern and mediaeval Church of Rome would estab
lish its claim to a primacy among all Christian
Churches, and a dominion over them. . But to such
a claim our actual records give no countenance of any
value whatever. There is no hint in the book of the
Acts of the Apostles of a visit of St. Peter to Rome.
There is no inference of the kind to be adduced from
the epistles either of St. Peter or of St. Paul. Nor,
again, is there any trace of such a tradition in our
ecclesiastical records prior to Jerome, who, in the
fourth or fifth century of our era, makes the bald,
unsupported statement, that St. Peter went to Rome
in the second year of Claudius, that is, A.D. 42; that
he founded the Church there, and constituted him
self its fiist bishop, that he continued to remain
there as many as twenty-five years, and eventually
suffered there in the last year of Nero, A.D. 68.1 For
these statements no authority whatever is advanced,
and when we find them mixed up with the unsup
ported assertion that the Apostle had been previously
bishop of Antioch, and with the foolish fable of his
contest with Simon the magician, we may confidently
' Jerome, Script. Bed, i.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 27
reject them, together with all the superstructure of
hierarchical pretensions that is built upon them, as un
worthy of the serious attention of plain seekers after
truth. We may admit the existence of an early and a
widespread tradition that St. Peter founded the Church
at Rome either himself or in conjunction with St.
Paul ; but it seems capable of proof that he was not
there before St. Paul, even if, which is still open to
question, he followed and joined him there at a later
period. On the contrary, in the Epistle to the Gala
tians, it is said distinctly that to St. Peter was assigned
the Gospel of the circumcision, or the preaching of the
faith to the Jews, while St. Paul was recognised as the
Apostle of the uncircumcision, or of the Gentile world.
We assume, then, that the message of the Gospel
was first announced at Rome by the Jews or prose
lytes who had been converted to Christ by the preach
ing of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, A.D. 33. The
society of Christians in the great city consisted at
the beginning of the few isolated believers who had
witnessed the miracle, and had learnt to apprehend its
significance. These men doubtless talked over what
they had seen and heard one with another on the spot
at the time, and subsequently in their own homes
on their return. They discussed its bearings among
themselves ; they contracted a natural sympathy, and
communicated their own hope and faith to those
nearest to them. As heirs of one hope and of the same
calling they rejoiced over every new adherent whom
they attracted to their side and induced to listen to
their spiritual exhortations. One or another of them
would come to be soon acknowledged as a leader, for

28 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
his spiritual gifts, for his gift of praying, of preaching or
expounding, for the sanctity of his life, or generally
for the superior force of his character. These dis
ciples would occupy themselves chiefly in searching the
Scriptures for their witness to Christ's appearance,
and for the assurance they might give of a new cove
nant with the God of Israel, of the revelation of
new heavens and a new earth. But they would not
all at once develope any form of spiritual govern
ment among themselves. They would be satisfied
at first with administering the simple rite of Baptism
as an assurance of the remission of sins upon a de
claration of repentance; they would live constantly
together in the practice of mutual kindness, breaking
bread from house to house, and consecrating their
meal with prayer, in remembrance of their blessed
Lord and Saviour. Such would be " the apostles'
doctrine," and " the apostles' fellowship," in which
they had been instructed at Jerusalem ; such the
common forms of obedience by which they would
become mutually known to one another. But they
had received no instructions there as to the position
which the law must now assume, the conditions of
the covenant of grace, the services or ministry of
the Gospel. Such matters as these, fundamental
as they were, must be left for their own discovery,
or for the arrival of more advanced teachers to
disclose to them. The first epoch in the progress
of the Christian society, or Church at Rome, would
date, we may suppose, from the early dispersion of
the believers in Judaea which followed upon the death
of the first martyr, Stephen, and this may be dated
A.D. 36. Up to that period, the Apostles and first

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 29
disciples had doubtless confined their direct teaching
to the Jews with whom they conversed at Jerusalem it
self. The persecution which ensued drove the believers
further afield. They were " all scattered abroad through
out the regions of Judaea and Samaria." Such, at least,
was the case with the believers generally ; the Apostles
alone remained still for a time at the centre where
they had first planted themselves. The disciples,
however, " went everywhere preaching the word."
Philip the deacon betook himself to Samaria, as we
are told particularly, as if to verify the declaration of
Jesus, " Ye shall be witnesses of me both in Jerusalem,
and in all parts of Judaea, and in Samaria " ; to which
He had added, as the next and final step, " and unto
the uttermost parts of the earth." To what more
distant parts the disciples now repaired, what journeys
they made, or what direction they took, we have no
specific statement, except that Philip was enjoined to
turn his steps southward on the road to Gaza, and,
returning from thence, after bis meeting with the
« chamberlain of Candace the Ethiopian, "he was
found" at Azotus, and, "passing through, preached in
all the cities " of the coast, " till he cami to Caesarea."1
It was, no doubt, under stress of this persecution
that many of the Gentile nations were now visited by
the disciples, and received direct information of the
revelation of Christ the Saviour. None of these were
more likely to be thus favoured than the Romans
themselves. Distant though their city was, none,
we may well suppose, was in closer or more constant
communication with the capital of the Jews.
1 Ads viii. 40.

30 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
It was to the infant society of Christian believers
at Rome that the itinerant disciples would most im
mediately address themselves. The Church at Rome
would derive more solidity and a more organized
character with every fresh arrival from the source of
Christian development. The usages established by
the Apostles themselves at Jerusalem would be
promptly accepted at Rome ; the sacraments would
assuredly be first recognised as the necessary marks
of internal union, and their obligation would be pri
marily insisted upon. Matters of ceremony, of order
and discipline, might be left to follow, as the need
for them became more urgently felt, as the duty of
adapting the nascent church to the constitution of its
kindred churches made itself more apparent. But
such formal organization would be a birth of time,
and the fruit of growing observation and experience.
As regards the spirit in which the preachers of the
Gospel among the Gentiles would commence their
operations at this moment, we must remember that
the process against Stephen, and the general persecu
tion which followed it, were the direct work of the
Pharisees, a local sect, confined for the most part to
Judaea, and exercising little if any influence over the
great body of the Jews dispersed among the nations.
We may imagine that little or no stigma was thus cast
upon the Gospel in the eyes of the Jews abroad, and
that Christ could at this moment be much more freely
preached among them at Rome than in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless the new belief was thus placed before
them in direct antagonism to the ceremonial law, and
to the traditional observances of their religious leaders
at home. The preaching of Christian truth was thus

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 31
thrown more decisively upon the witness of the heart,
upon the spirit of the Jewish religion rather than the
letter. " God," said the first teachers of the Gospel
at Rome, " is a Spirit, and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth." The ori
ginal society of disciples at Rome would be little likely
to receive from the mouth of those who first came to
them from Jerusalem, under stress of the Pharisaic
persecution, any distinct or cogent call to submit
themselves to an ecclesiastical organization. This
might follow in due time, but at the first their law
would be in the broadest sense a law of liberty. There
were other things of more immediate importance to
come first.
1. First of all, following the indications given us
in the preaching of Philip the deacon, the only one
of the dispersed disciples of whose conduct we have
any record, would come the preaching of Jesus as the
Messiah predicted by the prophets. The time is now
come — so the Christian preacher would proclaim —
the time has come for the manifestation of the Son
of David, the King of Israel, the Son of God, He
who cometh in the name of the Lord. Thereupon
would arise in every hearer's mind the vital question,
What is to be expected of this Messiah ? What
is to be the nature of His mission ? More than one
claimant to the title soon appeared. Such had been
the prediction of our Lord Himself, and such, ac
cording to the accounts we have received, was the
actual fact. The excitement and discontent of the
Jewish people at this period gave colour to the pre
tensions of various personages, who are supposed to
have announced themselves as the expected deliverers

32 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
from the Roman yoke. More than one of these seem
to be specified under the names of Theudas, Judas,
and Simon ; and such, we may suppose, was the one
who is said in the Acts of the Apostles to have
" boasted himself to be somebody " of more than
usual significance.1 We may allow, however, that
Bar Cochebas, the leader of the Jewish insurgents
under Hadrian a hundred years later, is the only one
of these national heroes who is historically designated
as a pretended Messiah.
2. The preacher of the true Christ would doubtless
describe Him, after the example of John the Baptist,
as a spiritual reformer, and would demand in His
name repentance and amendment of life. He would
enlarge, as we have said, on the duty of receiving
Him as a Divine Master, and of placing His moral
precepts above the requirements of the ceremonial
law. This would undoubtedly excite surprise and
murmuring among the Jewish residents at Rome ; it
would open among them the same question which
had led to the persecution of the believers at Jeru
salem ; and we should expect to find that the little
band of disciples there would soon be exposed, as
elsewhere, to much violence and misrepresentation.
3. Further, the preacher of the true Christ at
Rome, feeling his mission to be to the Gentiles as
well as to his Jewish brethren, would necessarily pro
claim the call of the Gentiles, and the abolition of the
special privileges of the Jews under the Mosaic law.
We can hardly doubt that even before the vision of
1 Ads v 36.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 33
St. Peter and the conversion of Cornelius the question
would present itself to such preachers in the capital
of the Gentile world, "What hinders that these
should be baptized ? " At all events, this question
would certainly.follow immediately afterwards. This
would become another source of jealousy and dis
satisfaction between the different classes of Jews, pro
selytes, and yet unconverted hearers. Even at Jeru
salem, the authority of the Apostles had hardly availed
to maintain harmony among their disciples on the
subject of the true relation of the new faith to the
old. At a distance from Judaea, and especially at
the centre of so many discordant opinions, each seek
ing to assert itself against every other, divisions of
sentiment would assuredly arise, and would plunge
the Jewish community into confusion. The notion
that the recent development of Judaism must issue
in the reception of all mankind into its bosom, un
palatable as it was at Jerusalem, would be perhaps
still more so at Rome ; for the Jews at Rome were
especially proud of their nationality, and elated with
the impression it had so evidently made upon the
strangers around them. To associate the pagans
with themselves in the same spiritual hopes and pri
vileges would be to abandon their actual vantage
ground, and descend to a lower level. It would re
quire not only the authority of a chief among the
Apostles, but the power of an inspired counsellor, to
overcome the obstacles which existed at Rome to the
preaching of Christ as a common Saviour both of the
Jew and of the Gentile.
Accordingly we find some slight but significant
D

34 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
notices in our historians of the troubles which occuned
at this very period among the Jewish residents in the
city. Suetonius mentions the fact that the emperor
Claudius decreed their entire expulsion from Rome,
on account of the repeated disturbances that arose
among them at the instigation of a certain Chrestus.
The early Christian writers seem to have agreed in
applying this statement to the contests between the
Jews of the old faith and the sectarians who followed
the Gospel of Jesus ; and it has been judged probable
by many modern critics both that the name of Chres
tus was a mistake for Christus, and that the Roman
writer was further unable to distinguish between the
conflicting persuasions which then divided the Jewish
community at the capital. As regards, indeed, the
fact of the expulsion, it is confirmed by the express
testimony of the Acts ; 1 but we must distinguish this
occurrence from that which is recorded by Dion
Cassius, a historian of a later date (about A.D. 200),
and of less authority, who speaks of an edict of Clau
dius, not for banishing, but simply for controlling, the
Jews, and forbidding them to assemble together, ac
cording to their national custom. Their numbers had
again increased, he tells us, since the first great clear
ance which was made of them by Tiberius. But if
this statement be deserving of credit, it must be re
ferred to the first year of Claudius (AD. 41), while
the severer measure seems to have occurred in the
ninth or even in the twelfth year of that emperor.
We may readily believe that these dissensions were
Acts xviii. 2

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 35
mainly caused by the religious jealousies of the Jews ;
and the pertinacity with which these strangers con
tinued to disturb the peace of the city is marked by
the repetition of the edicts thus levelled against them.
It may be believed, indeed, that the decree for their
wholesale expulsion was but partially enforced, just
as with decrees of a similar kind so often issued
against the votaries of divers foreign superstitions,
against the soothsayers, and against the philosophers.
Nevertheless this hostile action seems to mark a
change in the feelings of the citizens towards the
Jewish people, which had hitherto been rather in their
favour, but were now beginning to weary of their vio
lent and intriguing spirit, and inclined to fear as well
as to dislike of them ; while both the Jews and the
Christians in their midst still continued to make
proselytes, principally, but not wholly, from the lower
class of foreigners.
The community or church of Christian believers
which was now collected together at Rome was com
posed both of Jews and Gentiles. These Gentiles
might be further subdivided into such as had been
previously enrolled as proselytes to Judaism, and had
since become converted to Christ, and such as had
received the Gospel while in the ranks of heathen
ism. Probably the members of neither of these classes
were in the habit of speaking the vernacular language
of Judaea among themselves. They would rather em
ploy a -tongue which was common to all, and there was
certainly none so common as the Greek. This was
the language generally spoken, and almost universally
understood, even in Palestine itself; but more espe
d 2

36 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
daily it was the literary language of the whole civilized
world. Latin was little used in the eastern provinces.
Even at Rome strangers from the East would seldom
or never resort to it. The Romans, on their part,
were far less impulsive and curious than the Greeks
and Asiatics, and the Christian preaching would be
much more attractive, as a new and exciting subject,
to the Greeks and semi-Hellenized Orientals, than to
the Italians or Latins. We may conclude that the
primitive Church at Rome was composed mainly
of Jews and Greeks, with an infusion of other
Orientals, but probably few, if any, genuine Romans.
We should expect that any communication publicly
addressed to this Church would be couched in the
Greek language.
As regards the Apostle Paul himself, who was now
about to write his " Epistle to the Romans," we may
be assured that he was personally familiar with the
common speech of the Jews in their own country;
and it was in Hebrew, or more properly in the popular
Aramaic idiom, that he addressed them at Jerusalem
when he sought to justify himself to the multitude,
and explain his position as a believer in Christ, whom
he had before persecuted.1 But to the chief captain,
speaking more privately, he had addressed himself
most naturally in Greek, as the general medium of
communication between men of some social position at
a time when all nationalities were locally mingled to
gether. Whether he ever spoke Latin, or even under
stood it, does not anywhere distinctly appear, though
Ads xxii. 23.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 37
we may infer his knowledge of the tongue from the
liberal education he had received, and from his appa
rent acquaintance with the principles of Roman law.1
The use, indeed, of Latin seems to be left altogether
out of consideration among the speakers and writers
in Judaea at this time, of whatever origin they might
be. Many Greeks, and certainly many Jews, assumed
Roman names, such, for instance, as Lucas, Silas,
Marcus, and the Apostle Paulus himself. Mark, in
his Gospel, is careful to explain the meaning of va
rious Latin words, but he wrote in Greek. So also
St. Paul seems to have written uniformly in Greek,
and the tradition that Mark, as a Latin speaker, acted
as his interpreter at Rome, shows at least that it was
easy to believe him ignorant of the Latin language
altogether. Whether he exhorted the churches of
Asia Minor, of Greece, or of Rome itself, whether he
addressed a Timotheus or a Titus, he uniformly
clothed his thoughts in the Greek, and in no other
language. And so it was with the other Apostles and
disciples; even for some time after the apostolic age.
Greek was the common vehicle of thought to which
the preachers of a new and common religion would
most naturally resort. Their general use of the Greek
language was in itself a token that they regarded all
mankind as members of one family, and held out to
them one appointed means of salvation for all equally.
Rome itself was the common centre of this all-em
bracing confraternity of nations ; Rome, therefore, was
to be addressed, not in Latin, but in Greek.
See Note at the end of the volume.

^S ST. PAUL AT ROME.

CHAPTER III
st. Paul's arrival at rome.
From a few slight indications in St. Paul's Epistle to
the Romans, to which we now turn our attention, we
may infer that the Apostle wrote it towards the close
of his residence at Corinth, and that it was sent in
the spring of the year A.D. 58, about the time of his
departure for Jerusalem. At the close of the Epistle
he solicits the prayers of the disciples whom he
addresses, that he may be delivered from " them that
believe not in Judaea," and that his service for Jeru
salem " may be accepted of the saints " there. If
these prayers succeed, he hopes to come to the dis
ciples at Rome " with joy." When he has performed
the immediate business in hand, he anticipates with
devout satisfaction the great ' work of carrying the
Gospel by his own ministry to the capital of the
world, and even to the western extremity of the em
pire in Spain. Meanwhile he has other business
nearer at hand, which he must first perform. He is
intent on taking his journey to Jerusalem, notwith
standing the peril which he knows mil environ it.
He had already come to open disagreement with his
countrymen in all the great cities of Greece and Asia.
He had been assailed and persecuted by them, and

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 39
his life had been threatened on many occasions. It
was through the machinations of the discontented
Jews that he had been so often attacked by the rulers
or by the mob in these Gentile cities, and had suffered
the scourgings and the stonings of which he makes
complaint to the Corinthians.1 He had been " in
perils by his own countrymen, in perils by the hea
then, in perils among false brethren.'' The Gospel
of Jesus Chrjst was an object of general suspicion
and contention because it was misunderstood. At
Jerusalem, to which place he was first bound, he
would no doubt confer with the Apostles and the
actual witnesses of Christ; but he had himself a
mission from the Lord also : he was himself sent
forth to declare the word which had been specially
revealed to him, and in the epistle he now writes to
the Romans he explains the scope and meaning of
the Gospel which has been committed to his ministry.
He lays the foundation of the doctrine which he
will preach to them in all its fulness, if he is suf
fered to accomplish his purpose of visiting Rome in
person. The commencement of the Epistle, declaring the
universal sinfulness of all mankind, is meant to pre
pare for the doctrine he has to preach, namely, the
common necessity of salvation through Christ, the Re
deemer of the world. The vivid description it gives
of sin is most fitly addressed to a city in which the
wickedness of the human race actually culminated, and
was manifestly produced or fostered by the prevailing
1 2 Cor. xi. 25

40 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
idolatry of the heathen world. This was to attack
sin in its principal stronghold. This attack upon the
Gentiles first and foremost seems to indicate that the
Gentile converts who had been called out of this
stronghold of sin were uppermost in the Apostle's
thoughts. Amidst this general wickedness, however,
and this disobedience to the plain law of God, the
Jews, he continues, are even more inexcusable than
the Gentiles ; and upon them, accordingly, the wrath
of God is first manifested. Nevertheless his natural
yearning towards his own countrymen induces the
Apostle to balance this declaration with a word of
comfort. He allows that, after all, the glory and
honour and peace which ensue from God to every one
that worketh good are also given first to the Jew, and
then to the Gentile after him. Yet essentially the two
are alike in the sight of the Divine Father : " There
is no respect of persons with God." l
This was a bold and startling declaration to make
at Rome, to a community whether of Romans or of
Jews; for these two nations were each, above all
others at that moment, convinced that such a respect
did actually exist in their special favour. The Roman
deemed his own the favoured race, and regarded the
extent of his dominion as a conclusive proof of it.
The Jew, with no less complacency, maintained that
the Divine preference of himself was intimated by the
spiritual advantages he manifestly enjoyed, and the
glorious hopes proclaimed to him. To require the
Jew and the Roman each to surrender the assurance
Romans ii. ii.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 4 1
on which he relied, and admit the other to an equal
footing in Divine favour, was indeed a bold under
taking. But between the Jew and the Roman there
stood also the Greek, and the Epistle of St. Paul was
addressed to the Greek equally with both the others ;
perhaps, indeed, to the Greek more directly than to
either of them, inasmuch as the Grecian element in
the early Roman Church was, as we have seen, larger
probably than either of the others. The Greek, too,
had a pride of his own, a pride in his intellectual
culture ; and he looked down from his own point of
view with equal scorn on both the Roman and the
Jew. He, too, would despise, if he dared not resent,
the apostolic declaration of a universal equality of
races. The Apostle proceeds to assert the insufficiency of
" the Law," whether it be the Moral Law, which is
binding upon Jew and Gentile equally, or the Cere
monial Law, which pertains to the Jew only. Neither
the one nor the other could avail to render men holy
before God. If God was pleased with Abraham, it
was not for his fulfilling the Law imposed upon him,
but for the faith which was " counted to him for
righteousness." This great truth, that faith may be
counted for righteousness before God, refers not to
the Jews or to the circumcision only, for it was de
clared of Abraham while he was yet in uncircumcision.
Accordingly the promise now published, or rather
republished, under the Gospel, affects the Gentile no
less than the Jew. To make this dogma of justifica
tion by faith more comprehensive, the Apostle goes
back from Abraham, the father of the Jews, to Adam.

42 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
the father of all, and declares that as by the offence
of one, judgment came upon all men to condemna
tion, even so by the righteousness of One, namely,
Christ, " the free gift came upon all men unto justifi
cation of life " ; or, as he urges the same view again
still more pointedly, " As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners ; so by the obedience of One
shall many be made righteous." ]
This is the main argument of the Epistle, and it is
reiterated so that neither Jew nor Gentile can possibly
overlook it. Henceforth it is impossible for either
party at Rome, for those who would confine the gift
of Christ to the " chosen people," or those who would
extend it to the utmost, to question but that the
Apostle has decided for, and taken his stand upon,
the wider interpretation. The Jew at Rome must
now determine upon one of two courses. If he will
accept the teaching of Christ through the Apostle,
His accredited organ, he must invite the Gentile to
a share of the Gospel promises ; he must acknowledge
that a new covenant has been made between God and
man, a covenant embracing the human race in gene
ral, and not confined, as of old, to one favoured
nation. In such case, the only further question is,
how far, or in what sense, the elder covenant is
abolished ; which is the question between the Juda-
izing and the Hellenizing Christians. If, on the other
hand, he persists in refusing to acknowledge the com
mon brotherhood of Jew and Gentile, and contends
for the exclusive privileges which were formerly con-
Romans v. 19.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 43
fined to the Jews alone, he must make up his mind
to separate himself from both the Gentile and the
Christian converts, he must throw the Christian, as it
were, into the arms of the Gentile, and allow them
both to make common cause together ; for both must
henceforth have a common bond of union in the
principle of a broad and liberal equality before God.
The Jew could not fail to see that by thus rejecting
the leading principle of the new doctrine he would
strengthen the position of the Christian in the eyes of
the Gentile; he would be doing his best, against his will,
and against the supposed interest of his own creed, to
bring these two together, and unite them with a common
bond of sentiment. Hence it became his policy to sow
jealousy between them, to misrepresent the Christian,
to seize upon every evil report against him, to believe
the worst, and to magnify it to the utmost. Hence,
when St. Paul first arrived on the coast of Italy, after
his Epistle had been long received, and had produced
its due effect among the Jewish community at Rome,
the Jewish party, as we shall presently see, met him
with the remark : " We desire to hear of thee what
thou thinkest ; for as concerning this sect, we know
that everywhere it is spoken against." l Doubtless,
the Jews at Rome had already spoken against it
among both Jews and Gentiles. We shall see, as we
proceed, how they continued to speak evil against it,
till they succeeded in bringing upon it the distrust,
the odium, and the persecution of Roman society.
St. Paul had left Corinth early in the spring of
Ads xxviii. 22.

44 ST. PAUL AT ROME
the year 58, in order that he might reach Jerusalem
by the day of Pentecost, bearing with him the contri
bution which had been made in Macedonia, in Achaia,
and elsewhere, for the poor brethren in the Jewish
capital. The poverty of the brethren at Jerusalem
appears from other places ; we may suppose, indeed,
that some wealthier people attached themselves to the
new faith at a distance, but on the actual spot of its
birth, it was, like its Author, " despised and rejected
of men." Learning that the Jews were lying in wait
for him to kill him on his voyage into Syria, the
Apostle made his way through Macedonia, and sailed
from Philippi to Troas. From thence he passed by
various stages to Caesarea in Palestine. He was
warned of the evil designs of the Jews against him in
Jerusalem ; everywhere it was from the Jews, rather
than from the Gentiles, that he had cause of appre
hension ; but he declared that he was ready, not to
be bound only, but to die there for the name of the
Lord Jesus. The disciples were fain to let him de
part from place to place ; his companions would not
abandon him, and on their arrival at their destination
they were gladly received by the faithful. Paul went,
and invited a conference with James and other elders
of the Church at Jerusalem. He proved himself
faithful to the decrees of the council held there some
years before ; and as a Jew by origin he presented
himself in the Temple, and practised some of the
ceremonies of the Jewish Law. He was there dis
covered by certain Jews of Asia, who had arrived for
the celebration of the Pentecost, and who may perhaps
have known him at Ephesus. These men excited a

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 45
commotion by accusing Paul of " teaching everywhere
against the Law and against the Temple," and of pol
luting the holy place by bringing Greeks within its
precincts, which seems to have been a mere calumny.
Nevertheless the people were stirred up to fury. They
took Paul and drew him out of the Temple ; the city
was in an uproar; the Roman police interfered. Paul
was cast into bonds, under the idea that he was a
certain Egyptian, who had recently raised a sedition.
The officer in command treated him, however, with
considerable indulgence, and allowed him to address
the multitude. His defence of himself clearly esta
blished his innocence of the charge of sedition ; but
if the government was satisfied, the populace was all
the more incensed. It became necessary to appease
them, and the chief captain would have scourged Paul
in their presence. Then it was that the Apostle ap
pealed to his status as a Roman citizen, and insisted
that he might not lawfully be punished, except after
a legal trial and condemnation. Lysias at once
desisted from blows, and it was in order to protect
him from the fury of the excited populace that he
took him away by force and brought him into the
citadel.1 The Apostle had appealed to the Roman law. He
was by birth a Roman citizen, having derived the
civitas, with its privileges and immunities, from his
father before him. On a former occasion he had made
a similar appeal to the magistrates at Philippi, and
with complete success. " They feared," it is ' said,
1 Ads xxii.

