II. } Paul in BOOK retirement into a foreign region, and the part of the extensive country, which was then called Arabia, in which he resided, are altogether unknown. It is possible, indeed, that he may have sought refuge from the Jews of Damascus, or employed himself in the conversion of the Jews who were scattered in great numbers in every part of Arabia. The frontiers of the Arabian king bordered closely on the territory of Damascus, and Paul may have retired but a short distance from that city. During this interval, Aretas, whose hostile intentions against Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, Vitellius, the prefect of Syria, had made preparations to repress, had the boldness to invade the Syrian prefecture, and to sieze the important city of Damascus. It is difficult to conceive this act of aggression to have been hazarded unless at some period of public confusion, such as took place at the death of Tiberius. According to Josephus, Vitellius, who had collected a great force to invest Petra, the capital of the Arabian king, on the first tidings of that event, instantly suspended his operations, and withdrew his troops into their winter quarters. At all events, at the close of these three years Damascus was in the power of Aretas. The Jews, who probably were under the authority of an ethnarch of their own people, obtained sufficient influence with the Arabian governor to carry into effect their designs against the life of Paul.* His sudden apostasy from their cause, his extraordinary powers, * Acts, ix. 23. his ardent zeal, his unexampled success, had wrought their animosity to this deadly height; and Paul was with difficulty withdrawn from their fury by being let down from the walls in a basket, the gates being carefully guarded by the command of the Arabian governor. Among the most distinguished of the first converts was Barnabas, a native of Cyprus, who had contributed largely from his possessions in that island to the common fund; and whose commanding character and abilities gave him great influence. When Paul, after his escape from Damascus, arrived at Jerusalem, so imperfect appears to have been the correspondence between the more remote members of the Christian community, (possibly from Damascus and its neighbourhood having been the seat of war, or because Paul had past considerable part of the three years in almost total seclusion,) at all events, such was the obscurity of the whole transaction, that no certain intelligence of so extraordinary an event as his conversion had reached the apostolic body, or rather Peter and James, the only Apostles then resident in Jerusalem.* Barnabas alone espoused his cause, removed the timid suspicions of the Apostles, and Paul was admitted into the reluctant Christian community. As peculiarly skilled in the Greek language, his exertions to advance Christianity were particularly addressed to those of the Jews to whom Greek was vernacular. But a new conspiracy again endangering his life, he was carried away by the care of his friends to * Acts, ix. 26. BOOK Cæsarea, and thence proceeded to his native city of Tarsus.* II. Persecution of the Jews About this time a more urgent and immediate by Caligula. danger than the progress of Christianity occupied the mind of the Jewish people. The very existence of their religion was threatened, for the frantic Caligula had issued orders to place his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem. The historian of the Jews must relate the negotiations, the petitions, the artful and humane delays interposed by the prefect Petronius, and all the incidents which show how deeply and universally the nation was absorbed by this appalling subject. It caused, no doubt, as it were a diversion in favour of the Christians; and the temporary peace enjoyed by the churches is attributed, with great probability, rather to the fears of the Jews for their own religious independence, than to the relaxation of their hostility against the Christians.+ A. D. 39-41. This peace was undisturbed for about three years.§ The Apostles pursued their office of disseminating the Gospel in every part of Judæa, until Herod Agrippa took possession of the hereditary dominions, which had been partly granted by the favour of Caligula, and were secured by the gratitude of Claudius. Herod Agrippa affected the splendour of his grandfather, the first Herod; but, unlike him, he attempted to ingratiate himself with his subjects * Acts, ix. 30. + Joseph. Ant,, xviii. 8. History of the Jews, ii. 178. 186. Benson (Hist. of first planting of Christianity) and Lardner take this view. § Acts, ix. 31. From 39 to 41, the year of Caligula's death. I. James. by the strictest profession of Judaism.* His power CHAP. appears to have been as despotic as that of his ancestor; and, at the instigation, no doubt, of the leading Jews, he determined to take vigorous measures for the suppression of Christianity. James, Death of the brother of St. John, was the first victim. He appears to have been summarily put to death by the military mandate of the king, without any process of the Jewish law.† The Jews rejoiced, no doubt, that the uncontrolled power of life and death was again restored to one who assumed the character of a national king. They were no longer restrained by the caprice, the justice, or the humanity of a Roman prefect, who might treat their intolerance with contempt or displeasure; and they were encouraged in the hope, that at the same great Festival, during which some years before they had extorted the death of Jesus from the reluctant Pilate, their new king would more readily lend himself to their revenge against his most active and powerful follower. Peter was cast into prison, perhaps with the intention of putting him to death before the departure of Herod from the capital. He was delivered from his bondage by supernatural intervention.‡ If the author of the Acts has preserved the order of time, two other of the most important adherents of Christianity ran considerable danger. The famine, predicted by * Hist. of Jews, ii. 192. 196. + Blasphemy was the only crime of which he could be accused, and stoning was the ordinary mode of execution for that offence. James II. A. D. 44. BOOK. Agabus at Antioch, commenced in Judæa, in the fourth year of Claudius, the last of Herod Agrippa. If, then, Barnabas and Paul proceeded to Jerusalem on their charitable mission to bear the contributions of the Christians in Antioch to their poorer brethren in Judæa*, they must have arrived there during the height of the persecution. Either they remained in concealment, or the extraordinary circumstances of the escape of Peter from prison so confounded the king and his advisers, notwithstanding their attempt to prove the connivance of the guards, to which the lives of the miserable men were sacrificed, that for a time, the violence of the persecution was suspended, and those who would inevitably have been its next victims, obtained, as it were, a temporary respite. Death of The death of Herod, during the same year, delivered the Christians from their determined enemy. In its terrific and repulsive circumstances they could not but behold the hand of their protecting God. In this respect alone differ the Jewish and the Christian historian, Josephus and the writer of the Acts. In the appalling suddenness, of his seizure, in the midst of his splendour and the impious adulations of his court, and in the loathsome nature of the disease, their accounts fully coincide. * Acts, xi. 30. |