46 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
"when they heard that they" — Paul, namely, and
Silas — "were Romans. And they came and besought
them, and brought them out, and desired them to
depart out of the city." l In the present case, the
Roman officer was, no doubt, less indulgent. The
occurrence of disturbances in the civil capital of
Palestine was, we may weil suppose, a more serious
affair than such an incident in an ordinary provincial
town. Nevertheless he recognised at once his pri
soner's claim to exemption from indignity and torture,
for such was the unquestioned privilege of a Roman
citizen. " It is a crime," says Cicero, " to bind a
Roman, an atrocity to scourge him." He might be
kept in safe custody within the residence of a magis
trate, and be attached with a single chain to the arm
of a soldier, until he could be brought to trial, when
he might be condemned to banishment and the loss
of caput or civic status. Such had been the law under
the Republic, and the principle on which it rested
was still acknowledged, although the emperors claimed
to deal, when they pleased, more stringently with
criminals in virtue of their imperium or their tribuni-
tian potestas.
Paul was now brought before Felix, the imperial
procurator of Judaea, at Caesarea. He defended
h:msclf against the charge of sedition, and his judge
was easily convinced that the real cause of the attack
was simply his preaching the doctrine of the resur
rection, and controverting the cherished dogmas of a
particular sect among the Jews. On such a mattej
1 Ads xii. 38.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 47
he was himself profoundly indifferent; and finding
no pretence for putting his prisoner to death as a
public enemy, he did not choose to deliver him over
to the violence of his own people. By detaining him
in custody, he might expect perhaps to be approached
with a bribe for his release. Festus, who succeeded
Felix in the province two years later, found Paul still
a captive, but, as it would seem, under lenient treat
ment. When the high priest and chief men of the
Jews desired that he should be brought to Jerusalem,
with the design of waylaying and killing him, Festus
was inclined to indulge them; but Paul appealed as a
Roman citizen to Caesar; and though in the judgment
of king Agrippa, in whose presence he was permitted
to defend himself, he might have been set at once at
liberty, it was determined that, as he had appealed
from the emperor's officer to the emperor in person,
he should be sent to Rome accordingly.1
The Apostle's claim to enjoy the privileges of a
Roman citizen had thus protected him from the fury
of the Jewish mob, and from the insidious designs of
his enemies in the ruling classes at Jerusalem ; but
it had interfered to prevent his complete deliverance,
and it now subjected him to the perils of a trial among
foreigners in a distant land, under conditions of which
he could have little experience. But he felt perhaps
secure in the justice of his cause, and the conviction
that he had " done nothing worthy of death or of
bonds," as a Roman judge at Rome could not fail to
decide, in a controversy between a Roman citizen and
' Ads xxv., xxvi

48 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
a Jewish accuser. He might rely upon the loyalty to
the Roman government which he had evinced in his
epistle to the Romans, as a public document to which
he could legitimately appeal; in which he had plainly
enjoined the disciples to be " subject unto the higher
powers "... for " the powers that be are ordained
of God:" adding, "for this cause pay you tribute
a'so." He had refrained even from instituting any
guild or confraternity among them, for of such social
combinations or collegia the authorities were pecu
liarly jealous. Further, he might have some con
fidence in the reputed equity and mercy of the
emperor; for the famous Qiiinquennium Neronis had
hardly past. At all events, to Rome he was already
bound for the sake of the Gospel; and setting aside, as
he doubtless did, all regard for his own personal in
terests, he might expect that his position as an appellant
to the chief ruler of the empire on the highest seat of
judgmentwould give him a glorious opportunity, hardly
otherwise to be looked for, of proclaiming the truth
of Christ so that all the world might hearken. Already
Agrippa had muttered, " Almost thou persuadest me
to be a Christian." What if Caesar himself should
feel the force of Divine truth, and be " not almost,
but altogether '" persuaded ? The course of events
which actually followed, the trials and sufferings of
the Faith in after times, the long and weary way
through which the Church of Christ was appointed
to struggle before it received toleration, much less
acceptance, among the Gentiles, was doubtless hidden
from his eyes. But may he not have indulged in a
brighter vision, and beheld in his imagination the

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 49
Dowers and principalities of this world suddenly bowed
down at the word of the preacher before God and
His Christ ? For a time, at least, such a vision might
well continue to dazzle him.
Of the Apostle's voyage to Rome little need be said
here. We should remark, however, that he was placed
along with some other prisoners in custody of a cen
turion of Augustus's band, named Julius. It has
been supposed that this band was a company of the
praetorian guard, which may have been recently sent
as an escort with Agrippa from Rome, and was now
under orders to return. The gentile name of "Julius"
may indicate some connection with the imperial court,
the freedmen of the emperor being commonly ad
mitted into his tent, and often placed in close attend
ance, whether civil or military, upon him. We may
even conjecture that the kindness with which this
centurion regarded Paul was due to some injunction
from Agrippa, who had evidently been interested in
his defence of himself. The date of the Apostle's
sailing maybe fixed to a late day in August, A.D. 60.
The destination of his vessel was Adramyttium, a port
in Thrace, from whence he would probably have been
carried overland to Dyrrhachium, and so into Italy
by Brundisium. But the course of the voyagers was
first delayed, and then altered by various circum
stances. They were driven eventually upon the rocky
coast of Melita, or Malta, towards the close of autumn,
when the season for sailing had come to an end, and
it was not till after a sojourn of three months on that
island that Paul embarked again for Italy, about the
middle of February, A.D. 6r. The corn-vessel of
E

50 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Alexandria, to which he had been transferred at Myra
in Cilicia, had become a total wreck. He was now
placed on board another craft of the same class, whicn
was bound for Puteoli, the port where the large ves
sels which crossed the Mediterranean transferred their
freight to smaller barges adapted to the coasting trade
of the Italian peninsula. With the commencement
of spring, the grain-fleets from Egypt made their ap
pearance in the Bay of Naples. Their arrival was
eagerly expected by the people ; and the government,
conscious that the tranquillity of Rome depended
upon the punctual supply of its daily food from a
distance, was often disturbed by apprehensions of even
a momentary delay. The corn-ships were allowed, as
a special favour, to come into the bay with their top
sails set, in order that their speed might not be for
an instant retarded, while all others lowered them in
token of respect for the superior greatness of Italy,
or of the goddess Minerva, whose statue crowned the
promontory of Surrentum, or possibly of the emperor
himself, who had resided so many years, not long
before this time, on the opposite island of Capreae.
The people rushed in crowds to the mole to greet
them, and made their auspicious arrival a pretext for
a public holiday.
Puteoli, the great haven of Italy, was no doubt
the resort of numerous foreigners. There the new
comers from Judaea found, as might be expected,
" many brethren." The centurion who had thus far
conducted Paul, and who -had felt himself at liberty to
aliow his passage from the East to be protracted
through six months, made no diffia;!tv d^'v in

ST. PAUL At ROME. 5 1
granting him the further delay of a week to confei
with his countrymen at this spot. It was necessary,
indeed, to keep him securely. When there had
seemed a chance of his escaping along with the other
prisoners, while their ship was in peril, the guards
would have had no scruple in putting them all to
death at once ; but as long as he could depend on
being able to deliver up his charge at the end, their
keeper, it seems, was not required to expedite their
arrival. This delay allowed the news of the Apostle's
landing to be conveyed to the disciples at Rome,
which was one hundred and forty miles distant from
Puteoli, and some of them set forth directly to meet
him. Paul bade farewell to his friends at his place
of landing, and was conveyed along the Appian road
towards the great city. At a station called Appii
Forum, about forty miles from Rome, and again at
" the Three Taverns," the next stage, he was met by
some of the brethren, and was, no doubt, much
comforted by the assurance that his coming was
regarded with deep interest by the society to which
he had addressed his epistle three years before. He
" thanked God," it is said, and " took courage."
The arrival of St. Paul at Rome, and his interview
with the Jews there will be most fitly described in the
terms of the simple narrative which closes the book
of the Acts of the Apostles.
"When he came to Rome," says St. Luke, who
had accompanied him on his voyage, and was now
attached to his fortunes, though not, it would seem,
himself a prisoner, " the .centurion delivered the pri
soners to the captain of the guard, but Paul was
e 2

§2 St. PAUL AT ROME.
suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept
him." On this there will be more to be said at a
later period. " And it came to pass that, after three
days, Paul called the chief of the Jews together, and
when they were come together, he said unto them,
Men and brethren, though I have committed
nothing against the people or customs of our fathers,
yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the
hands of the Romans; who, when they had ex
amined me, would have let me go, because they
found no cause of death in me. But when the Jews
spake against it I was constrained to appeal unto
Caesar ; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of.
For this cause, therefore, have I called for you, to see
you and to speak with you ; because that for the
hope of Israel I am bound with this chain." And
they said unto him, " We neither received letters out
of Judaea concerning thee, neither any of the brethren
showed or spake any harm of thee. But we desire
to hear what thou thinkest ; for as concerning this
sect we know that it is everywhere spoken against."
From these few words it appears, as also from the
tenor of Paul's discourse which follows, that the Jews
with whom he now reasoned were not members of a
specific Christian church. No such organized church,
it would seem, had yet been formed at Rome at all ;
but all the Jewish residents in the capital had, of
course, heard rumours of the spread of the new belief;
they had heard of the new sect arising in the bosom of
Judaism which was everywhere spoken against by the
great body of their fellow-countrymen. Many among
them were already leaning towards these so-calledGood

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 53
Tidings, and many more were seekers after the truth,
who had not yet imbibed an intelligent appreciation of
it. All, perhaps, had received the epistle which St. Paul
had addressed to the Jews at Rome, and in the general
disturbance of men's faith, and the excitement of an
age much addicted to spiritual inquiry, there were few
who did not hail with satisfaction the arrival of one
who claimed to speak with authority upon a subject
so generally interesting. It has been asked how it was
that the Jews at Rome should have received no inti
mation from their brethren in Judaea of the visit they
were about to expect. Some may imagine that the
inhabitants of Palestine, both Jew and Christian, con
cluded that the Apostle's captivity was but a sure
precursor of his execution, and did not anticipate
that, if he ever arrived at Rome, anything more
would be heard of him. The unbelievers, at least,
did not allow themselves to apprehend that his arrival
at the great focus of all secular business would have
any effect upon the worldly minds of its vain and
dissolute inhabitants. It may, perhaps, be farther
alleged that Paul had embarked at Sidon later than
the usual time of sailing from Palestine, and that
he had reached Rome somewhat earlier than the
usual arrivals in the following season.
However this may be, and the question, though
difficult, is not important, the chief of the Jewish
community appointed, after the meeting, a day for
more particular explanation and conference. Then
it was that Paul unfolded to his fellow-countrymen
the scheme of salvation through the Gospel, such as
h,e had already expounded it in his elaborate epistle.

54 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
" The salvation of God," he said, " is sent unto the
Gentiles, and they will hear it." Thereupon the Jews
departed, " and had much reasoning among them
selves;" to what effect we know not. But the
Apostle, though he had appealed to the emperor on
the charges preferred against him at home, seems not
to have been admitted to a hearing in the august
presence. Perhaps the papers and witnesses required
for the case had not arrived ; his accusers would, no
doubt, make all possible delay if they thought it
would be decided against them, while he was power
less himself to accelerate a decision in his favour.
He was suffered to remain two whole years, as it would
seem, without an interrogatory ; still in the keeping
of a soldier, no doubt, but, nevertheless, in a separate
or private dwelling which he hired for himself; at
liberty to receive all that came to him, though
restrained, we must suppose, from going abroad to
them. So it was that he " continued to teach and
preach the things which concern the Lord Jesus with
all confidence, no man forbidding him." ]
Ads xxviii. 31.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 55

CHAPTER IV.
POLITICAL CONDITION OF ROME ON ST. PAUL'S
ARRIVAL.
On the death of the emperor Claudius, who is sup
posed to have been poisoned by his consort Agrippina,
(A.D. 54), Britannicus, the son of his former empress,
Messalinn j had been quietly set aside. The succession
to the imperial power had been conveyed by the
acclamations of the Praetorians, under the direction of
their prefect, Burrus, together with the consent of the
senate, to Nero the son of Agrippina by her former
husband, Domitius. Of the two rivals Nero was
somewhat the elder, being now seventeen, while
Britannicus was a mere stripling about four years
younger. Nero had, moreover, been formerly adopted
by Claudius, and admitted by him into the Claudian
gens, which might give him a technical claim to pre
cedence. But the rules of succession to the imperial
power were, up to this time, very unsettled; the
prerogatives which the imperator affected were still
supposed in theory to be the free gift of the senate
and of the people represented by the senate, and,
under the circumstances, the Caesar's heir-presumptive
was enabled to assume the functions of imperial auto
cracy without the raising of any constitutional question.
Bvurus had been already appointed a tutor or guardian

56 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
of the youthful prince by his crafty mother, and she
had taken care to associate with this sturdy soldier
the philosopher Seneca, who bore a high reputation
among civilians both for wisdom and integrity. Nero
was himself popular on account of his youth, his pleas
ing figure, and some reputed accomplishments. He
shone the more in the eyes of the citizens from the
apparent contrast between him and his weak and
decrepit parent, who had outraged the pride of the
magnates, and made himself the laughing-stock of the
populace of Rome. There can be little doubt that
Agrippina had herself studied to bring Claudius into
ridicule, in order to disparage his true son Britannicus,
and elevate her own offspring in popular estimation.
It is probable that the character for mental and bodily
infirmity which history has fastened upon the wretched
Claudius has been too highly coloured, through the
scandals to which the last of his consorts gave circu
lation in her Memoirs after his decease.
Nero succeeded to the empire in the year 54, seven
years before the arrival of St. Paul at Rome. He
had been already married in his sixteenth year to
Octavia, a child like himself, the daughter of Claudius,
by Messalina. The union had been arranged for
political purposes, to facilitate the young prince's suc
cession. There was no liking, no agreement of tastes
and habits between the two ; their cohabitation had
been brief and barren. For the first years of his reign
Nero continued to submit himself to the restraints
of his imperious mother, and of the well-meaning and
careful guardians she had appointed him, who con
certed together their measures for keeping him under

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 57
tutelage. Gradually, indeed, he broke loose from
them. The poisoning of Britannicus, if such a crime
be justly imputed to him, was effected certainly with
out the complicity of Seneca or Burrus, though we
can hardly doubt that it was instigated by Agrippina;
and it is too true that when the story was bruited
through Rome without an effective denial, both Seneca
and Burrus agreed to throw a veil over it; nor were
they, perhaps, displeased at the removal, by whatever
means, of a possible pretender to the sovereign power,
which was now lodged practically in their own hands.
But Nero had fallen under other influence than either
his mother's or his tutors' : his favourite Acte, a
Grecian concubine, first gained an ascendancy over
him. He now plunged more and more deeply into
dissipation of every kind. He disgraced himself in
the eyes of the nobles by condescending to play, sing,
and drive his chariot at the public spectacles; and
when he found himself losing ground with all classes,
whose respect he could not but feel to be valuable,
he lost all self-control, and abandoned himself to vice
and crime without further scruple. The first five
years, indeed, of Nero's principate were celebrated as
a reign of equity and honourable conduct ; but this
famous season was succeeded by a career of de
bauchery and cruelty, to which it would be difficult to
find a parallel. The murder of his mother Agrippina
was followed by many other murders, and still more
judicial executions. The ranks of the aristocracy were
decimated from motives of fear, and- sometimes of
mere caprice. Feeling himself an object of detesta
tion to the class he had most deeply injured, t'he

58 ST. PAUL AT ROME,
tyrant was impelled to still further violence for his
own protection. Tyranny was avenged by conspiracy,
conspiracy was punished by tyranny redoubled, not
in the city only, but in the provinces. The jealousy
of a prince who reigned by no intrinsic force of mind
or character was excited against all possible rivals.
Corbulo, the most victorious of his captains, was
stricken down by the imperial mandate on the
Euphrates. Burrus was fortunate in dying in his
bed; but Seneca, along with some of the chief nobility,
was, at a later period, required to put himself to death
on a charge of treason. The emperor's sole reliance
now rested upon his favour with the reckless mob of
the city, and the mutual jealousies of the magnates
themselves. The great men of Rome at this period were, in the
first place, the descendants in the fourth generation of
the illustrious houses which had contended one with
another for the governments under the lead of Caesar or
Pompeius. The civil wars together with the massacres
and proscriptions which accompanied them had made
terrible havoc of the oldest families of the city. The
progress of enervating luxury, the spread of gross
debauchery, and the desperate reluctance of an in
dolent aristocracy to engage in the bonds of legitimate
wedlock, had materially reduced the genuine stock of
the older Romans ; while the national institution of
adoption, on the other hand, had largely replenished
it with baser blood. The names of the great gentes
of the Republic still stood, for the most part, among
the foremost in the annals of the empire. The Julii,
the Claudii, the Cornelii, ^Emilii, Asinjj, and many

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 59
others, became more widely diffused than ever, and
were not less highly ennobled in the public service
than at the period of their most brilliant historic fame.
But the men who enjoyed these sounding names, and
very commonly the patrimonies that descended with
them, were, in innumerable instances, the sons or
grandsons of slaves or clients, foreigners by extraction,
who had thus become introduced, surreptitiously, as
it were, into the genuine Roman houses. It was by
succession to the traditions of the ancient houses that
they imbibed the character of the race which had pre
ceded them. They looked with extreme mortification
upon the fortunes of the family which had gained the
highest place among them, though it had been origin
ally no higher, but rather lower than themselves. Even
the first Caesar, who represented the Julian gens, was
a scion of a house noble rather than illustrious. The
second Caesar had been adopted into the Julian from
the Octavian, which was still less eminent than the
Julian. The Claudii, among whom Octavianus
Caesar sought an heir by adoption, were, indeed, more
illustrious than either of these ; but the Domitii, from
whom Nero himself descended, though highly respec
table, could claim no precedence before many others.
The jealousy which such comparison excited could
not fail to engender ill-will and evil designs. The
emperor was only too prone to suspect evil where
none might be intended. He was surrounded, of
course, by spies and flatterers, who imbued him with
distrust of the most loyal of his subjects ; it was only
too easy to discover the means of getting rid of those
who seemed most dangerous ; the actual necessities

60 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
of empire where the prince's position at the head of
a people dependent upon shows and largesses de
manded constant supplies, impelled him to exactions
and confiscations for the replenishment of his coffers,
till a desperate contest was excited between him and
his nobles; and the only question seemed to be,
whether he should crush them or they should succeed
in first destroying him.
In this state of barely-veiled hostility between the
Caesar and the whole class of the powerful and
wealthy citizens — the holders of the chief civil offices
and most important military posts, the ministers of
the state-religion, the possessors of the widest estates
in Italy and the provinces, the patrons of the longest
retinues of clients and dependents, the owners of the
most numerous hordes of slaves, the men, finally, of
most liberal culture throughout the empire — the em
peror, himself but one of their class, was obliged to
look about for some effective means of retaining his
isolated position at their head. He was a tyrant, and
the first and most obvious defence of tyranny is the
army. The great military force of the empire was
comprised in twenty-five or thirty legions, which, with
their auxiliary cohorts, might amount to 300,000
soldiers. These numbers, however imposing in the
aggregate, sufficed to furnish but slender detachments
for the defence of the many important stations at
which they were quartered. The frontier provinces
were assigned to the direct control of the emperor,
as commander-in-chief of the whole Roman people.
The more tranquil regions were placed under the
appointment of the senate. Such, at least, had. been

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 6 1
the disposition of military affairs made by Augustus ,
but the whole army had fallen in later times "under
the imperial prerogative. The defence, however, of
the frontiers required the concentration of several
legions on the lines of the Rhine, the Danube, and
the Euphrates. The captain in charge of these
powerful forces was himself an emperor on a smaller
scale, and the Caesar was often as much afraid to
recall as to leave him in his supreme authority, at a
distance. The spirit, indeed, of military obedience
was still wonderfully strong throughout the Roman
ranks, and the commander-in-chief could depend for
the most part on the fidelity even of these powerful
lieutenants, who ascribed to his auspices all their
successes, and surrendered to him the glory of their
triumphs. Perhaps he looked further to their mutual
jealousy to prevent their plotting against him. The
forces of the empire might thus be held in equili
brium ; but they^ were too far removed from the
centre, and generally too fully occupied in the de
fence of the provinces, to be directly available for
the protection of the imperial person in the city.
Caesar was obliged to look for his body-guard
nearer home. Since the disturbed era of the Civil
Wars, with their proscriptions and usurpations, the
men who successively leapt into power had found it
necessary to secure their personal safety by surround
ing themselves with a few companies of picked sol
diers, on whose fidelity they could fully depend.
Julius Caesar had rejected this unconstitutional re
source with a too generous contempt, and he was
assassinated. Antonius and Octavius both consented

62 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
to adopt it, and they survived. After the settlement
of the empire, Augustus felt himself free to dispense
with it ; he removed, at least, the body-guard from im
mediate attendance ; but he took care to- have some
cohorts of armed men, perhaps 12,000 in number,
quartered in the city close at hand, under the name
of an urban garrison. Tiberius had taken a more
decisive step for his personal security. He had col
lected these cohorts, increasing the number of men
to 20,000, in a fortified camp on the outskirts of the
city, and placed them under an officer whom he styled
the prefect of his praetorium. Such was the origin
of the " praetorian guards," who played so great a part
in the later history of Rome. This institution, like
all others of the imperial regime, had its foundation in
the habits of the Republic. It had been usual for the
imperator, called at first the praetor or leader, at the
head of his legions, to attach to himself a special re
tinue of men and officers, who constituted his prae
torium ; but the tent of the imperator in the field, or
his residence in winter quarters, obtained the same
appellation, and from thence the term prcetorium
came to be applied to the residence of a governor, to
the palace of the emperor himself, or to the splendid
dwellings of any great officers or nobles. This is to
be borne in mind, as it bears on the interpretation of
an important passage connected with St. PauFs resi
dence at Rome, which will come under discussion as
we proceed. At present we hasten on to complete
our rapid view of the political condition of the city.
The multitude of the free Roman citizens resident
in the capital constituted a power in the state on

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 63
which the emperor might, perhaps, more securely rely
than on either the nobility or the army. Julius Caesar
had placed himself at the head of the commonalty,
and pretended to represent the interests of the masses,
which at an earjier epoch had ranged themselves
under the patronage of Marius and Saturnmus. Caesar
had beaten down the Optimates, and destroyed the
last remains of the revived oligarchic constitution of
Sulla. As dictator, he had undertaken to reconstitute
the republic; he had democratized the senate, and
extended the franchise so as to embrace foreigners of
various classes and communities. To Caesar had suc
ceeded Octavius, and around Octavius had circulated
the aspirations of the new citizens, the new senators,
the foreigners, and provincials. The second of the
emperors had, indeed, striven to reconcile the claims
of the old families with the pretensions of the new ;
but he still avowed himself the champion of the com
mons ; the powers of the tribuneship, which he placed
in the very front of his prerogatives, proclaimed him
protector of the plebs. The emperors who next suc
ceeded, popularly known as a Tiberius and a Caius,
continued still to be regarded as pre-eminently the tri
bunes of the people, and to remind the multitude of
the citizens by their names of the popular heroes, the
Gracchi of the ancient republic. The commonalty of
Rome was, indeed, at this time a mongrel race. Their
votes in the campus had been taken from them ; they
had absorbed into their body the representatives of a
hundred provincial communities. The pure Roman
blood had been almost lost in the Italian; the Italian
had become largely diluted by the admixture of Greeks,

64 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Africans, Spaniards, and many others. The constant
progress of enfranchisement had poured into this
compound the blood of multitudes of slaves from the
barbarian races on the frontiers. Roman citizenship
now conferred hardly any special privilege, except
that of partaking in the dole of grain. The emperor
fed his people, and his people looked wistfully to him
for their daily bread. They feared that the revolution
which might be caused by his sudden decease would
cut off at once their daily supply ; and their living
depended upon his life. So, at least, they vaguely
imagined ; and it is not surprising that, with such a
notion floating in their minds, they clung instinctively
to him, and encouraged him to depend on their de
voted adherence.
Augustus, the real founder of the empire, had
effected an eminent stroke of policy in the encourage
ment he gave "to the deification of his deceased parent
Julius. The deification of mortals was an idea wholly
foreign to the Roman of the commonwealth. A very
ancient poetical legend ascribed, indeed, such an
apotheosis to Romulus ; but the divinity of the first
founder of the state had been almost wholly merged
in that of Mars, his celestial progenitor. None of the
early kings of Rome had enjoyed such a distinction
after him, and under the free-state the common equal
ity of all had made it impossible to elevate any one
citizen, however distinguished, to a place among the
potentates of the spiritual world. Certain families of
the Republic, however, prided themselves on the
family fiction that they were descended from the
companions of demigods and heroes. Some pre-

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 05
tence of this kind was set up by his grateful country
men for Scipio as the offspring of Jupiter. Julius
Caesar thus openly proclaimed himself descended from
Venus, to whom he dedicated a temple under the title
of Genitrix, the ancestress.
This assumption of a divine origin seems to have
been received with little remark by the dictator's con
temporaries, but it bore fruit after his decease. The
citizens lamented the loss of their hero, and bestowed
upon him the unprecedented distinction of burial
within the walls ; but it was by the foreigners, probably,
who regarded him as their special patron, that the
impulse was given to the ascription to him of divine
honours. A shrine was immediately erected over his re
mains, and this was soon converted into a temple in
whicha special cultus was performed and sanctioned. It
was affirmed that his soul was received into the heavens,
and had been rendered visible to mortals in the comet
which appeared at the period of his death. Augustus
perceived at once the importance of this popular
movement. But, cautious as he was, and well aware
how alien hero-worship was from the temper of the
Romans, fearing, no doubt, a reaction of popular
feeling, he professed to forbid them to draw the natu
ral inference that he, too, as a descendant of the divine
Julius, partook of a divine origin. The adulation,
however, of the degenerate people outran his forbear
ance. All he could do was to prohibit the worship
of himself, while still alive, in the city; in the
provinces the ardour of the Greeks and Orientals was
not to be checked. In Asia Minor, more especially,
the god Augustus seems to have usurped the honours
F

66 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
of the celestial hierarchy. Temples arose to this upstart
divinity on all sides. Flatterers and poets were not
to be restrained by the official reserve of the chief of
the State himself. Virgil and Horace did not scruple
to use the language of religious devotion towards the
divine son of the divine Julius. The religious prin
ciple, which had been reduced to the lowest ebb by
the extinction of belief in the old national mythologies,
seemed to throw itself with ardour upon the new and
gracious object which was thus presented to it. The
emperor, it felt, was a real, substantial power; it
could not tell whether Jupiter and Juno were any
powers at all. The emperor was both beauteous
in his person and beneficent in his character ; the
reputed deities of the olden time, however glorious in
popular imagination, had been seen by no man, and no
man could trace the stream of their bounty to his own
door. On the death of Augustus the Senate was not
indisposed to gratify the general sentiment by pre
tending formally to enrol him among the denizens of
Olympus. His successor reigned thenceforth by a
fresh title. Besides the consent of Senate and people,
he too might claim, like Augustus, to be heir-presump
tive to divine honours. The imperial family began
now to assume a definite position apart from that of
their highest nobles. The admitted divinity of their
ancestors invested them with a nimbus of glory which
dazzled the eyes of the multitude. They reigned in
some sense by divine right. Though the Senate
eventually rejected the claim advanced for the deifi
cation of Tiberius, whom it detested, the popular
notior. of the divinity of his family became rooted

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 67
more deeply in the minds of the people with each
new accession, until it recognised in the youthful Nero
the representative of a sacred principle. This senti
ment the emperor studied to maintain by attention
to every vulgar prejudice and caprice. He gratified
the people not only with doles and largesses, but
with every new and exciting amusement he could
devise for them ; and with no show were they more
delighted than with that of their charming Caesar sing
ing, playing, and driving in the circus, while a zest was
added to their enjoyment by the disgust such exhi
bitions were seen to excite in the more staid and
solemn citizens of the older race. Thus the absence
of a great military force at the centre of government
might be sufficiently compensated by the passionate
devotion of the multitude.
But, in fact, the prince, the nobles, and the people
were all bound together in mutual support by their
common peril from the overwhelming crowd of slaves
which pressed on all sides upon them. The prince
himself was lord of thousands of these degraded
beings, who enjoyed no political status, nor any-
social rights. The households or " families " of the
magnates were hardly less numerous than that of
the emperor himself. Stringent law and unflinching
severity were required to keep these elements of dis
order from bursting forth. The masters lived with
a tacit understanding that they should support one
another to the uttermost in their dealings with the
dangerous class among which they daily moved. A
frightful instance is recorded at this very time of the
barbarity of their discipline, when, on the murder <>f"
f 2

68 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
a certain Pedanius by some of his slaves, the emperor
was urged to enforce the ancient law, and deliver over
his whole " family," amounting to 400 persons, for
execution. It would seem, indeed, that this whole
sale massacre was regarded as a pedantic recurrence
to an obsolete ordinance ; the mass of the people
murmured at it, just as the populace in England mur
mured at last against the execution of the barbarous
laws against heresy, which they had originally sanc
tioned and approved. Nevertheless it was judged
necessary, or at least expedient, to carry out the sen
tence. But if the great nobles and slaveholders were
thus afraid of their slaves, the common citizens, who,
for the most part, were destitute of slaves of their own,
and depended in their abject poverty on the State pro
vision, were jealous of a class who might become
their rivals. While law and usage were very favour
able to easy terms of enfranchisement, the people
would generally discourage and resist it, and would
lend all their influence to support the master against
the bondman.
Such were the forces which preserved at this period
the social equilibrium at Rome, and contributed year
by year to the equalization of all classes of freemen,
under the control of a despot, who was himself the
development of a sentiment quite as much as he was
the cre'iiion of brute force. The Romans submitted to
the emperor because they believed in the emperor ;
and they believed in him perhaps the more intensely
because they had nearly lost all other belief. The
last age of the Republic had witnessed a rapid disin
tegration of creeds. The scepticism of the Greeks,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 69
to which the Romans were introduced at the time of
their conquest of the Hellenic world, had come
suddenly upon them, and had found them wholly
unprepared to resist, or even to reason upon it.
They had continued for ages to practise their ancient
forms of worship, and to recite the names of the
divinities accepted among them, without bestowing a
thought perhaps on the actual truth of the legends con
nected with them, or the powers and attributes claimed
for them by immemorial tradition. Their national
faith was like the poet's description of the venerable
oak, spreading its arms far and wide over the field
around it, adorned with many ancient trophies and
cherished associations, but putting forth no leaves of
moral practice, and resting on no roots of intelligent
conviction. It was ready to fall at the first blast of
free inquiry ; and the assault made upon it by the
Greek philosophers was both vehement and persistent.
But the Romans easily satisfied themselves with a
compromise between faith and usage. They clung
to their outward forms, their rites and ceremonies ;
they still recited their fanciful legends and traditions,
at the same time that they openly rejected all genu
ine belief in the objects they professed most punc
tually to adore. The famous speech of Caesar in the
Senate on the sentence to be pronounced against the
Catilinarian conspirators is a type of the sentiments
most current among the statesmen of the day. The
supreme Pontiff, the chief of the State religion, pub
licly declared his denial of a future retribution, the
cardinal doctrine of all Greek and Roman mythology,
uor, it would seem, did any one rebuke him. This

70 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
disbelief in a future state was, no doubt, widely
diffused among the cultured class at Rome, which
imbibed its sentiments mainly from Grecian sources.
Such a disbelief never, indeed, penetrated very deep
among the masses, which reason less and are more
acutely sensible to moral feeling. Nevertheless, the
disturbances of the civil wars had so broken up the
ideas and principles of the Roman people that they
had easily suffered the services of religion to fall into
collapse. The temples had everywhere succumbed
to neglect and decay. The temple worship had been
very generally disused and forgotten. In setting
himself to restore the manners and morals of the
Romans Augustus fixed his attention on the outward
condition of the old religion. He was careful to
remind his people how it had been affirmed by
some of the wisest of the ancients that they owed
their eminent good fortune mainly to their reverence
for the gods. Other nations had been not less brave,
others had been even more acute and intelligent,
but none had equalled them in the cultivation of the
true sentiment of devotion. He could venture to
assure them that their recent distresses had been
inflicted upon them by the resentment of the gods,
whom they had of late so impiously abandoned. He
sternly recalled them to a sense of the duties they
owed to their divinities, and of the benefits they
might expect to accrue by confessing their sins towards
them. The outward revival of the national religion
which ensued is one of the most curious incidents in
history. It will be fitting to give here some atten
tion to it, both on account of its own general interest,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 7 I
and in order to prepare us for understanding the
religious sentiment as it prevailed at Rome a hundred
years later.
The cult of the Roman divinities had been main
tained, for the most part, by the honourable obligations
immemorially imposed upon the great national families.
Every gens was bound to keep up the private worship
of its patron demigod, and, in many cases, to maintain
the temples of the greater divinities, whose service
was of public importance. The chief deities of Hellas
had been introduced gradually into Rome, but in
almost every case under names of Italian origin. It
was only in the later ages of the Republic that these
gods of Greece had been generally recognised by the
whole Roman people. Their temples had, for the
most part, been erected by the piety, or, perhaps, the
fancy of victorious captains returning from their
foreign expeditions. The care of these edifices had
not been assumed by the people themselves, but had
been intrusted to the descendants of their founder,
and they had been kept in repair, not so much pro
bably by the revenues settled upon them, as by the
spontaneous but long unfailing devotion of the chief
of these families. The noble-minded Catulus had
testified his public spirit in restoring the great temple
of Jupiter, Best and Greatest, at his own charge. But
in the general decay of religious feeling such spirit
would be rarely manifested. The great families were
decimated by slaughter or impoverished by confisca
tions. So it was that at the end of the civil wars,
when the Romans took breath and looked around
them, they saw the shrines of their divinities falling

72 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
on all sides into ruin, their sacred images foul, it was
said, with smoke, or mouldering with mildew.
About fifty years ago, when our English people were
beginning to recover from the vast expenses and ab
sorbing interest of the greatest of our own wars, it was
remarked, by a shrewd observer, that the rural churches
throughout the country were actually tottering to their
fall. There was, indeed, far less-excuse for the neglect
by which these edifices had suffered ; but such had
been this neglect and its consequences, so hopeless, to
all appearance, the reparation and revival which alone
could save them, that he foresaw their utter destruc
tion in the course of the half-century which has
since elapsed. But from that moment, it may
be remarked, the era of church repair commenced
among us, and the happy result is now conspicu
ously manifest. So, also, at this period of its
lowest outward condition, when the revival of its
ancient fanes and the ancient spirit of temple-building
might seem least to be expected, Augustus under
took to restore the worship of the gods of Rome,
and outwardly, at least, he did restore it. The par
ticular duty of renovation had lapsed to the nation
itself; and Augustus, as censor, was the guardian of
public duty. Accordingly he rebuilt, for his own con
tribution, the temples of Jupiter, of Mars, of Cybele,
of Apollo; he deputed to his empress Livia the
restoration of the fanes of Juno. He invited his nobles
to emulate his example. New edifices, ampler and
richer than before, rose on every side, devoted to the
ancient deities of Olympus ; but the national faith
was more popularly resuscitated by the dedication of

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 73
lesser shrines to the Lares, the homelier patrons of
domestic life, which were placed at the corners of the
streets in every quarter of the city. These were modest
chapels, doubtless of small dimensions ; but it
would be to these, numerous as they were, that Virgil
specially alludes, when he speaks of the " three hun
dred goodly shrines " erected by Augustus " through
out the whole city."
Such was this great work of outward " restoration,"
to which it would be hard to find a parallel until our
own times, and except in our own land. It would be
deeply interesting could we trace the internal effect
which it actually produced. We shall recognise, in
deed, as we proceed, the prevalence of a deeper and
a more extended moral sentiment among the cultured
classes of the city, together with a philosophical theory
broader in its principles, and issuing in a more healthy
moral practice ; and these we may willingly ascribe,
in some degree, to the sure effect of any renewal of
spiritual devotion, however false its objects, however
prone it may be to superstition and idolatry. The
wide gulf in religious sentiment between Lucretius
and Virgil, and hardly less between Catullus and
Horace, marks the spiritual advance which had been
made in a single generation. We shall see rea
son to judge that even the outward revival under
Augustus contributed to the preparation of Rome for
the preaching of the Gospel by the Apostle. Augustus
himself was blind, it may be readily believed, to any
such moral issues. The effect he wished and studied
to produce was not the revival and strengthening of
moral sentiment, but merely a practical recurrence to

74 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
the ancient modes of life, which had marked the simpler
and happier ages of the Republic, and were supposed
in his view to be intimately connected with them.
He renewed the sumptuary regulations of antiquity,
encouraged legitimate marriage according to the
formal prescriptions of the state religion, revived the
study of law and ritual, defined and maintained the
institutions of property, and recalled the Romans to
a sense of the dignity of their fathers' customs, even
of their dress and their domestic habits. He looked
backwards when he should have looked forwards;
for the idea of human progress and improvement was
unknown to the statesmen of antiquity. The old
ways, they were assured, were still the best, and
every decline from them was, in their view, a loss
which could only be repaired by formally and punc
tually reverting to them, as far as change of circum
stances would allow. Enough, perhaps, if they could
still cling to the skirt of antiquity, which it was im
possible wholly to recover. But meanwhile other
forces were actually at work, and we may believe that
beneath the surface of mere formal observance there
was a truly spiritual revival also in progress, which will
present us with considerations of the deepest interest.
But this revival will deserve to be traced back through
the earlier stages of its life and progress.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 75

CHAPTER V.
CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNITY OF GOD AND THE COMMON
BROTHERHOOD OF MANKIND ENGENDERED BY THE
CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.
The principle of monarchical government was no
longer foreign to the ideas of the Romans at the period
of the establishment of the empire. Augustus, it may
be said, rather followed the national sentiment in this
respect than led it. The Romans had flourished,
indeed, and conquered for five centuries under a
Republic, and they still looked back to the free-state
as the period of their most transcendent glories ; but
free institutions had broken down under the stress of
their military policy, and. had proved themselves to
be no longer available after the catastrophe of the
civil wars. Monarchy, on the other hand, had recently
been rendered familiar to them under the forms in
which it was presented by the Oriental communities
over which they had triumphed. These forms had
been made peculiarly attractive by the elegance and
splendour of the Eastern civilization. No Roman
citizen had returned from his sojourn in Asia without
confessing that the East had far exceeded the West in
the arts and luxuries which impart its highest charm
to life. The seductive influence of Hellenic or

76 ST. PAUL AT ROME
Asiatic culture had led many minds to regard with
favour the political institutions under which that cul
ture had so conspicuously flourished. Many of the
leading statesmen of the declining commonwealth
were beginning to acquiesce in the tendency of public
affairs to the elevation of a single personal ruler at
Rome. If the monarchies of an Attalus, an Antiochus,
or a Perseus had proved themselves unequal to con
tend with the sons of Roman freedom, it might be
remembered that these states were but the fragments
of the mighty empire of Alexander, and a hope might
still be cherished that the empire of Alexander would
be reproduced under the sovereignty of Caesar or
Augustus. But the leading idea of monarchy, as represented
by the Eastern communities, was the equality of all
under the primacy of a single individual. Monarchy,
in the view of the Roman world, was the final triumph
of democracy over aristocracy, of the many over the
few. More than this, it was the triumph of the pro
vinces over the city, of subjects over their masters, of
the alien races of the world-wide empire over the race
which had conquered and gradually absorbed them.
When the bulk of the subject races pronounced in
favour of monarchy, the knell of the old exclusive
principle sounded. All the communities of the ancient
world had at first been isolated and exclusive ; they
had striven to set up a moral barrier between them
selves and strangers, by creeds, cults, and social
usages, peculiar to themselves, on which they placed
their reliance, while they stiffly refused to communicate
them to others. No ancient race had indulged in this

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 77
isolation more proudly than the Roman ; but, again
and again, the Romans had been compelled to relax
from it, and to accept fraternity with their neighbours.
It was under the empire of the Caesars that this process
of mutual assimilation was at last completed, and the
polity which it developed saved Rome from premature
decay by transforming the Romans themselves into
cosmopolites, and the cosmopolites of Greece and
Asia into Romans.
The wider view of the equality and fraternity of
man which was thus opened, had received its first
impulse from the Macedonian conquests. The policy
of the great Alexander, blending, as it did, Greece and
Asia together, and diffusing through so large a portion
of the world's surface the conception of generic unity,
had suddenly caused a radical and lasting revolution
in human ideas. Doubtless many things had been
long working together to this end; the designs of
Providence for the teaching of all nations and kindreds
that they are the common children of one divine
Parent, had been long ripening to their appointed
crisis ; but it was by the brief ten years of Alexander's
rule in Asia that the great result was actually accom
plished, and the conception of universal brotherhood
so firmly established in men's minds that it has never
since been obliterated. This idea was, no doubt, tem
porarily obscured after the disruption of Alexander's
dominions ; yet the Greek, the Syrian, the Persian, and
the Egyptian kingdoms never felt themselves alien
from one another. They still retained a common lan
guage, a common religion, a common sense of federal
unity. They were prepared to look with a common

78 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
anticipation to the spiritual revelations which they
already expected to be made to them.
The doctrine of the unity of mankind is recognised
as a fundamental principle of the Gospel, and this
unity is further declared therein to be not only natural,
as derived from one common human parent, but
spiritual, as of a common spiritual family, brought
into covenant with a common God, and Father of all.
But of the civilized peoples existing at the date of our
Lord's coming, there was none to which such an idea
as this last was more repugnant than to the Jewish.
It might well seem impossible to convince the Jew
that he was spiritually connected with the Barbarian
and the Scythian, when he held himself wholly distinct
from the heathen Greek, and could hardly reconcile
himself to communion with the Samaritan on his own
borders. This, however, was the first problem which
our Lord's disciples set before themselves, as soon as
they couid arrive at the true Christian conclusion in
their own minds. The teaching of their divine Master
had brought this conclusion before them, and the
assistance of the Holy Spirit had matured the con
viction of it in their hearts. After a debate and a
struggle, they resolved to throw themselves frankly
into it. St. Peter preached it at Jerusalem to the
assembled brethren, and prevailed on the whole body
to accept it, and make it the fundamental basis of
their teaching. St. Paul and his immediate associates
carried it onward among the nations, declaring it first
to the Jews and afterwards to the Gentiles. The
nations among whom they preached it were those
which had once been subjects of the Macedonian,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 79
and were now subjects of the Roman empire. We
have next to examine what preparation for its recep
tion had been generally made, and more particularly
what welcome it might expect to obtain in the great
city, which had inherited the social traditions of Greece
and Asia, and, to a great extent, had incorporated
them with its own.
The theory, indeed, that mankind are originally
derived from one stock, together with the moral results
which follow from it, had been partially admitted
among the philosophers of Greece from an early period.
While the poets were still dreaming of Autochthons
and Aborigines, sprung independently from the soil
on which they were born, Pythagoras had asserted
the common parentage of the whole animal creation,
and the transmigration of souls from man to the brutes,
and from the brutes back again to man. It is true
that this wild speculation had been long rejected,
and lived, at the epoch before us, only in poetical
traditions ; but it had given place to another, not less
significant of the essential unity of mankind, namely,
that the human soul might be transfused after death
into the divine, and become finally absorbed in it.
The unity of God and the unity of human nature, thus
fancifully developed, were the dogmas which stamped
the character of the Pythagorean teaching. From
Pythagoras we are told to date the first assault on
the old Hellenic mythology. Many refined religious
sentiments, far beyond the scope of the ancient Poly
theism, are preserved to us from the ages which fol
lowed, particularly in the remains of Euripides, the
preacher of popular ethics, and in the more subtile

So ST. PAUL AT ROME.
and searching reasoning of Socrates. The moral tone
of religion continued to rise with the decline of out
ward ceremonial superstitions. A further advance
becomes conspicuous in Plato and Aristotle, and the
same progress is maintained in the schools which
these masters founded, or which sprang out of their
teaching. The theory of Epicurus, however negative
as regards the being of God and a Providence, is
generous in its view of human relations ; but it is in
the philosophy of Zeno and the Stoics that we shall
remark the nearest approach to the true Christian stan
dard both of belief and practice. This standard, in
deed, the Stoics never reached, not even when they had
the light of the Gospel displayed before their eyes ;
but, it may be allowed that they had made a sensible
advance towards it in some essential particulars, long
before the first dawn of Christian light had glimmered
upon the world.
The doctrine of the unity of man was involved in
the primary teaching of the Stoics. Zeno believed
himself a citizen neither of Athens nor Sparta, nor of
Tyre, where he is said to have been born, but of the
universe itself. His early home, placed midway be
tween the universal emporia of Antioch and Alexan
dria, might remind him on either side of the equal
terms on which all races met in those marts of com
merce ; and the traditions of Tyre itself bore a similar
significance. The school of the Porch, which he
instituted at Athens, was remarkable for the liberal
reception it gave to students from all quarters. It
was under the teaching of the Stoics that Athens first
became a real university. Hitherto the Grecian stu
dent had traversed the world to learn the wisdom

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 8 1
of the foreigner at his own home; thenceforth the
foreigners crowded to the centre of Greece to learn
of the Greek, but at the same time to impart to the
Greek and to one another the learning with which
they were themselves imbued. The Stoic was the
first cosmopolite. Plato had advanced a step beyond
the popular notions of his countrymen in declaring
that all Greeks are friends and brothers of the Greeks,
and in laying down rules of humanity for their treat
ment of one another. But he does not extend this
consideration beyond the Greeks. The Greeks, he
still says, are the natural enemies of the barbarians.
He still clings to the ancient idea of the city as- the
nucleus of society, and takes as his model of a city
the most narrow and illiberal of all the Grecian com
munities, namely, the Spartan. He allows of slavery;
but here, too, he is in advance of the common senti
ment of his countrymen; for he admits slavery only as
a political necessity, and betrays very clearly, by his
loose way of discussing it, that he knows not how to
fit it logically into his ethical system. Aristotle, on
the other hand, not only holds the institution to be
necessary, but at the same time resolutely maintains
that it is right and proper according to the order of
Nature herself. The Greeks generally conceived it to
be impossible that the labourer and handicraftsman
could take any useful part in political life ; but while
Xenophon would make an exception to this conclusion
in favour of the husbandman, Aristotle sternly ex
cluded him also. This prince of philosophers pro
tested that among the human race beings there must
be of an inferior order, destined by nature to illiberal
G

82 ST. PAUL AT ROME..
occupations only. Many persons, he confessed, are
actually made slaves who ought not to be such ; but
that accident, he contended, did not invalidate the
principle that many are and ought to be slaves.
Greeks, he held, are naturally masters ; barbarians are
naturally slaves.
It was impossible, however, that such desperate
reasoning could maintain itself in the face of the
broad political unity introduced into the world by
Alexander. It may be surmised, indeed, that the
manifest failure of the illustrious Aristotle to justify
slavery on natural grounds threw discredit on any
such attempt subsequently. Accordingly the natural
equality of Greek and barbarian, of bond and free,
was fully admitted by the Stoics, and was never again
controverted as a philosophical dogma. The fact,
however, remained as before. Men continued to be
bought and sold, and kept in bonds, and deprived of
all human rights, as openly as ever. The only dif
ference perhaps was, that they were no longer insulted
by the pretence that God and Nature had created
them for that end only. The philosophers accepted
the fact, just as plainer men did ; and they fell back,
we must suppose, when constrained to account to
themselves for it, upon the excuse that death or
slavery was the common alternative with all conquered
enemies, and that men might well be made slaves to
save them from slaughter. From the time of Aris
totle they seem anxious to avoid the consideration of
the problem altogether.
But the grand discovery of the unity of man pointed
directly to the unity of God also. Here, too, the

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 83
Stoics found the way prepared for them by the effects
of the great Macedonian conquest. As long as the
Greeks and other peoples regarded themselves each as
a distinct and special race, under the protection of their
own respective divinities, they took little heed of the
divinities to which the others were attached. But as
they got to have more dealings in common, and to
know each other better, it became impossible to hold
them aloof from the spiritual ideas of their neigh
bours. It may seem a paradox to say that the idea
of the unity of God was the direct result of the pro
gress of polytheism ; yet it is probably true that the
minds of the most intelligent of the ancients found a
refuge in monotheism from the perplexity into which
they were thrown by the recognition of the many gods
of the many nations which their habits of mutual in
tercourse forced upon them. Pythagoras, the learned
-and much-travelled philosopher of the sixth century
B.C., may have the credit of being the first of the
Greeks to see clearly beyond the old Homeric my
thology unto the One God, who comprehends and
embraces all spiritual intelligence. Unpopular and
even dangerous as such views were, they seem to have
been studiously preserved to later generations beneath
the veil of the mysteries.
With the progress of reflection this idea of the
Divine unity became more commonly accepted. While
some schools of thought were beginning to reject God
altogether, others were seeking Hint beneath the dis
guise which He had assumed in the hands of Homer
and Hesiod. ^Eschylus, bold and imaginative, indi
cates plainly such a belief. There can be no doubt
g 2

84 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
that Socrates accepted this solution of the great
spiritual problem, though from his leaning to the aristo-
cratical element in government, which constitutes itself
the guardian of the traditional religion, he continued
to observe established cults himself, and recommended
them to his disciples. His followers, however, soon
threw off all pretence of adhering to the national
beliefs. The conquests of Alexander, while they
equalized the condition of the whole aggregate of
races subjected to his rule, equalized no less the
claims of all their respective divinities to the common
recognition of all. Polytheism became discredited
by its own universality. Two opposing forces re
mained to divide the intellect of the age between
them — atheism and monotheism. The one or the
other of these was accepted by the multitudes of the
thoughtful men who rushed away from the supersti
tions of the early world. Many there were who
openly avowed and preached both the one or the
other of these views ; but many more still remained
who, while they more covertly attached themselves
to the theory of negation, still deemed it prudent to
hold, at least outwardly, by the old traditions, or
shrank, from timidity or more purely reverential mo
tives, from breaking altogether with them. The
ignorant and superstitious believers still formed, even
in the time of the Stoics and Epicureans, the bulk of
mankind. They were conscious of their numbers and
strength, and they showed their jealousy of superior in
telligence by generally requiring a show, at least, of
decorous respect for the objects of their own infatuated
devotion. It was in the empire of Alexander, however,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 85
that the doctrines both of Zeno and Epicurus
struck their roots. The one was essentially mono
theistic, the other atheistic ; and these two conflicting
theories divided between them, at the time of the
first preaching of the Gospel, the great majority of
men of intelligence and reflection. The Epicureans
seemed to prevail in numbers and influence during
the hey-day of the Roman power and prosperity.
The severe lessons of humility which the civil wars
enforced upon the recent conquerors of Greece and
Asia abated their pretensions. The school of the
Stoics rose much higher in favour with the cultured
classes of the generation which was born to struggle
against more adverse fortune. Augustus found mind
and thought at Rome atheistic ; he left it mono
theistic. Such, at least, may be accepted as a broad estimate
of the prevalent disposition of the intelligent classes
at the centre of empire at the era of our Lord's com
ing. The emperor himself had held aloof from either
theory. He affected to be a plain, practical man,
and no ideologue. He thought it, no doubt, more
important to keep on good terms with the impulsive,
unreflecting masses of his subjects than to curry
favour with one school of philosophers, in doing which
he would lose the favour of the other. But he was
not content to hold a merely negative position in this
respect. He deemed it politic to revive the poly
theism of his people, possible perhaps to effect such
a revival, but certainly politic to attempt, or at least
to seem to attempt it. In his own younger days,
indeed, he had allowed himself to sport wantonly with

86 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
holy things, and, if we may believe the stories of the
day, to turn the divinities of Olympus into ridicule
among his boon companions ; but as he advanced
in years he cast off the slough of his early infidelity :
in his manners, as well as in his public measures,
he affected the gravest decorum, and he set an ex
ample, which was promptly followed by his friends
and parasites, of implicit deference equally to all his
patrons, to the senate, the people, and the gods ot
Rome. With Cicero had terminated the first age of Roman
philosophy, which had been, in fact, a mere summary
of the theories of the Grecian schools, devoid of any
life and character essentially its own. Cicero himself
assumes in turn the position of the Stoics and the
Epicureans, and leaves us in doubt to which of them
he most inclines. If he holds any definite views
himself, they approach nearest to those of the New
Academy, which was, in fact, little else than a nega
tion of all positive views whatever. The Romans of
his age were for the most part content to listen to the
harangues of the various professors of Greek philo
sophy; to hold their own conclusions in suspense,
while they gave access and a hearing to all. Surely
Augustus showed much practical sense in refusing, as
we are told, to addict himself to any one of the rival
schools which Cicero might have told him could bring
him to no definite conclusion on any of the true ob
jects of moral speculation, which might instruct him,
indeed, in the history of the human mind, but could
assure him of no specific moral or intellectual truth.
His business, above all the Romans, was, not to

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 87
debate questions of eternal truth, but to sway men's
hopes and fears by appeal to their immediate in
terests, and to inure them to habits of obedience by
the discipline of cults and ceremonies. His policy,
such as it was, was pregnant with mighty conse
quences, much more so than he was probably himself
aware.

88 ST. PAUL AT ROME.

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEACHING OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY UNDER THE
EARLY EMPIRE.
Such, we may believe, was the position which Au
gustus, as a practical statesman, was content to take
up, a position of neutrality as regarded the question
in debate between the existing schools of Greek
philosophy. But, in fact, the closing years of the
Republic had witnessed a new development of specu
lation of an origin and character more truly Roman.
The Romans were at this period thoroughly weary of
the debates of the Grecian schools. The eloquence
of Cicero had thrown a gleam of splendour over their
shadowy discussions ; but even Cicero had failed to
interest his countrymen in the unpractical and useless
subjects of thought to which he had given so large a
portion of his own priceless time and attention. The
Romans already sighed for something more to the
purpose for the conduct of public or private life ; for
some philosophy which could be a guide in times of
activity and peril, which could teach men how to live
and how to die, rather than Jiold up to them a faint
portrait at best of abstract goodness and holiness. At
the close of the Republic there was rising into notice
a school of such practical instruction, to which we
may give the name of the New Stoicism, a school

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 89
which may claim both Cato and Brutus among the
earliest of its Roman disciples, as men who strove to
give a definite aim to the maxims they had imbibed
from their Grecian masters. It may be presumed
that the New Stoics of the Roman discipline were
men who, leaving the teaching of Zeno and Chrysip-
pus, turned back to the elements of Pythagoras him
self. In the time of Cicero Pythagoreism was not
perhaps preached at all at Rome. The Greeks had
almost forgotten it ; to Rome it had hardly penetrated.
The gross materialism of the age had turned con
temptuously away from the moral doctrines which
were founded upon ascetic self-restraint, and eventu
ated in mystical idealism. But the pride of the Ro
mans was disenchanted on all sides by the progress
and the issues of the Civil Wars. All that they had
gloried in was turned to their shame ; all they trusted
in seemed to break and crumble under them. The
commonplaces of modern rhetoric were to them actual
realities. Rome could not bear her own bulk ; Rome,
they felt and confessed, was torn in pieces by her own
conquering passions. They had now to reconstruct
their ideas of life and rules of living. They had to
look for some principles on which they could rely to
support them under disappointment and mortification,
to compensate them for the many objects of interest
which they found no longer attainable, to reconcile
some of them to a private station in place of the
brilliant public career to which they had deemed
themselves bom, to chasten in all the yearnings of
ambition, to confine their worldly desires to petty
objects, to lead them perhaps to look to other recom-

yo ST. PAUL AT ROME.
penses of a more solid and effectual kind to which
they had hitherto given little heed. The assurances
of a revealed religion were as yet denied them ; but
it was in the aspirations of the New Stoicism, even in
the idealism of Pythagoras, its remote founder, that
they sought with ardour, though with slender hope,
for the nearest compensation for such a blessing.
We learn that Augustus, while refusing to sub
scribe to the tenets of the Porch, the Garden, or the
Academy, the three orthodox theories of his day, did
not withhold his attention at least from the preachers
of the new Stoicism. Areius, Alexander of ^Egae,
Athenodorus and Nestor, both of Tarsus, are men
tioned among the sages who waited upon him and
the empress Livia at their residence on the Palatine.
and assumed what we may call the direction of their
consciences, giving practical lessons on the control of
the passions, and the moderation of desires. These
were Greeks ; but the most consummate teacher ot
this new doctrine among many was a noble Roman,
Q. Sextius, who, if he did not call himself a Stoic,
deserved to be noted as the founder of the school
which did the greatest honour to that name in the
following generations. Other Romans succeeded
him, and these teachers, though forming themselves
on the methods of the Greeks before them, broke
away without scruple from the subtle refinements of
disputatious verbiage in which their masters were
apparently losing themselves. They reanimated the
science they had received from their masters with a
vigour and vivacity wholly their own ; it is the ardour
and eloquence of Sextius that tends to form the

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 9 1
style both of thought and expression by which the
greatest of the Roman Stoics is individually distin
guished. Seneca particularizes this teacher as the
one to whom he owed more of his own philosophy
than to any other.
It may give some idea of the activity and influence
of this school if we refer to the names of its professors,
which, indeed, are almost all that is left us of them.
The elder Sextius, who had flourished in the time of
Cicero, was succeeded by his son, whom Seneca
praises for the constancy with which he inculcated
the leading dogma of the later Stoics, that the truly
virtuous man is himself divine, and that Jupiter is
only superior to him inasmuch as Jupiter's excellence is
not limited in time. Here we have the highest heathen
encouragement to virtue, to become like the deity.
From this source there flows a copious stream of ex
hortation to all practical virtues, to fortitude, justice,
temperance, and frugality. The teaching of Sextius
seems, as it were, to foreshadow the tone of Christian
pulpit oratory. This system of emphatic moral
direction, which became established by the school of
the later Stoics, was illustrated in the hands of the
practical Roman masters by constant reference to
actual examples. The history of Rome itself was
the ready storehouse from which they drew their
examples of morality ; and their language was diversi
fied by repeated allusions to the familiar subjects of
Roman law and Roman warfare. When we read in
St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians such sentences
as these, " Take unto you the whole armour of
God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day ;

92 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
.... Having your loins girt about with truth, ana
having on the breastplate of righteousness," &C.1
and remember that it was written from Rome, we may
trace in the metaphor a reference to such a passage as
that which Seneca cites from one of the Sextii, which
took rank doubtless among the common-places of
Stoic predication : " An army marches in battle array,
prepared for combat at whichever side an enemy may
appear. So should the wise man prepare himself.
He should draw forth all his virtues in every direction.
so that his forces may be ready at all points, and
answer to the word of command  The wise
man, sustained aud vigilant, will not retreat in the
face of poverty, of sorrow, of ignominy or pain. He
will advance fearlessly against them all, he will hold
on his way confidently 'amidst them."
Among the disciples of Sextius we hear of a Cornelius
Celsus, a Crassitius, a Fabianus, whose names indicate
that they were probably Romans ; though Sextius, at'
least, wrote, as we are informed, in Greek. To these
were attached others who were doubtless Greeks by-
origin, Sotion the preceptor of Seneca, Metronax,
and Attalus, all of whom are individually distinguished
by some trait of personal teaching or character. We
may say of them generally that the main object of
their teaching was morality and the rules of virtuous
living, though they did not abstain altogether from
speculation either in physics or metaphysics. But,
above all things, they enjoined self-examination and
the education of the conscience. It is herein that
Efhes. vi. 13.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 93
we see the great advance philosophy had made from
the time of Cicero, and still more it may be pre
sumed, from the time of Epicurus and Zeno. It was
in order to cultivate this habit of strict moral training,
and render the heart more susceptible to moral
influences, that the new school recurred more urgently
to the doctrine of Pythagoras, which taught men to
purify their affections by abstaining from their coarse
indulgence in animal food. Seneca has told us how
he was persuaded in his youth, under the guidance of
his Stoical masters, to renounce the use of meat
altogether. " Excited by their discourses," he says,
" I commenced the practice of such abstinence in a
moment of enthusiasm. At the end of a year habit*
had made it easy and even agreeable. I was con
vinced that my spiritual nature acquired greater vigoui
and activity ; and now, after I have long given up
this discipline, I am still inclined to believe it was
so. Why did I then renounce it?" he continued,
" because, when the philosophers were banished from
Rome under Tiberius, this abstinence being one of the
marks of their teaching, my father entreated me, from
motives of prudence, to relinquish a practice which
might bring me under suspicion of being one of their
party myself. So it was that I returned to my former
mode of living ; and I confess that I found no diffi
culty in resuming the use of better cheer." 1
This translation is slightly paraphrased ; but it
seems to preserve the writer's real meaning, for he
intimates that the foreign rites which Tiberius prc-
1 Senec. Epist., 108.

94 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
scribed, namely, the Jewish and the Egyptian, as
Tacitus more particularly specifies them, were con
nected in the minds of the Romans with the
dogmas respecting abstinence which were taught
by the philosophers of the day. This connec
tion is important ; for it shows that the moral
teaching of the schools was grounded, to a great
extent, upon practical observances. No doubt the
religious usages of the Jews and the Egyptians, even
in the city, as far as they related to the use or pro
hibition of particular viands, were harmless in them
selves, and it is difficult to perceive in what way they
could have attracted the jealous attention of the
' Government. It was only in their connection with
the moral teaching of the prevailing schools of
thought that they might assume an appearance of
hostility to the existing polity. But the imperial de
spotism looked askance at all freedom of thought,
especially of thought which arrayed itself in opposition
to it, and engaged its votaries to murmur at it, to
thwart it, or at best to withdraw from all active
adherence to it. The disciples of the teachers of
the day showed themselves adverse to the imperial
interests in all these ways. If they dared not act or
speak against them, they were known, at least, to talk
privately in disparagement of them, to busy themselves
in the composition of histories or pamphlets to be
read, as they would sometimes say, after their own
deaths, when their sentiments would exercise a mis
chievous effect on the next generation. As yet, how
ever, in the reign of Tiberius, and indeed of his next
successors, this hostile tendency was more or less

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 95
disguised, and offered no reasonable excuse to the
Government for overt measures of repression. The
emperor was unwilling, almost nervously unwilling,
to break with the thinking men of his day. He knew
well that his system could not please them ; he de
spaired, for the most part, of conciliating them ; but
he would not, perhaps he dared not, prosecute them.
They were still a power in the State. The class to
which they belonged still preserved the show at least
of acquiescence ; and it was only by stealth, by covert
and oblique methods, that he strove to check them,
and defend himself against them. In the reign of
Tiberius it was premature, as it would seem, to banish
the preachers and teachers from Rome. The suc
cessor of Augustus was satisfied with aiming an
indirect blow against them by denouncing the foreign
superstitions from which they were known to derive
one main support of the moral discipline which
rendered them so independent of the flatteries and
enticements of power. The brave and patient spirits
who fortified their moral courage by hard and frugal
living were not the men to cringe to their rulers either
for fear or favour. But there were many who, like
the elder Seneca, were wise in their generation, and
urged their sons to refrain from practices which might
bring them under suspicion ; who took the action of
the Government as a mild hint which it was imprudent
to disregard, while it was still too distant and oblique
to be resented. This, no doubt, was the real object
of the decree ot Tiberius. As against the Jews there
might have been further motives of jealousy; but we
are unable to conceive any adequate cause of appre-

96 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
hension with regard to the devotees of Isis and
Anubis, however much the old-fashioned worshippers
of the Olympian divinities might affect to be hurt and
scandalized at their vulgar and vicious propensities.
The teachers of philosophy bowed to the storm,
and while it fell to some extent, though still not very
generally, upon the obscure foreign brood specified in
the decree, they succeeded personally in evading it
by the exercise of ordinary caution. The philosophers
continued to haunt the chambers of the men of letters
and the men of public affairs. They continued to
converse with them in private, to impart to them the
lessons of their reputed wisdom, to advise them in
their moral difficulties, to console them in their sor
rows, to attend them at all seasons of domestic interest,
and suggest to them on their death-beds the last con
solations of a resigned or a self-applauding spirit.
The men, and still more the women, derived a com
fort with which at last they could hardly allow them
selves to dispense, from the constant and tender
attention of these domestic confessors. That in many,
and, perhaps, in most cases, such spiritual assistance
weakened rather than strengthened the moral fibre,
we may well suppose ; nevertheless, we may allow
ourselves to hope that it often availed to guard men
from the evil associations which beset them on all
sides, and raised the general tone of practical morality
among them. The histories of the time reveal to us
6ome few noble examples of virtue among the men,
such as those of an Agricola and a Thrasea; and
the improved tone we meet with in the intercourse
of the sexes, and in the estimate formed by the

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 97
Romans of their wives and daughters, seems to evince
a genuine advance in the graces of domestic life.
The Apostle himself, who draws with firm unshrink
ing hand his frightful portrait of Roman wickedness,
has still a word of consideration for the Gentiles, who,
having not the law of God made known to them, yet
do by nature the things contained in the law ; these.
he repeats, " having not the law are a law unto them
selves, which show the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their
thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one
another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets
of men by Jesus Christ."1 This maybe taken as a
description of the choicest members of Roman society,
who, at this period, and under the teaching now
described, were dubiously feeling their way to the
more perfect law which was about to be revealed to
them. The revival even of external religion under
Augustus was not wholly formal. It certainly assisted
in opening men's minds to the moral teachings of an
advanced philosophy, and thus prepared the way for
the better teaching of the Gospel.
Of all this active and extensive school of thought,
there remain the actual writings, or a portion of the
writings, of one master only, — namely, of Seneca,
surnamed "the philosopher." The father, indeed,
of this illustrious sage, who is distinguished from
him by the title of " the rhetorician," has left
us some fragmentary references to its leading
teachers, and to the character of their teaching ;
but from the remains of his son we may collect
1 Romans ii. 13-15.
H

98 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
not only some further direct account of the teachers
themselves, but indirectly of the doctrines which
they taught. For the younger Seneca represents
to us the doctrine of the new Stoics completed,
and, to some extent, reduced to system. In his works
we may look for the vein of thought which had glim
mered through the previous century, and which in
him, and in him only, is fully brought to light. We
must not- regard Seneca, as we might ersily be tempted
to do, and as has been too commonly done, as a single
independent thinker, standing out from his age, and
from the age before him, original and self-evolved.
He is rather the natural product of the age, which was
itself moulded by a series of thinkers and writers, and
we know not by what chance he has alone survived.
No doubt the place he filled in public life gave him
prominence above others ; but we are by no means
certain that his place as a philosophic teacher is really
higher than that of Sextius or of Attalus. It is more
probable that his writings have so far escaped the
oblivion which has overwhelmed the others from the
interest they have had in the eyes of some Christian
theologians, who have seemed to recognise in them a
germ of Christian, and especially of Pauline dogma.
It was felt to be specially important to preserve the
works of a contemporary philosopher for comparison
with the teaching of the Apostle himself.
L. Annaeus Seneca was born in Spain a.d. 3, a date
which coincides, perhaps, exactly with the birth of
St. Paul. He was brought to the great city in his early
youth, and there received his education under the
care of a father who had attained distinction as a

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 99
teacher of rhetoric, and he was subjected, no doubt,
to all the best influences of the people around him.
He was, to the last, a representative of Rome and the
Romans, rather than of his native province. The
cultivation of eloquence was the main object of his
intellectual training, and the eloquence of the day,
deprived of its genuine aims, the maintenance
of public rights and the assertion of equal laws,
had become little better than a play of words,
abounding in epigrammatic point, in incisive lan
guage, and startling antithesis. In matter it was
jejune and barren ; every rhetorician stored his
memory with the figures he had learnt from his master
or from his own fellow-students. It is curious to
trace in some instances which have been preserved
to us, how a flower of language might be borrowed
and handed on from one vapid declaimer to another.
The eloquence of the imperial bar had almost run its
course of life and genuine invention, and was touch
ing on its decline, when Seneca gave it its last onward
impulse. Quintilian signalizes its decay in the next
generation; and the younger Pliny, but a few years
later, illustrates its fall in his own person. Un
favourable as was the age to progress in the direction
of eloquence, it was not less so to the development
of thought in the realm of ethical speculation. The
condition of society did, however, allow some play
for improvement in moral conduct. The height to
which the appliances of easy and luxurious living had
advanced, seemed to call aloud for the exercise of
effectual repression. The wealth of the few contrasted
too painfully with the squalid poverty of the many.

1 00 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Crying was the need for self-control, for the cultivation
of contentment, for recommending the graces of
humility, fortitude, and temperance in all things. It
may be admitted that Seneca, in applying his philo
sophy, for the most part, to the inculcation of these
moral duties, made some advance upon the more
abstract teaching even of his own masters ; there can
be no doubt that his teaching stood in sharper con
trast with the fashions of his degenerate age than that
of the ages before him. As the general tone of
society under Claudius and Nero was apparently more
corrupt than under Augustus, so the preaching of
Seneca was, we may believe, more earnest, more keen,
more startling in its application to the conscience of
his hearers than that of Sextius and his more
immediate followers.
Plato and Aristotle had taught men their duties to
the State. After the- fall of Grecian freedom the
Stoics and Epicureans taught men their duties to
themselves and to one another. While Rome re
mained a free State this latter teaching continued
subordinate to the other. Cicero still devotes himself
chiefly to illustrating the duties of men as citizens. It
was the new Stoics, under the empire, who finally
absolved their pupils from all inquiry into public ob
ligations. Seneca hardly refers to any such at all;
still less, it may be said, do Persius and Juvenal, Dion
Chrysostom and Plutarch. The topics of Seneca's
formal discourses, of such personal and private applica
tion, are sufficiently indicated by their titles. He writes
on Anger, on Constancy, on the Shortness of Life, on
Benefits, on Clemency, on Tranquillity of Mind, and

ST. PAUL AT ROME. IOI
such like themes. He addresses " Consolations " to
his friends, or the loss of their relatives. The series
of " Letters " with which he forms the mind of his
friend Lucilius to philosophy, turn very generally
upon these and similar topics ; and of all these
there is none more practical than the direction he
gives for preparation for death ; for death sudden,
violent, unmerited, was a subject of constant con
templation in the society to which the friendly
preacher addressed himself. The principles which
Seneca enforces bear throughout a high and noble
character. There is nothing sordid or selfish in his
prudential maxims ; his courage, his honesty, his gene
rosity, betray every mark of sincere feeling. Though
his style is unfortunately disfigured by far-fetched point
and laboured antithesis, though his own personal con
duct fell sometimes far below the level of his moral
rules, there is no hollow exaggeration, no empty de
clamation in the precepts he inculcates. There is one
great lacuna, indeed, in the circle of duties he pre
scribes ; he has no room in his system as a genuine
Stoic for the sentiment of pity. Again, there is, at
least, one false view on which his system compels him
to insist ; the Stoic, having no notion of a duty to his
God, can recognise no obligation to bear the ills
which Providence inflicts upon him ; and when the
circumstances of his condition seem to preclude the
further exercise of his own volition, he has no resource
but to die, no duty left him but to put an end to his
own baffled existence.
For the fatal defect of the Stoic morality was
after all that it rested upon no sanction; there

102 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
was nothing to bind it together ; it was " sand
without lime." It acknowledged, indeed, the being
of God in words, and it could speak very perti
nently and even warmly of the relations of God to
man, as the common Father of all, of the duty of man
to imitate His holiness, of the love of God for all His
children, of His fatherly discipline and correction.
Seneca speaks very pointedly on all these subjects ;
he expatiates on the communion between God and
man, on the divine Spirit which takes up its abode in
the human heart, and the constraining influence it
exerts upon it. He acknowledges the heinousness of
sin, and the burden it imposes upon us. He declares
that life must be a perpetual warfare against sin ; he
proclaims that sin is universal, that no man is free
from it, no man can wholly escape from it. He points
to the stings of conscience as its appointed, and, as
he would hope, its inevitable punishment. He allows,
as has been said, that there is a divine Providence
which watches over men and things, and orders mun
dane affairs more or less completely and stringently.
Yet upon this cardinal subject his views are painfully
indistinct and fluctuating. Between Providence and
Fate he is continually oscillating. If the divine
government seems to him at one time intelligent and
full of purpose, at another it relapses into a blind
impulse, directed by an external necessity. At such
times the Deity himself, the object of adoration and
honour, ceases to be a personal existence, and is
resolved into the external universe. The idea of a
future life, as it presents itself to the mind of Seneca,
fluctuates in the same manner. It is to be absorbed

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 103
in the universal spirit ; at best, it is the lot of a few
choice individual spirits only ; it is subject to no law
of moral retribution ; it becomes a painless, passion
less, mechanical existence ; it shall continue, indeed,
as long as the world itself continues, but that, too, is
only for an appointed period ; the time shall come
when everything, both matter and spirit, shall be con
sumed in a universal conflagration. It appears, then,
that man in this world is wholly independent of God ;
he cannot look to Him for assistance, direction, or
protection ; God has done nothing for him, and he is
not bound to repay obedience where no moral support
has been reciprocally given. His duties, in short, are
prescribed to him, not by God, but by his own con
science; the good man fulfils the law of his own
being, not the law of God. He has no rule of life
external to himself ; no sanction for his actions ; no
assurance of their rectitude, except his own incon
stant imagination.
If the system of Sextius and Seneca was thus
preached in its logical results, it could not fail to
betray its hollowness. But it was the character, of
the masters of the sect to play with the outer lines of
their great subject rather than to penetrate to its core.
They could not but feel that their footing was inse
cure, nor fail to recognise the inconsistencies in which
they involved themselves. Again and again they
drew back from the edge of the slough of uncertainty
in which another step in speculation would have irre
trievably plunged them. They were perhaps only
half conscious of the falseness of their position ; yet
we can hardly fail to detect the artifice with which

104 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Seneca often escapes from an untenable point undei
a shower of his most brilliant fireworks.
The account thus submitted to the reader may
help in giving him a general view of the moral teach
ing of the heathens at Rome at the period of the
Apostle's visit. To what extent this teaching prevailed
among the various classes of society must be a matter
of conjecture only. We know but too well from various
sources that the corruption of the age was deep and
widely diffused, and to this fact St. Paul himself has
given his attestation conclusively. Such, as he
assures us, are the universal and inevitable effects of
Pagan blindness or superstition. But enough has
been said to show that there were still some ele
ments of good feeling, some virtuous aspirations,
among certain classes, even at the capital of the Pagan
world, and that some advance had been recently made
by them. We have now to see what opportunity was
given to the Apostle to build upon this foundation,
and to trace, as far as we can, the incidence and
effect of the appeal he personally made to it.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. ioe;

CHAPTER VII.

ST. PAUL'S INTERCOURSE AT ROME WITH THE DIS
CIPLES AND "THEM OF CjESAR'S HOUSEHOLD." —
ST. PAUL AND SENECA.
The last chapter of the " Acts of the Apostles " has
brought St. Paul to Rome, and its concluding para
graph informs us that he "dwelt two whole years in
his own hired house, and received all that came in unto
him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching
those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ,
with all confidence (or freedom of speech), no man for
bidding (or hindering) him.1 " As no mention is made
either of the Apostle being brought up for trial, or of
his liberation, we may conclude, in accordance with the
tradition of the Church, that he was still kept in cus
tody during that period as a prisoner awaiting the
hearing of his case ; but the statement of St. Luke
plainly implies that no harshness was used towards
him, and that he enjoyed all the indulgence which,
as a prisoner, could reasonably be granted him. He
was, indeed, a prisoner of some note; as a pro
vincial, the central Government would, we may
imagine, be even more lenient to him than to a
Roman resident, who might be an object of greater
suspicion and distrust; the account which would
be given of him by the authorities before whom he
had been brought in Palestine would be favourable
' Acts xxviii. 30, 31.

106 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
rather than the reverse. "This man," Festus and
Agrippa had said, when conferring privately together,
" doeth nothing worthy of death or of bonds." Had
he not appealed to Caesar, and desired to be sent to
Rome, he would have been let go free. His judges
at Cxsarea were not sorry to be rid of him ; but there
is no reason to suppose that they would say anything
to his prejudice. What causes may have delayed the
hearing of his cause at Rome hardly admit of con
jecture. It is easy to surmise that the jealousy of the
national party among the Jews at the capital may
have operated to his prejudice. It is possible that
the empress Poppaea, just married and at the height
of her power, may have humoured and supported a
sect which she is supposed to have held in favour.
Two cases have been cited from the histories of
Josephus in which she seems to have thus exerted her
self in its behalf, and it is possible that, like some other
Roman matrons, she may have addicted herself to
Jewish usages.1 We cannot suppose that Nero, idle
and dissolute as he was, would care personally to exert
himself in the interests of mere justice. Possibly, also,
the documents to be obtained, and the depositions
to be taken at so great a distance, involved a delay of
indefinite duration. Possibly the Apostle was wholly
overlooked among the number of appeals which were
constantly soliciting the emperor's attention. How
ever this may be, Paul continued, to all appearance,
for the space at least of two years, still untried, and
Still in custody. We are anxious to ascertain any
Joseph., Antiq., xx. I, n ; Vit, 3.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 107
particulars that can be gathered of a sojourn which
must surely have been exceedingly important for the
propagation of the faith, but of which no more is
recorded than the few words of Holy Writ above
cited, and upon which tradition itself is singularly
silent. One or two collateral intimations only, and these
too of the slightest kind, and liable to some variety
of interpretation, can be gathered from other passages
in Scripture.
It was during the interval of this detention for
instance that certain of St. Paul's epistles seem clearly
to have been written. Such are the epistles, taking
them in their order of time as generally reputed,
addressed to Philemon, to the Colossians, to the
Ephesians, and to the Philippians.
Now, in the first chapter to the Philippians we
meet with the words, " So that my bonds in Christ
are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places!' x
Such, at least, is the rendering of our Authorized
Version ; but a question arises as to the exact mean
ing of the Greek word TrpaiTi>pwv, which is here
rendered " palace," and in the latter clause the italic
ized word " places " is an insertion to complete the
supposed sense.
Upon this it is first to be observed that the word
7rpainipioc occurs in four of the historical books of the
New Testament, and is applied in all these cases either
generally to the residence of the king or governor of the
country, or, more definitely, to the judgment-hall in
• Phil. i. 13.

108 ST; PAUL AT ROME.
which he presided within it. The term is derived from
the praetor's or commander's tent in the Roman army,
which he moved from camp to camp during his ope
rations of war, but which became his fixed seat of
authority as a military governor, when his conquest was
peaceably settled. The provincials recognised in this
commander their civil ruler, and the term in question,
which was properly no more than a technical military
designation, became with them the equivalent for what
we should call the Residence, Government-house, or
Palace. Such we find to be the uniform application of
the word in the writings of the Greek and other Eastern
provincials. One exception only has been adduced
where an obscure Greek writer of the third century,
baldly translating a Latin document, gives the word
a somewhat different sense, but one which is not un
common in the earlier usage of the Romans them
selves.1 For in Latin the word praetorium is found
in two significations. The first, which seems to be the
primary one, is the same as the Greek equivalent;
though, by a poetical or historical flourish, the
plural, " praetoria, " is used more frequently for " a
palace," while the singular, " praetorium," is generally
appropriated to a "military tent." But the word
means also the body-guard or official retinue of the
commander, and becomes extended accordingly to the
whole of that large division of the Roman forces
which protected the person of the emperor, and con
stituted the permanent garrison of the city. " Prae-
1 Dositheus, Hadrian. Sentent., 2 (being a number of ex
tracts from the legal decisions of the emperor Hadrian), cited by
Prof. Lightfoot, Comm. on the Philippians, p. ico.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. IO9
torium" in this extended sense, becomes equivalent to
" praetoriani " ; and it may be contended that the
Apostle's phrase, " known in the whole praetorium,"
means, not the palace, nor even the actual locality of
the praetorian camp, but the men and officers who
formed the corps, 20,000 strong, of the praetorian
cohorts. Such a term, it might be said, would be
understood by all intelligent citizens as a technical
and constitutional designation of the praetorian guard.
But the emperor had his own residence in the
imperial palace on the Palatine Hill. In the time
of Nero a full half of the area of this hill was
occupied by the buildings of this vast and multi
farious edifice. He continued to extend it on all
sides. Besides the chambers which he would retain
for his own private use, and the numerous halls,
corridors, baths, and temples which it would comprise
within its precincts, accommodation would be pro
vided for hundreds, or even for thousands, of clients
and retainers, such as thronged the " insulae," or
cubicles which leant against its walls ; there would be
space allotted for the barracks of the body-guard which
kept watch in turn over the emperor's person ; there
would doubtless be chambers or houses assigned to
individuals who came to him on appeals, in which they
might be left altogether at large, or strictly confined,
or kept again in hired lodgings, as a matter of favour.
Under the Republic it had been usual to place arrested
criminals in the custody of persons of note in the city.
In the same way we cannot doubt but that the
emperors, ever studious of maintaining the old
traditions, made themselves the guardians, in the

IIO ST. PAUL AT ROME.
interest of the State, of many who were sent to them
under arrest from the provinces. Accordingly, if we
take TTpairwpwv to mean the imperial Residence, we
may suppose Paul to have been thus kept in charge,
though lodged at his own cost, in the immediate
custody of the guard which kept watch around the
palace. This is, on the whole, a safer interpretation
than to apply the word to the praetorian camp, for
which there seems to be no authority in Greek usage,
nor, perhaps, in Latin ; for surely the camp of the
praetorians would rather be known as the castra prae-
toriana. Again, it is little likely that .a Greek or
Eastern provincial should know the exact technical
sense which may also be given to the Latin " praeto
rium " ; he would be more apt to use it, as it was used
to his own knowledge, of the Residence of an Agrippa
or a Herod. Paul himself, though formally enrolled,
among the citizens, was a provincial, destitute perhaps
even of a knowledge of the Latin language ; devoid
almost certainly of a knowledge of a local Roman
usage of which the provinces had no cognisance.
P>en if we allow that the Latin word would be most
properly applied, at Rome and by the Romans them
selves, to the personnel of the imperial retinue, we
should bear in mind that the word here before us is a
Greek and not a Latin one, and is used by a foreigner
such as Luke, writing of a foreigner such as Paul, for
foreigners acquainted with provincial rather than
Roman usage.1 There is no doubt that the Greek
1 When Josephus has to speak of the imperial body-guard, he
calls it, not ro Trpanupiov, but to OTparriyiKbv KaXov/itvov.
This passage (Antiq., xix. 3, i) is also cited by Professor

ST. PAUL AT ROME. Ill
word, rpairiipiov, wherever it occurs elsewhere, except
once in what seems to be a servile reproduction of a
Latin law phrase, means a palace, or a chamber in a
palace, and nothing else.
We may admit, indeed, that there is some difficulty
in this version arising from the clause which follows,
" and in all other," or perhaps more correctly,
" among all other." It may seem more natural to
complete the sentence with " people " than with
" places." But, on the other hand, the accredited
rendering " palace " is rather strongly supported by
the passage at the close of the same epistle (iv. 22);
" All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of
Caesar's household." For this seems clearly to indicate
a close connection between the Apostle and the in
mates of the palace itself, as if he had actually resided
among them, and had been enabled to address his
preaching directly to them without interference. The
household of the emperor consisted, we may suppose,
mainly of the troop of slaves who ministered to his
wants and caprices as the wealthiest and most luxu
rious of the Roman magnates. But senators and
knights were also in close attendance upon him,
equally in his hours of business and of relaxation.
These, indeed, were all probably masters of house
holds of their own ; thus Seneca, the most intimate of
his ministers, enjoyed a private residence in his own
" gardens " ; Burrus, the prefect of the Praetorians,
whose duty brought him, no doubt, daily into the
Lightfoot. It seems to show pretty strongly that trpairiapiov was
not known in the sense of "body-guard" to Greek writers or
readers.

1 1 2 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
imperial presence, occupied his own lodging in the
Praetorian camp. The affairs of government were
transacted at this time chiefly through the instrumen
tality of the emperor's freedmen, some of them notori
ous in history for their riches and influence, court
favourites whom he had himself enfranchised, or who
had been enfranchised by his predecessors, and had
succeeded to his own favour and confidence. These
also had each his own palace and gardens, in which
he vied with the proudest of the ancient aristocracy.
Nevertheless, these too were so closely attached to
the emperor's person that they might claim to form a
part of Caesar's household ; and it is quite possible
that if Paul was kept in lax custody within the pre
cincts of the palace, any one of these may have come
in contact with him, and have listened, if he pleased,
to the words which the apostle was eager to address to
him. A man of Paul's power of thought and language,
speaking with the academic tone of a scholar of
Tarsus, and with the natural fervour of a Hebrew
prophet, could hardly fail to command the attention
of the feverish students of moral truth who abounded,
as we have seen, even in the ranks of the Roman
aristocracy. But if such men as these turned away
from him, he could not fail to be better received
among the lower class of the emperor's household
attendants, both male and female, who filled a thou
sand menial offices about his person, and that of his
consort. The ministers to the luxury of Poppsea
were certainly not less numerous than those who dis
charged similar functions for the ease and gratification
of Livia before her. But the columbarium of the

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 113
former empress, discovered in the last century, con
taining the urns of numbers of her " family," reveals
to us the names of the various offices which her slaves
or freedwomen filled. Among them are servants of
the chamber and the antechamber, servants who
waited at the doors, who attended at the bath, who
assisted at the toilet, who kept the trinkets and jewels,
who read at the empress's couch, who sat at her feet,
who followed her in her walks, who lulled her to sleep
and watched over her slumbers, who had charge of
her privy purse, and distributed the tasks of the whole
household. The persons in waiting upon the emperor
himself were probably even more multitudinous, and
their functions were not less minutely discriminated.
While these functions were, in a great many cases,
merely manual, and imply no special breeding or edu
cation ; there were not a few of the household intrusted
with affairs requiring high intellectual training. The
emperor was surrounded with numerous members of
the learned classes, such as could discharge the duties
of secretaries, of physicians, of professors of every art
and accomplishment, and such as pretended, at least,
to be teachers of philosophy. To have access to the
household of Caesar was to be put in communication
with divers of the most intelligent people of the day,
even if they ascended no higher in the scale of society
than those who ministered to Caesar's personal comforts
and recreations.
But what opportunities of this kind were actually
allowed to the prisoner of the Gospel, we cannot
specifically say. Over Paul's intercourse with "those
of Caesar's household," a cloud rests which we can
I

114 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
never hope to penetrate. It so happens, indeed, that
recent excavations have discovered more of the ancient
columbaria, and revealed to us the actual names of
various persons, who seem to have been connected as
slaves or freedmen with the emperor Claudius, or his
consorts, Messalina and Agrippina, and others of the
imperial family. It is deeply interesting to meet
among these appellatives with not a few that are iden
tical with those of persons whom the Apostle mentions
in his Epistle to the Romans. If these are, indeed,
the very individuals to whom he sends his salutations,
we are authorized to conclude that the faith, as known
at Rome before his own arrival there, had already
made its way within the precincts of the palace itself.
The Gospel was already heard among them that were
of Caesar's household. So it is that we find among
these names an Amplias, an Urbanus, a Stachys, an
Apella, a Tryphaena, and a Tryphosa, a Rufus, a
Hermas, a Patrobius, which is probably the same name
as Patrobas, a Philologus, and a Nereus. Some of
these, no doubt, are very common appellatives ; but
the occurrence of so many coincidences can hardly
be accidental. Though none of them, except, perhaps,
Apella, can be considered as a Jewish name, yet as
the practice among the Jews of assuming Gentile
appellatives was exceedingly common, it is quite pos
sible that many of these people were of Hebrew origin.
The "household" of Aristobulus, if he was actually
the grandson so named of Herod the Great, then
resident at Rome, would naturally be, to a great ex
tent, of the same race, and thus we may easily account
for the introduction into it of Christian disciples ; but

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 115
every great man at Rome had probably some depen
dents of Jewish nationality, who were not inferior to
the Greeks in suppleness of character, or often in intel
lectual accomplishments, so that we may well believe
that in the imperial household also some Christian
disciples, some learners, some aspirants and candidates
for conversion, had obtained a footing from the time
of the first diffusion of the Gospel among their
countrymen in the city.
We may further observe that the easy and familiar
way in which the Apostle introduces the mention of
this greeting to the disciples at Philippi, " All the saints
salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household,"
seems to imply that he, too, stood on an easy footing
with the inmates of their class in the palace, as well
as in other houses of the great. It is surely the style
of one who went in and out among them, one at least
to whom they frequently and readily resorted. It is
the style of a man who dwelt close at hand, accessible
daily as they passed by on their ordinary avocations,
not of one who, though in a lodging of his own
hiring, was yet confined within the walls of the camp
of the Praetorians. He received all who came to him,
and conversed freely with them, no man forbidding
him, not the officer of the daily guard at the palace-
gate, not the sentry who kept watch over him, if such
a sentry was still attached to him by a chain, which,
however, it is not necessary to suppose. Surely many
Jews, and following in their footsteps many Greeks
and Romans, women as well as men, would naturally
seek out the eloquent Apostle among the various
domiciles of the court and palace, who would not have
I 2

tl6 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
ventured to inquire for him in the rude quarters of a
military fastness. The notice of " Caesar's household "
seems to deserve great weight in determining a question
already so nearly balanced as the meaning of Trpairibpiov
in the mouth of a foreigner writing Greek for the
Greeks. But if the Apostle was thus free to receive the
visits of the inmates of the imperial residence, and
was actually sought out by many, not Jews only, but
Greeks and Romans also, can we suppose that, with
such a message as he had to deliver, and with such
power given him to deliver it, he failed to attract
the notice of persons of higher mark, social and poli
tical, than the humble attendants on the emperor or his
consort ? Must we acknowledge that we are not suffi
ciently acquainted with the social habits and etiquette
of the day to speak on this point with confidence? If,
indeed, we could find any trace of such communication
between Paul and any one of the noted personages of
the day, the question would be answered. If we could
detect his thoughts and language in the recorded say
ings of any such character, we might naturally infer
such communication. This is the point to which the
attention of many inquirers has been directed, and
accordingly a brief reference to this inquiry will find
a fitting place in these pages.
What, we would ask, in the first place, was the doc
trine which we maj,- suppose St. Paul to have preached
to the inmates of Caesar's household, such as we have
described them, and more particularly to the accom
plished heathens, Greek or Roman, such as Seneca
himself, on the supposition that Seneca was one of

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 117
those who attended on his teaching, or paid, at least,
some casual visits to him, or hearkened more or less
curiously when he came himself among them ? When
St. Peter addressed the "men of Judaea" on the day
of Pentecost, and made to them his first public pro
clamation of the Gospel, he spoke of Jesus of Naza
reth as " a man approved of God among you, by
miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did in the
midst of you," of whom David had before spoken in
the spirit of prophecy, declaring that " the Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I
make thy foes thy footstool." And " therefore," he
added, " let all the house of Israel know assuredly
that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have
crucified both Lord and Christ." This proclamation
was made to the " house of Israel," and, accordingly,
it referred directly to the witness of the people of
Judaea to the works of Jesus, and to the well-known
prophecies concerning Him, both of which might be
expected to assure the intelligent Jew that Jesus was
the Christ. So, again, when St. Paul " answered for
himself" before king Agrippa, a man of Jewish birth
and breeding, he addressed him as himself a Jew, and
one expert in all customs and questions among his
own people ; and, accordingly, to him he declares the
cardinal doctrines of Jesus Christ's personality, of his
miraculous power on earth, of his glory in heaven,
and, further, of the authority given to his Apostle to
open the eyes of the Gentiles, and to turn them,
together with the Jews, from darkness to light, from
the power of Satan unto God. He refers his Jewish
auditor to Moses and the prophets in attestation of

Il8 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
the Messiahship of the Lord Jesus, of his promised
resurrection now accomplished, and of the salvation
of the world through Him. Such is the tenor of St.
Paul's preaching to a Jewish hearer. It is needless
to say that such are not the topics which we should
expect him to bring to the notice of a Roman philo
sopher. That there should be no trace in Seneca's
writings of an acquaintance with these topics cannot
be adduced in evidence against the supposition, on
whatever else it may be grounded, that he was actually
acquainted with the Apostle, and imbibed some
Christian principles from intercourse with him.
When, however, he turns to the heathen people of
Athens, the Jewish preacher naturally omits all re
ference to the promised Messiah of the Jews, and to
the tokens of miracle and prophecy by which he was
to be made known to them. He insists only upon
the two great points of Christian teaching in which
the whole Gentile world, together with the Jew, could
feel one common interest.
" God," he declares, " that made the world . . .
dwelleth not in temples made with hands . . . and
hath made of one blood all nations of men." He "is
not far from every one of us. For in Him we live
and move, and have our being ; as certain of your
own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."
And now, he adds, God " commandeth every one to
repent " of his mistaken views of Him hitherto, and
their evil consequences, " because He hath appointed
a day in which He will judge the world in righteous
ness by that man whom He hath ordained, whereof
He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 119
raised Him from the dead."1 At this point the dis
course was apparently interrupted; we may well
believe, indeed, that we have received no more than
a brief summary of its actual substance ; nevertheless,
we may fairly refer to it as indicating the main line of
argument which the Apostle would adopt with the
heathen as distinguished from the Jewish auditor.
The topics he here advances are plainly these : the
unity of God, as opposed to the popular polytheism ;
the spiritual nature of the Godhead, as opposed to
idolatry ; the revealed truth that God is the Creator
of the world, and the common Father of all mankind
as one brotherhood, living under one common law of
righteousness, as opposed to national and anti-social
prejudices; that all men have sinned, and are required
to repent, under pain of judgment after death, by
One who has appeared personally upon earth, and
Whom God himself has raised from the dead. We
may suppose that the Apostle further insisted upon
the resurrection of Christ as a pledge of the future
resurrection of all mankind for the judgment appointed
them. If such were the cardinal points of St. Paul's preach
ing to the " men of letters," including, among them,
"certain philosophers of the Epicureans and Stoics,"
such, also, we may infer, would be precisely the points
which he would bring most plainly before a heathen
of Caesar's household, whether he were the humble
slave of foreign extraction, and of the least cultivated
intelligence, or the wisest of the wise among them, a
Roman minister of state, a tutor of Roman princes.
' Ads xvii.

120 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Such, then, was the language which, if Seneca con
ferred with Paul, Paul assuredly held to Seneca, If
Seneca learnt any Christian principles from the Apostle,
such as these are the principles which we shall most
surely find reflected in his writings. Let us now turn to
the remains of the philosopher's own teaching, and refer
to some of the extracts that have been so copiously
made from them, which may be thought to bear upon
this point, and see what conclusion they may lead us to.
i. As regards the being and nature of the Deity,
Seneca nowhere draws out his views distinctly. It is
only in casual references that he not unfrequently
speaks of God in the singular number as if he were
one only. It is, however, not less common with him
to speak of Gods in the plural, as if they were many.
" God," he says, " hath no need of servants or mini
sters ;" " God is near us, nay, He is in us ;" but, on
the other hand, " The first of all worship of the Gods
is to believe in the Gods ;" " We worship them enough
if we believe in them." No doubt the common
rhetorical language of the day allows of either the one
phrase or the other, and Seneca's actual belief as to
the unity of God cannot be decided from instances
such as these. They may suffice to assure us, at
least, that he gave no countenance to the vulgar
mythology. If he uses sometimes the concrete
" Jupiter " for the abstract divinity, it is not to be sup
posed that he holds by the personal existence of a king
and father of the Gods, the husband of Juno, the
parent of Apollo ; rather he would have us infer that
the divine being, or divine principle, to which he
gives the popular appellation, is really one, and one

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 121
only. This is the creed he would insinuate without
directly stating it. But, if this is a Christian principle,
no less is it the principle of many of the philosophers
of earlier ages, from Pythagoras to Cicero. Seneca
assuredly did not learn it from the Apostle. He had
been made familiar with it by one heathen master
after another. The Roman sage gives us, however,
some further idea of the nature of this divinity.
He regards Him as a spiritual influence rather
than a spiritual existence. He confines Him to no
fixed locality. He disdains the vulgar superstition
of ascribing to Him a corporeal being, or a human
form. He declares that the true figure of the Deity
cannot be represented by a material image of gold
or silver; nor does He require to be worshipped
in a temple of stone, nor appeased by the sacrifice
of victims. He affirms that a sacred or divine spirit
inhabits the breast of every good man ; but to this
spirit he ascribes no personality. God, in his view, is
coextensive with the world, and informs or animates
the whole. His Monotheism is, in fact, Pantheism, in
which God and man are confounded together, and not
less so God and nature. His God becomes a mere
abstract idea, and is easily, perhaps necessarily, re
solved into Fate. As regards the Fate which is thus
identified with Deity, the philosopher cannot for a
moment retain a distinct conception of it. The
question ever recurs with him, and presents no foot
hold for him, whether it is conscious or unconscious,
whether it is Providence or Necessity, whether God,
in short, controls it, or it controls God. Either
view is presented to us from time to time, and seems

122 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
to occupy the teacher's field of vision. Seneca
does, indeed, profess a belief in a divine Providence,
and has written a special treatise upon the subject ;
but his casual sayings are constantly found at variance
with any such fixed belief, and leave us with the full
impression, that he, like many of the philosophers
before him, vacillated between the one conception and
the other. The Christian belief, on the contrary, is
fixed and definite; if Seneca had learnt anything
from St. Paul, or listened to him for a moment upon
this point, he could not fail to have spoken more
firmly and consistently.
2. That God is the author of the world is an idea
common to Seneca with the Platonists and many
earlier speculators, as well as with the Christian
teachers. It does not appear, however, that he had
any distinct opinion as to whether He were the original
Creator, or rather the ultimate Disposer of its elements.
Whatever greatness and power he may from time to
time ascribe to the divine principle, he is ever haunted
by a notion of the self-subsisting energies of matter.
He has no belief in God as a personal existence, and
he shrinks from asserting that material substance can
be the creature of an immaterial principle. Yet he
allows that spirit can inform matter, and infuse spirit
into all living things. He calls God, in a rhetorical
if not an actual sense, the parent of man, and plainly
intimates, almost as plainly as St. Paul would have
done himself, that all mankind of every race and de
gree are equally His offspring. He deduces from
this generous creed the assurance that all mankind
are brethren of one family, and lie under family

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 23
obligations one to another. " Virtue, or goodness,"
he declares pointedly, "admits all men, free men,
slaves, and princes." The only distinction between
men in the sight of God, is a moral one. This sen
timent is truly Christian ; but this, again, is not con
fined to Christianity. It had been conceived long
before by the most liberal of the early philosophers,
as we have seen, from Pythagoras downwards ; it had
been brought more generally into notice, as we have
also seen, by the consequences of the Macedonian
conquest, and had become the common property of
all the more advanced thinkers of the Grecian world
from that time forward. Paul expresses the senti
ment more distinctly and more powerfully than any
of them, but, so far, that is all.
3. If, however, all mankind are generically equal,
they are distinguished in the sight of God one from
another by their moral qualities only. Seneca speaks
in the strongest manner of the prevalence, and even
the universality of sin. St. Paul himself is not more
emphatic than Seneca in declaring that " we have all
sinned "; " there is none that can acquit himself of sin";
and if anyone calls himself innocent, he means only that
he has not been convicted by any other witness than his
own conscience. But the duty of man, he adds, is to
resist and overcome sin, to amend himself according to
the wisdom he can attain unto, to conceive worthily of
God and then to imitate Him as he best may. " To
imitate God is the best and 'sufficient worship of
God." This too is a Christian sentiment, and, at
the same time, it is a sentiment common to the most
spiritual of the ancient heathen teachers. But both

124 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
they and Seneca were equally unconscious of the con
siderations which specially attach to the Christian
view of human sinfulness; they do not grasp the
assurance that man cannot purify himself from sin
by his own endeavour without the sanctifying in
fluence of the divine Spirit ; and that he cannot
relieve himself from the penalty of sin, and
obtain forgiveness for it, except through the inter
vention of a divine Saviour and Redeemer. They
have no abiding sense of the fatal consequences of
sin, of future retribution, and of judgment to come.
Still less, of course, does either Seneca or any of his
predecessors conceive of a personal Redeemer, who,
under the form of a man, ordained of God, shall
judge the world in righteousness at the appointed
season, " whereof God hath given assurance unto all
men in that He hath raised Him from the dead." Of
all this special revelation in Christ there is no word in
all the writings of Seneca. Of the great scheme of
sanctification by the Holy Spirit, and justification
through the imputed merits of the Lord Jesus, of
the necessity of faith and the insufficiency of works
without faith, there is no hint in the moral system of
the philosopher, however devoutly he may speak of
the common fatherhood of God and of the universal
wickedness of mankind.
Such being the case, can we for a moment sup.
pose that Seneca actually held converse with the
Apostle, whose influence on human hearts has been
felt so powerfully in all ages ; that he imbibed from
Paul a few commonplaces on the spiritual character of
the Deity, already familiar to himself, with manv others

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 25
before him, and yet retained no impression of the
glorious revelations which the Gospel has first dis
closed, and which have since effected so deep and
lasting a change in the tone of religious thought
wherever they have been allowed to penetrate?
What a reflection this would be upon the power of the
Gospel, when it was first brought in close contact
with the power of mere natural religion ! But this
we may fairly pronounce to be impossible. We
must take upon ourselves to reject without hesita
tion the pleasing, but fantastic, hypothesis, that Seneca
had any personal intercourse with the Apostle at
all. Granted that there does exist a similiarity in
some of the ideas common to both, still more in
some particular expressions, it is much more likely
that Paul derived them from a source common to
both, than that Seneca learnt them direct from Paul.
The Apostle, it must be repeated, was born, and bred,
at least in early life, at the city of Tarsus, which was
at the time a school of philosophic teaching second
only to Athens herself. He can hardly have sojourned
there for some years as a Roman citizen, without im
bibing some of the spirit of the place, and even the
language of its popular teachers, who, as we have
seen, were enrolled on the list of Stoic philosophers.
We know, indeed, that he was actually conversant
with certain writings of the Greeks, and that he did
not disdain, when occasion served, to enforce his
great doctrine of the common fatherhood of God by
a reference to a philosophical poet of the Greek
nation. It is no derogation from the divine source of
his special revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ's

126 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
place in the spiritual world, to allow that he reflects,
on matters of secondary interest the sentiments and
the language of the highest natural wisdom.
A few words may still be added with regard to the
intrinsic probability of the philosopher and the
Apostle having come into such communication with
one another as has been imagined. We should
examine into the date of their respective preaching, to
see whether the language of the one can have been
affected by any such acquaintance with the other. No
one supposes that Seneca had read the Apostle's
Epistle to the Roman disciples, still less the earlier
Epistles to the Galatians or the Corinthians. Now,
St. Paul did not come personally to Rome before the
year 61. At this period Seneca, who had in the
previous year given the consent, so fatal to his cha
racter, to the murder of Agrippina, was becoming less
and less assured of his position, and on the death of
Burrus in 62 he withdrew, for the most part, from
public affairs, and secluded himself in his suburban
villa, seldom or never appearing af the emperor's
court. During the remainder of the Apostle's sojourn
at Rome he kept thus aloof from the spot where we
suppose the prisoner to have been detained; his
opportunities of visiting him were scanty; he was
hardly in a position to seek out a criminal accused of
treasonable practices, even if he were disposed to
enter into conference with a Jewish stranger on ,
themes on which the last word, in his view, had long
been spoken by the Greeks and Romans. Seneca
was, indeed, the brother of the Gallio before whom
Paul had been brought at Corinth ; but Gallio had

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 127
taken no interest in Paul's case, and is specially noted
for his indifference to questions which agitated the
Jewish mind at home and abroad. That this careless
gentleman should have notified to his brother the
arrival at Rome of a prisoner of high spiritual intelli
gence, and urged him to seek his acquaintance, and
inquire into his doctrine, is a conjecture to which we
need pay little heed. The only point of any import
ance in this branch of our inquiry concerns the actual
date of the writings in which the philosopher ex
presses the sentiments in which we trace a coincidence
with Christian sentiment. On this point we may ob
serve that such expressions are scattered almost
throughout his various writings, extending from ten
or twenty years previous to Paul's arrival down to the
period of his own death, about four years later. It is
true, indeed, that some of the most striking parallels
are to be found among the latest of these writings ;
but the same liberal and spiritual tone which dis
tinguishes them pervades no less the utterances of an
earlier period. It is to be added further that some of
the strongest resemblances to Christian teaching
would point to books of the New Testament which
were not written till after Seneca's death, such as the
Gospel of St. John, as well as St. Paul's Pastoral
Epistles. It may suffice, in a sketch like the present, to make
these general remarks on the interesting subject before
us, and to warn the reader against an attractive
hypothesis which has found so much favour among
Christian divines with apparently so little reasonable
foundation. Even the Fathers of the Church, who were

128 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
so near to the date of these supposed communications,
seem to have been very commonly seduced by it.
Tertullian and Jerome speak warmly of the Christian
character of the philosopher's teaching, and call him
" our own," or " often our own." Lactantius points
out the coincidence between his teaching and the
Christian. This yearning to identify the two prompted,
no doubt, the forgery of a correspondence of several
letters between Paul and Seneca, which dates, per
haps, from the fourth century. These letters were
very generally received as genuine for many ages, and
materially helped to keep up the delusion. Since the
revival of learning their credit has been, indeed, com
pletely overthrown, but the main subject is still brought
from time to time into discussion. The connexion
between the two great teachers has been recently
maintained by Champagny in his " Caesars," with an
elaborate comparison of texts ; while Aubertin, in his
" Sene'que et St. Paul," has denied it with a much
more comprehensive analysis of the argument. But
the English reader may study, with still greater benefit,
the acute and exhaustive summary of the whole
question by Professor Lightfoot in the dissertation
appended to his Commentary on the Epistle to the
Philippians.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 129

CHAPTER VIII.
st. Paul's release and the burning of rome.
The period of two complete years from the spring of
A.D. 61 brings us to the corresponding season A.D.
63, and this, accordingly, is the point to which St.
Luke conducts us in his account of the Acts of the
Apostles. Why the historian's self-imposed task
breaks off at this juncture we are unable to say.
Neither history nor tradition supplies us with any
explanation. The writer was living, and was still a
companion of St. Paul, at a later date. " Only Luke
is with me," writes the Apostle to Timothy shortly
before his martyrdom, which we shall have to assign
to a period some years subsequently. The testimony,
however, of Luke extends no further than the two
years referred to, and during that interval, we may
presume, no change of importance took place in the
Apostle's condition. Paul was still, in the spring of
AD. 63, a prisoner under custody, awaiting the
hearing of his cause, but otherwise preaching and
receiving visitors without impediment.
We cannot suppose, however, that the affairs of the
Church, and of the Apostle in connection with them,
went on wholly during this interval without any inci
dent to mark their progress. The year 62 gives occa-
sion, as we have seen, for four of St. Paul's Epistles,
K

130 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
those to Philemon, to the Colossians, to the Ephe
sians, and to the Philippians. The first of these
relates to Onesimus, the slave of one Philemon, who
had fled from his master at Colossae, in Phrygia, and
escaped to Rome, where he seems to have fallen in
with Paul for the first time, and to have become
through his means a convert to the faith. After
keeping him for some time under instruction at
Rome, the Apostle takes the opportunity of a certain
Tychicus going into the province of Asia to send
the converted slave back to his master, thus recog
nising in a marked way the laws of property as then
accepted by the civilized world. He was confident,
no doubt, that Philemon, to whom he addresses a
letter as to one well known to him, " our dearly
beloved and fellow labourer," will not only forgive
the restored fugitive, but will also grant him his free
dom, for such indulgence was of no unusual occur
rence. The occasion of the second of these Epistles
was the arrival of Epaphras, another Colossian, who
brought with him the contributions entrusted to him
by the Philippians, as he passed through their city,
for the Apostle's support during his captivity. Epa
phras brought also a favourable account of the state
of the Church at Colossae, chequered though it was
with intimations of the prevalence there of Judaizing
and Gnostic opinions. The seeds of Oriental heresy
were beginning to take root among the churches of
Asia, and the Christian converts were the less able to
resist them, inasmuch as they were falling more and
more under the perverse reactionary teaching of the
party among themselves which urged the necessity

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 131
of circumcision, and of practising the ceremonies of
the Jewish law. The Apostle was induced there
upon to address a letter to the Colossians, and
another to the Ephesians, in both of which he makes
also some specific allusions to the errors of the Gnos
tics. " Beware," he says to the former, " lest any
man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ." St. Paul, in all these
letters, speaks of himself distinctly as " a prisoner of
Jesus Christ," and we may suppose that they were all
written about the same time, perhaps in the autumn
of the year 62.
At the close of this year the Apostle had been
about one year and nine months in captivity at
Rome. Nearly five years had elapsed since he had
been first arrested at Jerusalem. His appeal had not
yet been heard. He had now been brought to the
very door of the emperor's judgment-hall, and was,
we may suppose, willing and eager to have an oppor
tunity for pleading his own cause and the cause of
his divine Master before the highest of all earthly
tribunals. Nor, as far as we can learn, had he as yet
any misgiving, at least if justice was to be done him,
of the final result of this hearing. He might, indeed,
entertain apprehensions from the machinations of the
Jews in the city, whose indifference, such as it might
at first appear, would soon be turned to active enmity,
by the continued success of his preaching, and the
progress of a new sect in their midst. It has been
conjectured, also, that Poppaea, as a patroness of
the Jewish residents, and one whom they ventured
K 2

132 ST. PAUL AT ROME
perhaps to claim as a proselyte to their faith, would
employ her baneful influence against him. Yet, if we
accept the view most generally adopted, that, whether
his case was brought on for hearing or not, Paul was
actually released at the end, or soon after the end of
two years, it would seem that no such powerful
influence was exerted to his prejudice. As for the
possible cause of the delay which evidently occurred,
we can only say that much time might have been
consumed in bringing to Rome the accusers and
witnesses from so great a distance, and that various
accidents might have intervened to prolong it. Nero
himself may have been profoundly indifferent. On
the death of Burrus, the post of prefect of the Prae
torians was given to Tigellinus, the basest of all the
minions of the court, a man notoriously reckless of
the claims of humanity and justice. The governor
of Judaea had declared that no mischief had been
done, that none was to be apprehended. The prisoner
who had appealed for trial might safely it would seem
be neglected and forgotten.
During the short interval' that now elapsed, Paul
wrote his Epistle to the Philippians. He could speak
with satisfaction of the success of the Gospel through
his bonds. He could announce his anticipation of
approaching trial without alarm ; for after reviewing
the prospect of life or death before him, and adding
that to him "to live is Christ, and to die is gain," he
adds, with an apparent inward assurance, " I know
that I shall abide, and continue with you all for
your furtherance and joy of faith "...." that your
rejoicing may be more abundant by my coming to

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 133
you again." This evident -expectation of revisiting
his disciples abroad seems to afford some presump
tion for the common arrangement, which places this
as the latest of the four epistles of the first captivity
at Rome. The Apostle goes on from hence to warn
the Philippians, as he had so recently warned the
churches of Asia, of the danger they incurred from
the perversion of the Judaizing party among them,
and exhorts them with all his customary fervour to
walk worthily of the Gospel, and to avoid disputations
among themselves. The epistle concludes with the
significant intimation above cited of the success of
the Gospel in the very household of the emperor.
This document was conveyed to the Philippians by
Epaphras. The only fellow-labourers who had ac
companied Paul so far, and still remained with him,
were Luke, Aristarchus, and Demas.
The question, indeed, is still agitated, whether the
Apostle was ever released at all from the captivity
recorded by St. Luke ; and no doubt, in the absence
of any early historical statement to that effect, we must
feel some difficulty in affirming it. Yet the general
consent of the ecclesiastical writers points to such a
release at the end of the two years, to subsequent
journeys of St. Paul during the period that followed,
and to his falling again into captivity at Rome, and
there suffering martyrdom before the end of Nero's
reign. The first argument, indeed, for such release which
we must notice hardly deserves the serious con
sideration of those who are only bent on sifting
historical and critical evidence. We may remember,

134 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
however, that St. Paul, writing to the Romans in the
year 58, had said that having a great desire to come
unto them, he would do so whenever he took his
" journey into Spain." 1 Many persons have imagined,
as a matter of sentiment, both in ancient and modern
times, that no word of an inspired Apostle could
possibly fall to the ground, but that if he had been
inspired to intimate an intention of doing anything,
such intention must undoubtedly have been fulfilled
to the letter ; whereas no opportunity for such a visit
would be left, unless we suppose an interval between
a first release from captivity and a second and final
arrest. Again it is urged, we find, that the very earliest
of our ecclesiastical writers, St. Clement, sojourning
at Rome towards the end of the first century, speaks
of Paul having arrived at " the bounds of the West,"
and having " borne witness before the rulers "; and
this testimony has been commonly cited as evidence
of the supposed journey into Spain. But if this state
ment be cited to show that Paul visited Spain, it might
perhaps equally be cited to show that he was tried and
sentenced there, which no one certainly supposes to
be St. Clement's meaning. Surely it is quite possible
that this writer, himself apparently a Greek, and ad
dressing a congregation of Jews or Greeks at Corinth,
may have been satisfied with specifying Rome, the
Western metropolis, as the bounds of the West, just
as a writer from New York at the present day might,
under like circumstances, so designate in rhetorical
1 Romans xv. 24.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 135
language the most eminent city of the Western hemi
sphere in modern times. The so-called testimony of
the Muratorian Canon in the second century, however
neatly restored by the latest modern criticism, is a
mere fragment without a context; and Eusebius, who
is claimed as an authority on the subject, writing as
late as the fourth century, appeals only to the current
tradition, and has no historical evidence to produce.
On the other hand, it may be thought worthy of
consideration that no church in Spain ever claimed
to have been founded by St. Paul ; it is to St. Peter,
not to St. Paul, that the mediaeval legends of the
Spanish peninsula assign, whether he was ever there
or not, the consecration of its first bishops.1
But if this argument be set aside as at best incon
clusive, there are, no doubt, some passages in the
pastoral epistles which it is difficult, perhaps impos
sible, to reconcile fairly with the theory of a single
captivity followed by martyrdom. Thus, for instance,
St. Paul, in his Second Epistle to Timothy, speaks
very clearly of his approaching trial and execution : —
" For I am now ready," he says, " to be offered, and
the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought
the good fight, I have finished my course." 2 But at
the same time he gives directions about clothes and
books he had left behind him in Troas, which, if he
had never revisited Troas since his captivity at Jeru-
1 The genuineness of the inscription supposed to have been
found in Lusitania (Grater, p. 238), is generally rejected from
internal -evidence. The fancy that St. Paul visited Britain is
utterly discredited on all hands.
2 2 Tim. iv. 6. 1

136 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
salem and subsequently at Rome, must have been
five or even ten years previously. Surely then he must
have been released from a first imprisonment, and
have continued his accustomed journeyings from
church to church, and to Troas among other places,
in the interval between a first and a second arrest,
Nor are there wanting other internal marks in this
Epistle which favour this view. The critics who
pretend that the objections to it are insuperable are
generally constrained to argue against the genuineness
of the Epistle itself, and, indeed, of both the Epistles
to Timothy — a course which presents other difficulties
which need not now detain us.
Accepting, then, as on the whole the easiest solu
tion, the common tradition of Paul's release, whether
with or without a formal trial, we must place it sub
sequently, of course, to the two years indicated by
St. Luke ; that is, after the spring of the year 63, but
before the great fire at Rome, and the violent perse
cution of the Christians which so soon followed there
upon. We cannot suppose that a preacher of the
Gospel so eminent as the Apostle, had he been still
in custody at such a crisis, would have been allowed
to escape from the fury of the populace and the
cruelty of the government, after they were once excited.
Having quitted the city, however, Paul is supposed to
have gone in the first instance to Macedonia in the
course of the year 63, and thence to Colossae, where
he had already prepared Philemon to receive him, and
in the following year to have accomplished the voyage
he had so long meditated into Spain. It may be as
sumed that, if he once reached that remote country,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 37
he could not fail to make a stay there of some dura
tion ; but the Epistles to Timothy and Titus indicate
from internal evidence of various kinds that they were
written later than this, and that the writer had then
visited the East very recently. Accordingly we con
clude that St. Paul returned from Spain to Asia ; and
there seems some reason to believe that he presented
himself once more to the churches at Ephesus, Mi
letus, and Corinth, and even in Crete; that he jour
neyed into Macedonia, and proceeded to Nicopolis
in Epirus, and thence probably made his way finally
to Italy and Rome once more.
Slight and shadowy as are the hints we have re
ceived of the Apostle's doings and journeyings sub
sequently to his first Roman captivity, it would seem
that they must have occupied a considerable period
of time, and we cannot suppose that he had returned
to Rome till after the terrible crisis which the Chris
tian Church was at this moment undergoing. The
conflagration of the year A.D. 64 is doubly famous,
both for the greatness of the catastrophe itself, and
still more, at least in our eyes, from the persecution
to which it gave occasion — the first in the long series
of systematic and legalised cruelties to which the
Faith continued to be exposed for a period of two
centuries and a half succeeding. We possess, more
over, as our chief authority for the circumstances both
of the fire and the persecution, the full and striking
record of the historian Tacitus ; and some account of
both the one and the other under the guidance of not
only a contemporary but probably an eye-witness of
them will materially assist in completing our view of

138 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
St. Paul's connection with the metropolis of the
Gentile world.
The Palatine Hill, the seat of the imperial resi
dence, within the precincts of which we have conjec
tured Paul to have been confined, presented on its
summit a nearly level area of an irregular lozenge
shape, which may be aptly compared, both in size
and figure, with the space inclosed between Oxford-
street and Conduit-street in London. The sides of
this eminence sloped naturally, or were scarped arti
ficially, towards the Forum on the north, the Velabrum
on the west, the Circus Maximus on the south, and
the valley which divided it from the Caelian Hill on
the east. This entire space was occupied in the time
of the Republic either by sacred edifices or by man
sions and gardens of the nobles, and many of the chief
public men of Rome are recorded to have had their
dwellings there. There had been the house of Octavius,
the ancestor of the emperor Augustus ; but his family
was not one of the highest in the state, and its man
sion was a modest one. Under this roof, however,
Augustus continued to live ; for he affected modera
tion in his tastes, and carefully shunned the appear
ance of outvying in his personal surroundings the
chiefs of higher rank and greater private means than
he had himself inherited. When his house suffered
from a casual fire, the citizens had insisted on rebuild
ing it for him on an ampler scale ; but he still re
strained their liberality within modest bounds, and
allotted a portion of the extended structure to public
purposes. He took pains, however, to secure a wider
site at the centre of the hill, contiguous tq his own

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 139
residence, whereon to erect a sumptuous temple to
his patron god, Apollo, together with a public library,
which with its adjuncts occupied a considerable space,
and became the most conspicuous object of the whole
eminence. The princes who succeeded indulged
themselves more freely. Tiberius added to the im
perial dwelling other buildings, so far distinct from it
that they received the special designation of the Domus
Tiberiana. But Tiberius was more temperate than his
next successor. Caligula added greatly to the palace,
and caused the temple of Castor and Pollux, abutting
on the Forum, to be transformed into a vestibule
thereto. The scale of this prince's additions may be
conjectured from his extraordinary freak in construct
ing a bridge across the hollow, to connect the palace
with the temple of Jupiter in the Capitol, so as to
enable the ruler of Rome to pay his visits to the ruler
of Olympus above the heads of the miserable mortals
who were subject to both of them in common. This
bridge is so analogous to that which Herod threw
across the Tyropceum between his palace and the
Temple at Jerusalem, that we may be tempted to sur
mise that Caligula adopted the idea from conversation
with his friend Agrippa. If, however, this structure
was completed during his short reign, it seems to have
been demolished immediately afterwards ; no further
mention of it occurs, and some apparent traces re
cently discovered of the spring of the first arch from
the north-west corner of the Palatine constitute the
whole of its remaining fragments. Claudius seems
to have abstained from further additions to the im
perial residence. This emperor's tastes, as regarded

140 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
personal display, were moderate ; and in this and
other respects he took Augustus as his model, and
shrank from the selfish ostentation of Caligula as
much as from the morose reserve of Tiberius. But
with Nero there began a new era of extravagance.
This mighty builder conceived a colossal scheme,
first for extending the great imperial mansion over
the whole surface of the hill on which it was ori
ginally planted, and then connecting it by arcades
and corridors with additional structures on the sum
mits of the hills adjacent, sweeping into its embrace
halls, temples, and patrician villas on all sides of it.
Considerable progress had apparently been made in
these extensions on the Palatine when the event
occurred which was to give him an opportunity for
enlarging his plans to the utmost.
While the Palatine summit was crowned with an
array of buildings of solid brick and marble, the lower
grounds surrounding it were for the most part occu
pied with structures of wood and light materials,
packed closely together, and rising to a height of
many stories, especially where they abutted on the
face of the cliffs behind them. Such, at least, was the
condition of the Velabrum, a densely-crowded quarter ;
and such, we may suppose, was the condition also
of the opposite valley between the Palatine and the
Caelian, through which ran the Appian Way, one of
the most important arteries of the city. The Circus,
which filled the Murcian or Myrtle valley on the south,
was a more substantial edifice ; but this, too, though
propped on brick or stone, was crowned from end to
end with wooden galleries. On the north the descent

ST. PAUL AT ROME. I4T
into the Forum presented an open space of some
width ; but here, too, slight wooden fabrics lined the
slopes of the hills on either side, and lay so close
together as to make the eminences difficult of access.
Across the Palatine itself there were no avenues for
wheeled vehicles. The hill was, for the most part,
mounted by steps, and the alleys which ran between
the palaces and temples on its summit afforded means
of circulation to foot-passengers only.
But while the summit of this central hill was chiefly
occupied by the lordly mansions of the emperor and
his nobles, among the cabins of the poorer classes
crowded at its feet lay many public edifices, noted in
the national history, and dear to the imagination of
the Roman people. The Forum was itself filled with
statues and memorials of their ancient worthies ; it
was adorned with halls and temples erected by the
greatest of their heroes ; it was skirted with objects of
antiquarian interest, with shrines associated with their
earliest religious rites, poor, indeed, in decoration,
and diminutive in their proportions, but instinct, as it
might seem, with the life of the nation. The Forum
Romanum was still, as it had always been, the centre
of the civic life of the people, and it was crowded with
the objects which still preserved their sense of the
historical continuity of their institutions, both secular
and spiritual. The Forum was still the connecting
link between the past and the present, both in their
political and their religious aspects. It was now about
to be overwhelmed in one common ruin, and this
connecting link was to be severed for ever.
The historian Tacitus, from whom we have received

E42 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
a precise and graphic account of the great fire, intro
duces it in a manner which, to the Christian reader,
must seem eminently significative. The monster who
sat on the throne at this moment had addicted him
self, from the death of his mother, and soon after of
his minister Burrus, to every vice and criminal indul
gence. The disgrace and retirement of Seneca had
left him still more free to embrace his evil courses
without shame or scruple. His sins against the
national prejudices have involved his memory, perhaps,
in greater odium among the Romans themselves, than
the enormities of lust and cruelty which have made
his name a by-word with Christians and moralists in
all ages. The reader must not be afflicted with more
than a remote allusion to the nameless wickedness
which he now flaunted in the face of a society, which,
even in its own deep degradation, was both disgusted
and alarmed at such excesses ; but the Christian can
not fail to be reminded in the dreadful conflagration
of Rome of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain
by fire and brimstone in the record of Scripture.
It was on the 14th of the calends of August, on the
nineteenth day of July in the year 64, the 817 th of
the city, that the fire broke out among some habitations
at the eastern extremity of the Circus, where the two
hollows, the Caelian and the Murcian, diverge, the one
in a north-western, the other in a south-western direc
tion, embracing between them the eastern angle of the
Palatine.1 There was a high wind, and its direction
was evidently from the east. The shops among which
the fire had its origin were filled with materials of a

t Ullglll WtXC Ull'JU Willi
1 Tac, Annul,, xv. 38, foi.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 43
combustible nature, such, probably, as oils, gums, and
spices, as well as wood, and stuffs of various kmds.
The flames soon came to a head, and swept from roof
to roof, for the buildings in this crowded locality must
have been generally contiguous. The Circus itself
was soon wrapt in fire, and if its solid substructions
still offered resistance, the lighter structures above and
alongside of it must have crumbled like touchwood,
desiccated, as they were, by the drought of an Italian
midsummer. The conflagration leaping from arch to
arch soon penetrated to the Forum Boarium and the
Velabrum, and quickly turning the western corner of
the Palatine, coursed furiously onward in the direction
of the Roman Forum. It was under the western slope
of the hill that the greatest number of public edifices
and memorials perished ; for here had been the cradle
of the Roman people, here were the temple of Vesta
and Hercules, the Regia of Numa, and the Ruminal
figtree, the temple of Castor and Pollux, the fountain
of Juturna, the cave of Cacus, the Puteal and the
Rostra. The flames rose to the summit of the Pala
tine, and devoured, as they rose, the historic temple of
Jupiter Stator itself. The palace of the Caesars, ac
cording to Tacitus, whose authority should be conclu
sive, fell a victim to them, unless we ascribe the term
palatium in this passage to the new buildings with
which Nero was at the moment connecting the
imperial mansion on the Palatine with the villa of
Maecenas on the Esquiline opposite. No doubt the
fire swept the ridge of the Velia, which joined these
hills together. It is allowed, however, that the temple
of Apollo on the Palatine was standing, and apparently

144 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
uninjured, at a later period, for the library attached to
it was consumed, we are told, in the fire of Com-
modus, a hundred and twenty years afterwards. The
Capitoline escaped, perhaps, wholly ; but not so the
Aventine, where the loss of the temple of Luna is
specifically mentioned.
But the ruin caused in the six days that this con
flagration raged was not all. After the fire had ceased,
apparently from want of fuel, a change took place in
the wind, which now blew from the opposite quarter,
and another fire breaking out in the ^Emilian gardens
of Tigellinus under the Pincian Hill, a second con
flagration extended with no less fury southward, and
swept a large portion of the city from that point to
the Quirinal and the Viminal. This fresh outbreak
lasted three days, and this, too, seems to have been
intercepted by the obstacle of rising ground, and of
more solid constructions. The means of arresting
such a fire at Rome were to the last degree imperfect ;
but it would seem that the rabble of the city took
advantage of the confusion, not only for plunder, but
even to assist the destruction with their own hands.
Many, it was reported, were seen setting the torch to
houses here and there in various directions, so that
from the heights islands of flame might be observed
on all sides, apparently unconnected with one another.
It was whispered that some of these wretches declared,
on being seized, that they were acting under orders,
and the suspicions of the people, thus aroused, found
vent in denunciations of the emperor himself as the
real author of the horrible mischief. The citizens had
begun, perhaps, to look with jealousy on the vast

ST. PAUL AT ROME. r45
structures with which their ruler was" already filling
the centre of the city, and preparing one enormous
palace for his own insolent glorification. Stories were
repeated of a frightful wish he had been heard to utter,
that " the world might perish in fire " ; not, as the
tragedian had said, " after my death," but during his
own lifetime. He was at Antium when the fire broke
out ; but he had hastened back to Rome, and had
enjoyed the dreadful sight from a turret of his palace,
singing and dancing the mime of the " Burning of
Troy " during the progress of the national catastrophe.
He could not but perceive that the fire, which swept
away the narrow and tortuous lanes by which the lower
quarters of the city were encumbered, would clear the
area required for his own extravagant constructions.
Might not the monster have kindled the flames him
self, or, if the fire was really accidental, might he not
have forbidden or hindered its extinction ? Tacitus,
writing about forty years afterwards, mentions such a
charge against him as a dark insinuation only ; but
Suetonius, little if at all later, does not scruple to give
it more direct sanction; and Dion, after a longer
interval, accepts it as generally accredited.
It is not improbable that the destruction of the old
cathedral of St. Paul's, together with so many other
churches, with all their monuments and memorials of
our own mediaeval religion, in theGreatFire of London,
had a considerable effect in obliterating the prejudices
and superstitions of the English people at that period.
At Rome a similar effect would doubtless be produced,
and, to a much greater extent, by the Neronian con
flagration. The old Italian religion of the Romans,
L

I46 ST. PAUL AT ROME
notwithstanding the revival under Augustus, was already
tottering to its fall. New superstitions ar.d foreign
cults were overgrowing and discrediting it. There only
wanted a great catastrophe, which should show at once
the impotence of the old divinities and sweep away
the familiar monuments of their worship, to give a final
blow to the popular faith. The memorials of the
ancient legends could never be replaced ; we do not
hear of any attempt being made to replace them. New
temples arose for the most indispensable of the national
solemnities ; but many a long-cherished tradition was
henceforth deprived of the visible token with which it
was associated in the minds of the people. It may be
remarked that, from this time forward, the popular
religion at Rome ceases to be historic, and loses
thereby its main hold upon the popular imagination.
The burning of Rome inflicted a deep and lasting blow
upon the religion of the Romans, and cleared the field,
no doubt, for the new developments of spiritual belief
which were already impending. The first effect of
the crisis was disastrous to the little community of
Christian converts ; but it became, by God's provi
dence, a means for the ultimate advancement of the
faith. It was the first step towards the public recog
nition and the final acceptance of Christianity.

ST PAUL AT ROME. 1 47

CHAPTER IX.
THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.
Nero was not insensible to the danger into which
he had fallen. He sought the most ready means of
dispelling it by humouring the people in the ways
which had proved generally efficacious on other
occasions of public calamity. He threw open the
Campus Martius, with its porches and halls, and the
Baths of Agrippa, for shelter to the houseless multi
tude. He caused temporary buildings to be hastily
erected for them. He brought the most necessary
furniture from all the neighbouring towns, and reduced
the price of grain to the lowest fraction of the charge
at which it was ordinarily supplied them. But these
gratifications had failed to soothe their discontent, ex
asperated as it was by the prejudice suddenly excited
against him, when the second outburst of fire arose
in the gardens of his own creature Tigellinus. The
insinuation gained ready credence that he had com
manded the conflagration in order to clear an ampler
space for his insane projects. He purposed, it was
affirmed, to erect not a palace only, but a new city,
and to call it by his own name. No conception, it
was supposed could be too gigantic, no design too
monstrous for the greatest and most wilful autocrat
the world had ever known. L 2

148 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
True, indeed, it was that Nero actually con
templated an immense extension of the circuit of his
imperial residence ; true it was that he planned the
rebuilding of his squalid capital after the fashion of
the great Oriental cities, spacious and regularly
designed, which the Romans had long admired and
envied. Even in the few remaining yeats of his
principate he effected, heedless and indolent as he is
represented, the completion of his own Golden
House, the wonder of Rome and of the world for the
brief period of its existence, and also the transfor
mation of the close, narrow, and crooked alleys of the
city into broad and airy avenues. But these are works
which need not now detain us. We shall be more
interested in observing how at last, when every other
attempt to conciliate popular feeling had failed, the
tyrant succeeded in diverting the odium of the fire from
himself to the innocent Christians, and how he gave
them up to the refined and barbarous punishments of
that which is called the first Christian persecution.
We have seen how the Gospel had penetrated into
various classes at Rome, and had found a domicile even
in the imperial palace. There is no direct evidence,
however, of its having attracted any persons of distinc
tion, or made itself an actual power in Roman society
at this period. That one great lady, for instance, named
Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius who
conquered Britain under Claudius, had become a con
vert, though fondly believed by many commentators
on early Church history, is a surmise of the flimsiest
character. We read indeed in Tacitus that this noble
matron was cited by her husband before a family

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 49
council as addicted to a " foreign superstition."1 This
occurrence took place in the year A.D. 57. She had,
it seems, withdrawn herself from the society of her
class, and was plunged in a profound melancholy. But
she had been deeply distressed, as was noted, at the
murder of Julia, the daughter of Drusus fourteen years
before. Her strange deportment might be due simply
to excessive grief, and the family council exculpated
her from the charge of superstition now laid against
her. She continued to mourn for many years after,
and became, indeed, famous among her contempora
ries, for the signal fidelity of her sorrow. If she had
really embraced the tenets of a foreign creed, it might
have been the Jewish, the Egyptian, or the Syrian, for
all these made their converts among the sensitive
minds of the Roman women of the period, and pro
voked thereby the jealous anger of the men. The
Christian it was the less likely to have been, inasmuch
as the date of her trial was four years before St. Paul's
arrival in Rome, and one year before the arrival of
his epistle to the disciples in the city.
Another instance of a reputed conversion in the
upper ranks may be cited here; though this, too,
stands on no secure foundation. The attempt has
been made to identify the Pudens and Claudia, whose
greetings are mentioned in St. Paul's Second Epistle
to Timothy, with persons of distinction in the city.
Pudens, it is surmised, is the son of the Pudentinus
whose name is read together with his own in a well-
known British inscription at Chichester. This was
the seat of a king Cogidubnus, who had attached him-
• Tac., Annal., xiii. 32.

150 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
self to the gens of the emperor Claudius, and assumed
his gentile designation. It is conjectured that this
Claudius Cogidubnus may have had a daughter called
after himself Claudia; that she may have married
.Pudens, and have settled eventually at Rome with
him. These two suppositions granted, she may, very
possibly, it is said, be the same Claudia who is
complimented more than once by Martial as a
British lady of great accomplishments, and the wife
of a certain Pudens, a friend of his own. The dates
of Martial's compositions are too uncertain to allow
us to argue upon them one way or the other ; _but,
at least, it must be remarked that the Pudens of
the poet was a man of licentious morality, such as
might pass, indeed, with little comment among men
of the world at the time, but from which the Apostle
would surely have turned with indignation. Another
guess, that the Claudia of the epistle was the daughter
of the British hero Caractacus, brought up as a client
of the emperor's during her father's captivity at Rome,
is hardly less attractive, but this can only be regarded as
at best an idle fancy, besides that it is liable to the same
fatal objection as the former. Again, if we look from
particular instances to the general tone of literature
of the day, we shall be still less able to discover any
distinct impression made at this period by Christianity
upon the higher classes of society. The remains,
indeed, of Roman literature in the time of Claudius
and Nero are singularly scanty, and are almost wholly
confined to the works of Seneca and the epic poem
of Lucan. Both these writers make some mention
of the Jews ; but we haye seen that Seneca bears no

ST. PAUL AT ROME, 151
witness to the existence of Christianity, which is at
least equally unknown to Lucan.
Light, then, as is the impression which the un
doubted preaching of the Gospel at Rome can be
supposed to have made on the feelings of the higher
classes, there seems little reason to imagine that it
made itself hateful to the lower, among whom it no
doubt penetrated deeper. It was not the meek un
offending Christians who caused the sectarian troubles
among the Jewish population of the city ; but the
Jews, who harassed and maltreated them. The pecu
liarity of their usages and manners, the straitness of
their demeanour, the ascetic restraints which they
practised, were not, we may suppose, more offensive
to the licentious multitudes around them than those
of the Jews themselves, and other devotees of foreign
cults. If some among them spoke too openly of the
expected destruction of the world by fire, this startling
prognostication could not have made them more ob
noxious than the Stoics, who proclaimed a final con
flagration of all things. " Communis mundo superest
rogus," was the declaration of Lucan, in the tone of
the current philosophy, almost at the very moment that
Rome, the head and mistress of the world, was blazing
on her own funeral pyre. We can discover no reason
for any special jealousy being entertained of the Chrisr
tians, or for the burning of the city being imputed to
them, as we are assured it was, and for the cruel im
putation being caught up with unscrupulous ardour,
and the indignation of the populace successfully
directed against them.
The account, indeed, which we have received from

152 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
the historian Tacitus, corroborated in the main by the
slighter notice of Suetonius, describes the persecution
which followed as falling in its full force upon the
Christian community. The story will be most plainly
and vividly told in the words of our great authority
himself. After describing the fire, and the plans
adopted for the reconstruction of the city with a view
to its greater stability and convenience, he adds : —
" These things were supplied by human counsels ;
next to these, the gods were to be appeased by sacri
fices and ceremonies, such as should be enjoined by
the books of the Sibyl ; and supplications were made
accordingly to Vulcan, Ceres, Proserpine, and Juno.
. . . But neither by human aid, nor by the prince's
largesses, nor again by appeal to the divinities, was
the common rumour dissipated, which insinuated that
the conflagration had been commanded. In order to
stifle this suspicion, Nero accused and exposed' to
special torments certain wicked and detestable people
who were commonly styled Christians. They derived
their names from a certain Christus, who had suffered
death under Pontius Pilatus, in the reign of Tiberius;
but their abominable superstition, though checked for
a time, was again breaking forth, and, spreading not
only over Judaea, where it had its origin, but through
the city, whither everything atrocious and shameless
comes together, and is practised openly. Some people
were at once arrested, and, on their confession and
testimony, a great number of others were convicted,
not so much on the charge of the burning, as of their
hatred to mankind in general. These were put to
death, and mockery was added to their sufferings;

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 53
for some were sewn up in beasts' skins and torn in
pieces by dogs, others were fastened to crosses and
set on fire to give light at night. Nero threw his own
gardens open for the spectacle, and held chariot races
on the occasion, mingling with the mob in the garb of
a driver, or himself driving. Culprits they might be,
and worthy of extreme punishments; nevertheless,
the people could not help pitying them, as condemned
for no public advantage, but to gratify the cruelty of
a single individual."1
Such is the record of the great historian, who bears
the highest character for the truth and accuracy of
his statements, wherever he is not liable to the influence
of political partizanship or misled by malicious fabri
cations. This account, confirmed, as has been said,
by Suetonius, and again very faintly countenanced
by a casual expression of Martial, has been currently
received by our ecclesiastical writers, and is sufficient,
no doubt, to establish the fact of a cruel persecution
of the disciples of the faith at this time resident in
Rome. We know too well the indiscriminate ferocity
with which the Romans chastised the objects of
public hate or fear to be startled at the flagrant iniquity
of the proceeding. The shocking barbarity of wrap
ping the victims in cloths saturated with grease, and
burning them on poles or crosses to give light to a
popular festival, had been practised before, and con-
1 Tacitus combines the gardens of Nero with the games of the
Circus, and he is supposed to refer to the Circus of Nero, or of
Caligula before him, on the slope of the Vatican Hill. If this
was the place, it is perhaps the identical spot now occupied by
the basilica of St. Peter, or the Vatican palace.

154 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
tinued, perhaps, to be practised again upon othei
criminals.1 But, whether on this occasion the histo
rian has accuratelydiscriminatedbetweentheChristians
and the Jews, from whom the heathens at Rome could
hardly at the time distinguish them ; whether the
persecution fell more or less upon both, who were
liable to the same charge in the mouths of the heathen
of " hatred of the human race " ; whether the Jews,
being "the first arrested," evaded the charge by
" testifying " against the Christians, are matters which
may still admit of consideration and conjecture. It
was a common charge in later times against the heretics
that they were wont to inform against the orthodox
believers; and it is not impossible that the Jews may,
in this instance, have anticipated them. We have
seen that the so-called " correspondence of Paul and
Seneca " is spurious ; nevertheless, the forgery is pro
bably a genuine composition of the fourth, or even the
third century, and some of its statements seem to be
derived from documents existing at the time. Accord
ingly, when we read in a pretended letter of Seneca,
giving some account of the fire and the persecution,
that both " Christians and Jews are suffering on the
charge of contriving the conflagration," we may not
unreasonably conjecture that the injustice was not
wholly confined to our own brethren in the faith.2 It
1 Comp. Senec, Epist. xiv., and also Juvenal, i. 155, viii.
235, who seem, however, in both places to allude to this parti
cular event.
! Epist. xii. This " correspondence" may be compared with
the declamations and controversies commonly composed in the
decline of Roman literature, in which a given topic was treated

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 55
must be observed, however, that none of our authorities
mention any persons of Roman name, or of social
distinction, among the victims. The charge was
launched apparently at an obscure set of foreigners
only. If Pomponia and Claudia were really converts
they must certainly have escaped the fate of their
fellow-believers. Though the writers of ecclesiastical
history speak uniformly of this as the " first persecu
tion " of the Christians, and dilate upon its horrors,
the records of the Christian martyrs, whether genuine
or fictitious, embrace the names of none of the suf
ferers in it.1 The vague reference that is made to a
general persecution throughout the empire as follow
ing upon it, is supported by no documentary evidence.
The outbreak of violence caused by a momentary
panic seems to have speedily subsided into a feeling
of compassion ; and the shocking barbarities which
at first it sanctioned, were not, we may believe, re
peated. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that both Tacitus
and Suetonius may have been led into error in re
ferring the persecution to the Christians only, and
making no mention of the Jews who suffered with
them or before them. At the time of the fire the
as an exercise of ingenuity. Such compositions were not meant
to deceive, but if they were well and carefully executed, and
discussed matters of real interest, they might eventually obtain
a credit they did not deserve. Some of the speeches which pass
under Cicero's name labour under suspicion of forgery of this
kind, and the " Epistle of Sallust to Julius Cfesar" is perhaps
convicted of such an origin. Such writings, fictitious as they
are, may still possess some historical value.
1 Mosheim, De rebus Christ, ante Constant,, sasc. 1, § 34.

156 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
Jews were viewed with dislike and alarm on account
of the riots they had so recently excited in the city,
and of the rebellious spirit which was at the moment
about to break out in their own country, while the
Christians were a separate and quiet sect barely
heeded or heard of. But forty years later, when our
historians were writing, the situation was apparently
reversed. The Jews had been prostrated and crushed,
and though they actually rose in revolt once more
under Hadrian, they might be little regarded by the
contemporaries of his predecessor Trajan. But the
Christians, on the other hand, had emerged at the
later period into greater notoriety. They had been
watched and controlled, and sometimes maltreated,
through a whole generation, and Trajan was now
himself engaged in something like a systematic per
secution of them. The great bishop Ignatius, of
Antioch, was on his way to suffer martyrdom in the
arena at Rome. The Jews had receded from the
historian's field of vision, the Christians had insensibly
glided into it.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 157

CHAPTER X.
SECOND IMPRISONMENT AND MARTYRDOM OF
ST. PAUL AT ROME.
It pleased Providence to remove the Apostle from
Rome during the time of this fiery trial, and to give
him other work to do for the propagation of the faith
before he was called to seal his testimony to it with
his blood. While Paul was journeying and preaching
in Greece and Asia, and possibly in Spain, the great
philosopher whose name has been so closely asso
ciated with him, however little they may have been
personally acquainted, was going on his way to death
before him. Seneca was about to expiate his weak
nesses by a bloody end, and to cast a last halo of dig
nity over his career as a martyr to truth and virtue.
While the Christian preacher, on escaping from his
detention within the precincts of the palace, was re
commencing his active life of journeying and teach
ing, the pagan sage still shrank from showing himself
to the public gaze, and pleaded bodily infirmity as an
excuse for retiring first to his gardens in the suburbs,
and soon after to his villas in the country. He still
occupied himself with study and composition, and
kept himself aloof, we may believe, from the intrigues
of the nobles who were plotting against the life of the

158 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
emperor, whom they detested as the special enemy oF
their class.
In the year 65 the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso
was planned, but it was speedily detected, and he
suffered accordingly, together with Plautius Lateranus,
and the poet Lucan, the nephew of Seneca, and
many other magnates of the city. Nero had long
wished for an excuse for consigning his former pre
ceptor to death, and it was easy to cast suspicion of
complicity upon Seneca. The old man denied the
charge, but his denial was of no avail, and he was
commanded to put an end to his own life. Such was
the custom of the time in cases where the tyrant
shrank from exacting an execution of a Roman citizen
under legal forms. The indignity of a compulsory
suicide was never inflicted upon the Christian mar
tyrs. The narrative of the last sufferings of Seneca
constitutes one of the most harrowing tales of the
imperial history.
The Apostle was at the same time drawing nigh
to the bloody end which was appointed for him, but
neither is the immediate cause assigned, nor have
the circumstances of his death been so precisely
detailed for us. The rebellion of the Jews broke
out in the year 66, and at this period Paul, as we
may suppose from the slight indications before
noticed, was first, perhaps, in Spain, and afterwards
in Asia. Nero passed the greater part of the following
year in Greece, and the Apostle, who repaired from
Asia to Macedonia, may actually have crossed his path.
The emperor returned to his capital at the end of the
year, and thither the Apostle was about to follow him.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 59
It appears from Paul's Epistle to Titus despatched from
Ephesus in the autumn that he purposed to pass the
winter at Nicopolis in Epirus, in the neighbourhood
of the Christian communities which he had perhaps
himself already planted in Illyricum.1 But all his steps
are now involved in the merest conjecture. It may be
that he was arrested at Nicopolis at the instigation of
the Jews, as on the former occasion, as a disturber of
the peace and a disloyal citizen ; it may be that since
the persecution at Rome the name of Christian had
fallen into special disfavour, and that the authorities
beyond the sea thought to show their zeal for the public
interests by sending the Christian preacher bound to
Rome. If, however, a legal persecution of the Chris
tians had been formally proclaimed throughout the
empire, as has been too loosely asserted, he would
surely have been martyred on the spot where he was
apprehended. However this may be, we seem next
to hear of him as a prisoner at Rome, writing the
second of his letters to Timothy, attended by Luke,
but by Luke only. Demas, as he complains, had
forsaken him, and departed to Thessalonica ; Crescens
he had probably sent himself to Galatia, as well as
Titus to Dalmatia, and Tychicus to Ephesus. He
desires Timothy to come himself, and to bring Mark
with him, for he would be useful to him in the
ministry. It is evident that the charge against Paul,
whatever it was, did not include his nearest associates,
and accordingly it could hardly have been aimed at
1 Epist. to Titzis iii. 12: — "for I have determined"
(leeicptKa) "there to winter, "—showing that the Apostle was still
a free man.

l6o ST. PAUL AT ROME.
him simply as a Christian. It is evident, also, that
though his confinement may have been stricter now
than on the former occasion, still it did not preclude
him from conversing with his friends, and directing
them, in the work of the Christian ministry.
It is important then to remark, that the indications
of danger or suffering which are given in this epistle
refer to the Apostle himself alone, and in no respect
to the disciples generally. He was himself under
arrest, and might speedily expect his condemnation.
It would appear that his case had been already heard
a first time, and he had been respited. " At my first
answer," he says, " no man stood with me, but all
men forsook me  Notwithstanding, the Lord
stood with me, and strengthened me ... . and I
was delivered out of the mouth of the lion." Never
theless, he expects no such deliverance a second
time ; he is now " ready to be offered," and the time
of his " departure is at hand." " I have fought a
good fight," he adds, " I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, shall give me at that day ; and not
to me only, but to them also that " — not suffer under
persecution such as mine, but — " love His appearing."
He allows, indeed, that " all that will live godly in
Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution "; that is, all must
learn to " suffer hardness," all must expect " to endure
afflictions," inasmuch as "in the last days perilous
times shall come." But he allows Timothy and his
fellow-disciples to anticipate that some period of time
will be yet allotted them for the long work they have to

ST. PAUL AT ROME. l6l
perform ; there is no immediate prospect of an end
to their labours and trials ; they are not, as he is,
about to be offered up ; in short, there is no bloody
persecution of the faith at this time to be appre
hended in Rome.
Such seems to be the unavoidable inference from
the language of this Epistle, however difficult it may
be to reconcile it with the presumed condition of the
Christians at the city at this moment. Nor is it much
more easy to reconcile it with the tone of St. Peter's
Epistles to the Jews or strangers scattered throughout
the provinces of Asia Minor, which must be assigned
to a date very slightly antecedent to the period before
us. In these addresses the Apostle dwells, not upon
any trials or sufferings of his own, but much upon
those of the disciples, some that they were actually
suffering, others that seemed to be impending. He
leads us to believe that, in many regions of the East,
the Christians were at this very time, that is, after
the Neronian persecution, but before the death of
Paul, exposed to violence and cruelty. There is no
reason on this account to suppose that the recent
action of the Government at Rome was extended
throughout the provinces. But it is probable that
the prevailing hostility of the Jews to their Christian
brethren continued to break out in irregular attacks
upon them, such as we read of repeatedly in the Acts
of the Apostles, and that these attacks constituted a
source of constant danger to them. There is, in fact,
no reason to conclude that the systematic persecution
of the faith by legal methods which prevailed in the

162 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
time of Trajan, had as yet been organized either at
Rome or in the provinces.
The Epistles of St. Peter are dated from " Babylon."
Ancient tradition, upheld by the authority of many
early writers, asserts that Babylon is here used as the
mystical name of Rome, and that it was actually
from Rome that the Apostle wrote. But except for
this tradition, which may obviously be referred to a
merely sentimental origin, as satisfying the yearning
of the early Christians for some trace of a combined
foundation of the great Roman Church by the
Apostle to the Jews and the Apostle to the Gentiles,
there seems no ground whatever for deviating from
the plain logical rule of interpreting words in their
natural, rather than in their rhetorical or allegorical
signification. Though the " mighty Babylon " of
ancient days had long fallen, and the remains of its
greatness had been usurped by Ctesiphon and
Seleucia, no insignificant population was still dwelling
within the circuit of its mouldering walls, and the
colony of Jews which at this period frequented it
was numerous and even politically important. From
Babylon, then, as the eastern extremity of his mis
sionary travels, St. Peter might naturally address
himself to the converts . dispersed in the regions
of " Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,"
mentally reviewing them nearly in their local order
from east to west. This is, of course, the reverse of
the order in which they would present themselves to
his mind if he were writing from the capital of the
West. But it is precisely the order in which they
would appear to him when he anticipated the journey

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 163
which, as we may suppose, he was about to take him
self at the moment to Rome. For, though we may by
no means subscribe to it as a certain fact, we may not
care to dispute the prevalent tradition, even more
uniform than the one which we have just rejected,
that Peter did actually visit Rome at last. We may
embrace the pleasing opinion that the two great
Apostles did actually meet on the spot which was
destined to become the centre of their common faith
for so many ages, and to symbolize that union of the
two forms or tendencies of Christian teaching to
which they had respectively attached themselves.
The tradition goes on to declare, and if we admit
it as a tradition only, and carefully withhold from it
the credence we should reserve for facts established
on historical testimony, we may fairly allow its
prpbability, that the two Apostles were martyred
about the same time, or even on the same day.
Under what circumstances sentence was pronounced
upon either of them we are, however, absolutely un
informed. It seems idle to examine into the regular
forms of legal procedure at Rome, and picture to
ourselves the appearance of Paul or of his colleague
before the tribunals and the judges of the city. We
must confess ourselves ignorant of the exact charge
preferred against them ; we do not know for certain
whether at the last there was any regular and legal
charge at all. It would be plainly a mistake to suppose
that the early persecutions and attacks upon the
Christians were always conducted by regular and legal
methods. They were much oftener the result of popu
lar violences, or of the personal antipathy of men in
M 2

164 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
authority. We have accepted, amidst much con
flicting opinion, the hypothesis that St. Paul was
confined in his second imprisonment during the
spring of the year 68, because, in the absence of
any evidence to the contrary, it is important to
allow as much time as we can to the various
journeys the Apostle is supposed to have taken in the
interval between the two imprisonments, to the growth
of the untoward circumstances to which allusion is
made in his latest Epistles, and to the difference of
style which, as some think, may be discovered between
them and those which belong to an earlier date.
It can be shown that the emperor Nero perished
on the 9th, or perhaps the nth, of June in
that same year. For some weeks, or even months,
before that period, he had been disturbed and dis
mayed by the approach of his combined enemies. It
is very unlikely that he would have taken heed of
the obscure Jewish criminal, and presided in person
at his trial. It is hardly more likely that his minister
Helius, or his prefect, Nymphidius, would have
troubled himself in so trifling a matter. Clement of
Rome, the first of the Apostolic fathers, says that he
" suffered death," or perhaps more exactly, " bore testi
mony to the faith, " " before the authorities " ; l but
1 Clemens Rom. ad Corinth., i. 5 : fiaprvprioas *7rl tuiv
iiyoviiiruiv. The word iiapTvpiw, which Clement of Rome here
uses, occurs frequently in the writings of the New Testament,
but only in the sense of bearing witness, teaching, and such
like. But Clement was himself a contemporary of the writer
who so used it ; and this accordingly is the sense in which we
should expect him also to adopt it. The secondary sense of
' ' suffering martyrdom " became assigned to the word in later

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 165
what he plainly means is simply this, that the Apostle
proclaimed the faith in the most public manner ; for
such is the object of the context, to magnify the extent
and the power of St. Paul's preaching, and so it may
accordingly be rendered : " he went to the farthest
West, he preached in the highest places of the world,
and so he came to his end."
But, the story goes that Peter and Paul both suf
fered death at Rome, and both, it is said, on the same
day, during the reign of Nero. If our chronology is
correct, which may be still an open question, we can
not reconcile the statement of th". tradition precisely
with the evidence of history ; fur the exact computa
tions of our genuine authorities place the death of
Nero, as we have seen, on the 9th or nth of June;
while the martyrologies on which the tradition is
founded give the 29th of the month for the day of the
martyrdom. It would be lost labour to look more
closely into the flimsy materials we possess for form
ing any decided judgment on this question. Still
following, however, the guidance of a phantom tradi
tion, we are taught to look for the place of St. Paul's
martyrdom to a spot called Aquae Salviae, now Tre-
fontane, about two miles from the walls on the way
to Ostia. There was no attempt, it seems, to make
this execution a public spectacle for the gratification
of popular disgust. The road, which is now one of
the most desolate outlets into the country round Rome,
times : it is so found in Chrysostom and Basil in the fourth cen
tury. Suicer gives no earlier example. So jjydu/tEj/oc is com
monly used indefinitely for " persons in authority," ^ye/xuip more
technically for "agovernor," "a. prefect," "a proconsul," &c.

1 66 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
was then hedged in on both sides by the tombs and
monuments of the dead, and was neither an avenue
of suburban dwellings nor a thoroughfare of popular
resort. The mode of the Apostle's execution, we are
further told, was by the sword ; his death was that of
a Roman citizen, from which, even in those degenerate
days, the Roman mob might be expected to turn
away with shame, rather than to throng to it with
insolent delight. It seems, indeed, to have been not
unusual to conduct a Roman criminal some way be
yond the walls, in order to avoid making a public
spectacle of so ill-omened an execution. But, with
St. Peter, the circumstances are said to have been
different. If he really suffered, as we are assured, we
know not under what charge he was convicted ; but
as he was not a Roman citizen, it might be expected
that his punishment would be more suitable to the
case of an unprivileged stranger. It is said that he
was taken to the slope of the Vatican hill, hard by
the spot where the victims of the original persecution
had suffered, and was there crucified. The prurient
imagination of the martyrologists has added, that lie
was crucified with his head downwards, at his own
request, as though he held himself unworthy to die in
the nobler attitude of his divine Master. The places
of these two illustrious martyrdoms might naturally be
remembered by the surviving disciples, and honoured,
as soon as it was safe or possible to do so, by the
erection of chapels or churches over them. As time
went on and the faith of Christ became exalted into
the religion of the empire, these modest memorials
were converted into illustrious fanes ; the tomb of St,

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 67
Paul is now inclosed within a spacious basilica, glow
ing, since its restoration after a recent fire, with gold
and marble, and inferior only to the most sumptuous
of all Christian temples, the cathedral of St. Peter.
But the fate of the two buildings is very different. The
one, planted in a low and pestilential spot, is paced
only by a few fever-stricken monks, and an occasional
hasty traveller or pilgrim. The other is crowded
day by day by residents and strangers, as the shrine
equally of religious feeling and of aesthetic taste, and
has become the centre of devotion of the most
numerous denomination of Christian believers.
The result of this sketch of St. Paul's connection
with Rome will be felt no doubt to be, on the
whole, disappointing. Beyond the meagre notice
in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, we seem
to have few or no certain historical data to rely
upon in delineating it. The incidental allusions
of the Apostle's own letters are obscure, and
of questionable interpretation. The single passage
from the work of a contemporary believer which can
be adduced for a particular incident in Paul's career,
admits of different constructions. The references of
later Christian writers are evidently founded on vague
and uncertain traditions, framed, as seems but too
probable, to meet a previously-constructed theory.
It would, indeed, be easy to swell these scanty memo
rials by legends which were once current among the
early ecclesiastical writers, with regard to Paul as well
as Peter, but which at the present day an historian,
with any self-respect, can only pass over in silence.
But, if our materials for constructing an account of

1 68 ST. PAUL AT ROME.
St. Paul's doings at Rome are so slight and pre
carious, still more disappointing will it be to note,
how slight to all outward appearance was the effect
produced by the great Apostle's preaching. Of the
number of the Christian disciples who suffered in the
Neronian persecution we can say nothing ; but, grant
ing that they were, as Tacitus declares, a great multi
tude, and that many of these were converts of the
Apostle himself, we cannot, it would seem, claim any
among them as persons of note, either for rank or
intelligence. Neither at the time, nor for many later
generations, did the Pagan writers speak of the sect
of Christians as comprehending men of social or moral
distinction. The notion of Seneca having been con
verted has been shown to be utterly groundless ; nor
dare we put in a claim for Pomponia Graecina ; nor
for the daughter of Cogidubnus or Caractacus, and her
husband Pudens. In the next generation, Flavius
Clemens, a cousin of the emperor Domitian, was put
to death, on the pretence that he was an atheist, and a
convert to Judaism, and shrank fiom the proper duties
of his rank and station.1 Ecclesiastical writers claim
him as a Christian martyr; but the inference is, at
least, insecure. Still more, it must be allowed that
the Roman Church produced no men of mark in our
literary annals for some centuries. It is impossible
to suppose that where the inspired eloquence of Pau.
was but partially successful, the tame mediocrity of
Clemens Romanus can have commanded the sub
mission of intelligent pagans. Another disappoint-
' Dion Cassius, lxvii. 14.

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 1 69
ment still awaits us, for when the Church of Rome
seems first to emerge from its obscurity at the end of
the second century, we find her, under her bishop
Callistus, tinged with vice or sunk in indolence, and
lapsing into the secular habits and associations of the
Pagans around it. Her numbers as well as her virtues
increased under the stress of persecution; but the
first cessation of her sufferings in the third century
betrayed in her a weaker character than can be charged
against other churches. The Christian fugitives from
the sack of Rome by Alaric scandalized, by their
frivolity and licentiousness, the holier society of
brethren among whom they sought an asylum in
Africa. All these things are disappointing. It is difficult, no
doubt, to understand the apparent failure of the direct
teaching of the great Apostle Paul. It was not so
with the preaching of Luther ; it was not so with the
preaching of Wesley. It may be remarked, indeed,
that the special teaching of St. Paul has never enjoyed
the same acceptance with the more effeminate and
susceptible minds of southern Europe as with the
sturdier understandings of our northern nations. The
people of Rome in the early age of the Church were
much the same in this respect as they have been ever
since. The doctrine of the Epistles to Galatians and
Romans has never been made to harmonize with the
worship of the Virgin, the invocation of saints, the
adoration of relics, or generally with a blind addiction
to a sensuous ceremonial. The religion of the Gospel
as expounded by St. Paul appeals directly to the con
science, and brings man face to face with his Maker,

17° ST. PAUL AT ROME.
and with Jesus Christ and Him only as his Mediator
and Redeemer. But whatever our disappointment, as
above intimated, there seems to be a lesson of no little
significance to be learnt from it. We are ourselves
making, at this moment, great efforts for the conver
sion of the heathen abroad, for the planting of the
Christian Church more especially in the midst of old-
established superstitions in foreign lands. We com
plain of the slow progress we make, of our repeated
failures, and our meagre successes. Our preachers,
brave and devoted as they are, can take, it would
seem, no such hold on the imaginations of the Mussul
mans, the Hindoos, or the Chinese, as Luther upon the
monks and peasants of Saxony, and Wesley upon
tradesmen and artizans in England. But, possibly,
our advance is, after all, not slower than that of
St. Paul himself. It may well be believed that in
religion, as in many other things, the slowest growths
are the surest and most enduring. It will be found,
perhaps, that our great modern revivals have been so
successful because they have been revivals ; because
our preachers have been engaged in reviving a life
which had become wellnigh extinguished, not in creat
ing a life which had not existed before. Nothing is
so hard to extirpate as the root of a popular super
stition. The idolatries of the ancient world were in a
constant state of flux. The various forms in which
they presented themselves were constantly shifting.
The devotees of Paganism were hunted again and
again out of every stronghold. They were pursued
from elemental-worship to hero-worship ; from the
concrete divinity to the abstract ; from the classical

ST. PAUL AT ROME. 17 J
mythology to the Gnostic or Mithraic theosophy ; but
repulsed in one shape, the innate Paganism of the
human heart returned from age to age, and resumed
its dominion over the highest as well as the lowest
intellects. The Pagans continued to shift their
ground with every defe-at, but they yielded it only to
occupy it again with every fresh revival of their super
stitious impulses. The desperate contest they still
continued to maintain against Christianity in the fourth
and fifth centuries, when every external support had
failed them, may give us an idea of the long and
dubious fight we shall have to carry on for generations,
perhaps, for ages to come, with the last remnants of
the popular creeds, which still stand erect, and defy
us to the onset. The great triumph of St. Paul's
preaching, as far as it has been yet triumphant, was,
after all, reserved for the fifth, or even for the sixteenth
or the eighteenth century.

note on st. Paul's acquaintance

NOTE ON ST. PAUL'S ACQUAINTANCE
WITH ROMAN LAW,

[It may be right to apprize the reader that the remarks here
appended are substantially the same as the writer has previously
advanced in his Boyle Lectures for 1864, "On the Conversion
of the Roman Empire."]
St. Paul, we know, though a Jew and a native of
Tarsus in Cilicia, enjoyed the rights of Roman
citizenship from his birth. His city had been an
important place during the civil contests of the great
Roman captains. Caesar had treated it with favour,
and may probably have conferred the franchise upon
some of its people. M. Antonius was also partial to
it. It was noted as a school of literature and phi
losophy, hardly second at the time to Athens or
Alexandria. Several of its scholars belonged to the
sect of Stoics, which generally made a study of Roman
law. Augustus placed himself under the tuition of
one of these instructors, and gave his nephew Mar-
cellus as a pupil to another. It was observed that
the alumni of Tarsus did not generally make their
permanent abode there, but more commonly repaired
from thence to other seats of learning or of business.
If the young Saul of Tarsus acquired his early train
ing at his native university he would not be unlikely

WITH ROMAN LAW. 173
to betake himself in riper years to Jerusalem, and sit
there at the feet of Gamaliel, as a student of the laws
and customs of the Hebrew sages. We may easily
believe, however, that he carried away with him, even
in his youth, an acquaintance with the principles of
Roman jurisprudence, which it was of the first im
portance to a Roman citizen of foreign extraction to
make himself familiar with, for his own personal
security. The Roman civitas conferred on him dis
tinct privileges ; it assured him of protection and
freedom ; it gave him a certain prestige among his
less fortunate countrymen. We find St. Paul fully
aware of these advantages : he appeals more than
once to his rights as a citizen, and asserts his supe
riority as born to them over one who had only pur
chased them for himself.
But further, we meet in the teaching of the apostle
with a direct application of Roman legal principles in
illustration of his doctrine, such as none but a Roman
could be expected, or would perhaps be able, to
make. 1. The mission of our Lord Jesus Christ for the
salvation of men is described in Scripture in two
ways ; sometimes as though it were done of His own
will, and at other times as the accomplishment of a
task imposed upon Him by the Father. It will be
found that, while St. John and St. Peter represent it
distinctly in the former light, St. Paul introduces the
notion of the Father's will controlling His Son's
action. Upon this view he strongly insists. Thus
we have on the one hand, in St. John's Gospel, xviii.
37 : "To this end was I born, and for this cause

174 note on st. paul's acquaintance
came I into the world, that I should bear witness of
the truth." Again, r Epist. iii. 16 : "Because He
'laid down His life for us." St. Peter, i Epist. iii. 18 :
" Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just foi
the unjust." Comp. i Epist. iv. i. In one place, indeed,
St. John seems to glide into the other view, where he
says, i Epist. iv. 9 : "In this was manifested the love
of God towards us, because that God sent His only
begotten Son into the world, that we might live through
Him." But in St. Paul the notion of Christ's work
being an act of obedience to his Father becomes
more prominent and exclusive. Thus, in Romans iii.
25 : " Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation ; "
v. 19: "As by one man's disobedience many were
made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous ; " Galat. i. 4 : " Who gave Him
self for our sins . . . according to the will of God
the Father ; " Phil. ii. 8 : " Who humbled Himself
and became obedient unto death;" Coloss. i. 19:
" It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness
dwell ; and having made peace through the blood of
His cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Him
self." Comp. Heb. v. 8 : " Though he were a son,
yet learned He obedience by the things which He
suffered." It is not meant that there is any absolute
discrepancy in the two views here indicated, but that
the one apostle is led to dwell more upon the obedi
ence of Christ, the others on the spontaneousness of
His sacrifice.
But this notion of the necessary subjection of the
Son to the Father agrees exactly with the principle of
Roman law, familiar to every citizen, which was in-

WITH ROMAN LAW. 175
volved in the patria potestas, or authority of the father
over his children. The law of the Twelve Tables,
which gave the father an entire right over the person
and property of his son, even after he had come of
age, was maintained, in theory, at least, down to a
later period of the empire. Gaius, under the Anto-
nines, still speaks of it as peculiar to Roman jurispru
dence, except that the nation of the " Galatae " ad
mitted the same principle among themselves. It
may be a question whether he means the Gauls or
the Galatians ; but supposing him to mean the latter,
as seems most probable, it would give a special
significance to the language which St. Paul addresses
to them in his Epistle (iv. i) : " Now I say that the
heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a
servant, though he be lord of all ; but is under tutors
and governors until the time appointed of the father.
Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage
under the elements of the world. But when, in the
fulness of time, God sent forth His son," &c. Such
an illustration would have little force unless the
people to whom it was addressed were familiar with
the principle referred to. But to the disciples at
Rome the apostle would doubtless be intelligible
enough when he speaks of the "bondage of cor
ruption," in allusion apparently to the subjection of
the Roman son to his earthly father.
2. In the Epistle to the Galatians (iii. 15) we read :
" Brethren, I speak after the manner of man ; though
it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no
man disalloweth or addeth thereto " ; where the
apostle declares that he is making use of an illustra-

176 note on st. Paul's acquaintance
tion from secular customs, and refers apparently to
the Roman law of Wills, according to which the
testator, after certain formalities fulfilled, could
neither revoke nor alter the disposition of his pro
perty. Thus, when we are told by Suetonius ths.t
Caesar, and subsequently Augustus, placed their tes
taments in the hands of the Vestal Virgins (Jul. 83,
Octav. in), we are to understand that they re
nounced in so doing the power of cancelling or
adding a codicil to them. Comp. also Galat. iv. 1,
and following, above referred to.
Again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, there seems to
be a similar reference to the Roman law of testation
(Heb. viii. 6), where, however, the writer mixes up the
idea of a covenant and of a will (Heb. ix. 15-17) ;
either of which may be implied by the word Siadriicri,
which we here translate " testament," but elsewhere
" covenant." He had been describing Jesus* Christ
as the mediator or intermediate instrument of a
new " covenant," as opposed to the old covenant
made by God with Abraham, but he goes on to
introduce the idea of a will, suggested, as it would
seem, by the death of Christ, adding : " For where a
testament is, there must also of necessity be the death
of the testator. For a testament is of force after men
are dead ; otherwise it is of no strength at all while
the testator liveth " ; where it may be remarked that
our translation " be " hardly gives the force of the
Greek fiptadat, which is really a forensic term, mean
ing that the death must be " judicially proven."
This coincidence in the use of forensic language
in an acknowledged epistle of St. Paul's, and in

WITH ROMAN LAW. 177
another which must be regarded as at least Pauline
in its tone and character, is worth remarking, par
ticularly when we consider how peculiar the forms
of testamentary law were to the Romans. This fact
has been pointed out by Sir H. Maine in his valuable
book on " Ancient Law," where he gives the Romans
the credit of " inventing the will," and says that it is
doubtful whether " a true power of testation " was
known to any original society except them. " The
original institutions of the Jews," he adds, "have
provided nowhere for the privileges of testatorship."
(Ancient Law, p. 194, foil.)
3. The use which St. Paul makes of the idea of
adoption, a prominent feature in the Roman law, is
still more marked. The spiritual connection of the
true disciple with God is repeatedly represented to us
in his epistles under the figure of sonship. The
idea of simple sonship, indeed, is brought pro
minently forward by St. John ; as I Epist. iii. r, " that
we should be called," i.e. should be, "sons of God."
Comp. v. 9, 10 ; iv. 6, and other places. But
whereas St. John always represents this idea in its
simplest form, St. Paul, and St. Paul only, describes
this sonship more artificially as adoptive. This view
is set forth in a marked way in the Epistle to the
Romans, viii. 14, following : " As many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye
have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father." . ... 21 : "Because
the creature itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the
N

178 note on st. paul's acquaintance
children of God .... And not only they, but our
selves also, which have the first-fruits of the spirit,
even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for
the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body."
This illustration, it is to be observed, is not taken
from any Jewish custom ; the law of Moses contains
no provision for such a practice, nor is there any
indication of its having obtained among the Jewish
people. Adoption was essentially a Roman usage,
and was closely connected with the Roman ideas of
family. The maintenance of the sacra privata, the
domestic rites of the family, was regarded by the
Romans as a matter of great political importance ;
and their law accordingly described minutely the
forms under which, in default of natural heirs, the
paterfamilias might thus prospectively secure it. The
son was declared to be the absolute property of his
father from his birth to his father's decease. In
order to being adopted out of his own family into
that of another man it was necessary that he should
undergo a fictitious sale. But if a son had been thus
sold by his father and had again recovered his liberty,
he fell again under the paternal dominion, and it was
not till he had been thus sold, emancipatus, three
times, that he became finally free from this para
mount authority. Accordingly, the adopter required
that the fiction of sale should be three times repeated,
before the son could be received into his new family,
and fall under the dominion of his new father.
When, however, these formalities had been complied
with, the adopted son became incorporated into the
family of his adopter, identified, as it were, with his

WITH ROMAN LAW. 179
person, made one with him ; so that on the adopter's
decease be became not so much his representative
as his second self, the perpetuator of his legal per
sonality. He assumed, moreover, on adoption, the
burdens or privileges incident to the performance of
the rites of his new family. He relinquished his
former sacra, and attached himself to those of his
new parent.
All this appears to have been in the Apostle's mind
when he addressed the Roman disciples in the pas
sage just cited. The Spirit of God, he says, bears
witness with our spirit, or confers upon us an inward
persuasion, that we are now by adoption the children
of God Himself, whereas we were before the children
of some other father — namely, the world or the Evil
One. But henceforth we are relieved from the bond
age of corruption, from the state of legal subjection
to this evil parent, and admitted to the glorious
liberty of the happy children of a good and gracious
father, even God. And how was this escape from
bondage to be effected? God paid a price for it.
As the Roman adopter paid, or made as though he
paid down a certain weight of copper, so God gave
His Son as a precious sacrifice, as a ransom to the
world, or the Evil One, from whom He redeemed
His adopted children. Henceforth we become the
elect, the chosen of God. The same illustration is
indicated in Galatians iv. 3 : " When we were
children we were in bondage under the elements of
the world," addicted to the sacra of our original
family; " but when the fulness of the time was come,
God sent forth his Son ... to redeem them that

180 st. paul's acquaintance with roman law.
were under the law, that they might receive the adop
tion of sons . . . Howbeit, when ye knew not God,"
and were not yet enrolled in this new family by adop
tion, " ye did service unto them which by nature are
no Gods. But now, after ye have known God . . .
how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements,"
such as the sacra of your original family, " whereunto
ye desire to be again in bondage." Compare Ephe
sians i. 5 : " Having predestinated us unto the adop
tion of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself," where
the custom is referred to as familiar to those whom he
addresses ; and such it would doubtless be, inasmuch
as Ephesus was the residence of a Roman proconsul,
and a centre of Roman legal procedure.

the end.

Richard Clay d?» Sons, Limited, Loudon &> Bwigay,

PUBLICATIONS OF THE
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

BOOKS BY
MRS. RUNDLE CHARLES.
"By Thy Cross and Passion."
Thoughts on the words spoken around and on the Cross. Tost
8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
"By Thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension."
Easter Thoughts. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
"By the Coming of the Holy Ghost."
Thoughts for Whitsuntide. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
The True Vine.
Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
The Great Prayer of Christendom.
Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
An Old Story of Bethlehem.
One link in the great Pedigree. Fcap. 4to, with six plates,
beautifully printed in colours. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d.
Three Martyrs of the Nineteenth Century.
Studies from the Lives of Livingstone, Gordon, and Patteson.
Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 3s. 6d.
Martyrs and Saints of the First Twelve Centuries.
Studies from the Lives of the Black-letter Saints of the English
Calendar. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 5s.
Against the Stream.
The Story of an Heroic Age in England. With eight page
woodcuts. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, is.
Conquering and to Conquer.
A Story of Rome in the days of St. Jerome. With four page
woodcuts. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d.
Lapsed not Lost.
A Story of Roman Carthage. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d.
Sketches of the Women of Christendom.
Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 3s. 6d.

publications of the

Miscellaneous publications.
A Dictionary of the Church of England.
By the Rev. E. L. Cutts, Author of " Turning- Points of Church
History," ie. With numerous Woodcuts. Crown 8vo.
Is. 6d.
Aids to Prayer.
By the Rer. Daniel Moore. Printed in red and black.
Post 8vo. Is. 6d.
Being of God (Six Addresses on the).
By C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Small Post 8vo. Is. 6d.
Bible Places ; or, The Topography of the Holy Land.
By the Rev. Canon Tristram. With Map and numerous
Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 4s.
Called to be Saints.
The Minor Festivals Devotionally Studied. By Christina
G. Rossetti, Author of "Seek and Find." Post 8vo. 5s.
Case for "Establishment " stated (The).
By the Rev. T. Mooke, M.A. Post 8vo. Paper boards. Sd.
Christians under the Crescent in Asia.
By the Rev. E. L. Cutts, B.A., Author of "Turning-Points of
Church History," &c. With numerous Illustrations.
Crown 8vo. 5s.
Daily Readings for a Year.
By Elizabeth Spoonek. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Devotional (A) Life of Our Lord.
By the Rev. Edward L. Cutts, B.A., Author of " Pastoral
Counsels," &c. Post 8vo. 5s.
Golden Year, The.
Thoughts for every month. Original and Selected. By Emily
C. Ore, Author of ' ' Thoughts for Working Days. " Printed
in red and black. Post 8vo. Is. 6d.
Gospels (The Four).
Arranged in the Form of an English Harmony, from the Text
of the Authorized Version. By the late Rev. J. M. Fuller.
With Analytical Table of Contents and Four Maps. Is.

society for promoting christian knowledge. 3
Holy Eucharist, The Evidential Value of the.
Being the Boyle Lectures for 1879 and 1880. By the Rev.
G. F. Maclear, D.D. : Thirl Edition, Revised and
Corrected. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, is.
Land of Israel (The).
A Journal of Travel in Palestine, undertaken with special
reference to its Physical Character. By the Rev. Canon
Tristram. With Two Maps and numerous Illustrations.
Large Post 8vo. Cloth boards, 10s. 6d.
Lectures on the Historical and Dogmatical Position of
the Church of England.
By the Rev. W. Baker, D.D. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. Sd.
Paley's Evidences.
A New Edition, with Notes, Appendix, and Preface. By the
Rev. E. A. Litton. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, is.
Paley's Horse Paulines.
A New Edition, with Notes, Appendix, and Preface. By the
Rev. J. S- Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester. Post 8vo.
Cloth boards, 3s.
Peace with God.
A Manual for the Sick. By the Rev. -E. Burbidge, M.A.
Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. 6d.
"Perfecting Holiness."
By the Rev. E. L. Cutts, B.A. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d.
Plain Words for Christ.
Being a Series of Readings for Working Men. By the late
Rev. R. G. Dutton. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. -
Readings on the First Lessons for Sundays and Chief
Holy Days.
According to the New Table. By the Rev. Peter Younu.
Crown 8vo. In two volumes, 8s.

publications of the 8. P. c. k.

Religion for Every Day.
Lectures for Men. By the Right Rev. A. Barry, D.D. Fcap.
8vo. Cloth boards, Is.
Salutary Doctrine.
By C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.
Small Post 8vo. Cloth boards, Is. (id.
Seek and Find.
A Double Series of Short Studies of the Benedicite. By
Christina G. Rossetti. Post 8vo. Cloth boards, 2s. 6d.
Servants of Scripture (The).
By the late Rev. John W. Burgon, B.D. Post 8vo. Cloth
boards, Is. 6d.
Some Chief Truths of Religion.
By the Rev. Edward L. Cutts, B.A., Author of "St.
Cedd's Cross," &e. Crown 8vo. Cloth boards, 2s. (id.
Verses. By Christina G. Rossetti. Post 8vo. Printed in .red and
black on hand-made paper. Cloth boards 3s. 6d.

LONDON:
Northumberland avenue, charing cross, w.c. ;
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

i,hi nil an n -iwi»n