IV. 19 20 21 22 Lord shall deliver me from every evil, and shall preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesipho- Salutations rus. and persons! intelligence. Erastus1 remained at Corinth; but Trophimus I left sick at Miletus. There salute thee Eubulus, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia,' and all the brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with Concluding you' all. imminence of the immediate peril; but it may mean that St. Paul, at his first hearing, established his right, as a Roman citizen, to be exempted from the punishment of exposure to wild beasts, which was inflicted during the Neronian persecution on so many Christians. On the historical inferences drawn from this verse, see the preceding remarks. 1 This verse is an insuperable difficulty to those who suppose this Epistle written in the first imprisonment at Rome; since it implies a recent journey, in which St. Paul had passed through Miletus and Corinth. It has been also thought inexplicable that Paul should mention to Timotheus (who was at Ephesus, so near Miletus) the fact that Trophimus was left there. But many suppositions might be made to account for this. For instance, Trophimus may have only staid a short time at Miletus, and come on by the first ship after his recovery. This was probably the first communication from St. Paul to Timotheus since they parted; and there would be nothing unnatural even if it mentioned a circumstance which Timotheus knew already. For example, A. at Calcutta writes to B. in London, "I left C. dangerously ill at Southampton," although he may be sure that B. has heard of C.'s illness long before he can receive the letter. 2 Linus is probably the same person who was afterwards bishop of Rome, and is mentioned by Irenæus and Eusebius. 3 Pudens and Claudia. The following facts relating to these names are taken from an ingenious essay on the subject, entitled "Claudia and Pudens, by J. Williams, M. A. (London, 1848)." There are two epigrams of Martial, the benedictions. former of which describes the marriage of a distinguished Roman named Pudens to a foreign lady named Claudia, and the latter of which tells us that this Claudia was a Briton, and gives her the cognomen of Rufina. When the latter epigram was written, she had grownup sons and daughters, but herself still retained the charms of youth. Both these epigrams were written during Martial's residence at Rome; and, therefore, their date must be between A.D. 66 and A.D. 100. The former of the two epigrams was not published till the reign of Domitian, but it may very probably have been written many years earlier. Thus the Claudia and Pudens of Martial may be the same with the Claudia and Pudens who are here seen as friends of St. Paul in A.D. 68. But, further, Tacitus mentions (Agric. 14) that certain territories in the south-east of Britain were given to a British king Cogidu nus as a reward for his fidelity to Rome: this occurred about A.D. 52, while Tiberius Clau dius Nero, commonly called Claudius, was emperor. Again, in 1723, a marble was dug up at Chichester, with an inscription making mention of a British king bearing the title of Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus. His daughter would, according to Roman usage, have been called Claudia. And in the same inscription we find the name Pudens. Other details are given in our larger editions. See the Quarterly Review for July, 1858. 4 You (not thee) is the reading of the best MSS., which also omit "amen." In English we are compelled to insert all here, ir order to show that you is plural. We know not whether Timotheus was able to fulfil these last requests of the dying Apostle; it is doubtful whether he reached Rome in time to receive his parting commands, and cheer his latest earthly sufferings. The only intimation which seems to throw any light on the question is the statement in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Timotheus had been liberated from imprisonment in Italy. If, as appears not improbable,' that Epistle was written shortly after St. Paul's death, it would be proved not only that the disciple fearlessly obeyed his master's summons, but that he actually shared his chains, though he escaped his fate. This, also, would lead us to think that he must have arrived before the execution of St. Paul, for otherwise there would be no reason to account for his being himself arrested in Rome; since, had he come too late, he would naturally have returned to Asia at once, without attracting the notice of the authorities. We may, therefore, hope that Paul's last earthly wish was fulfilled. Yet if Timotheus did indeed arrive before the closing scene, there could have been but a very brief interval between his coming and his master's death. For the letter which summoned him could not have been despatched from Rome till the end of winter, and St. Paul's martyrdom took place in the middle of summer. We have seen that this was sooner than he had expected; but we have no record of the final stage of his trial, and cannot tell the cause of its speedy conclusion. We only know that it resulted in a sentence of capital punishment. The privileges of Roman citizenship exempted St. Paul from the ignominious death of lingering torture, which had been lately inflicted on so many of his brethren. He was to die by decapitation; and he was led out to execution beyond the city walls, upon the road to Ostia, 1 See the next chapter. If our Chronology be right, Timothy's escape would be accounted for by the death of Nero, which immediately followed that of St. Paul. 2 Supposing the letter to have been despatched to Timotheus on the 1st of March, he could scarcely have arrived at Rome from Asia Minor before the end of May. 3 Nero's death occurred in June, A. D. 68. Accepting therefore, as we do, the universal tradition that St. Paul was executed in the reign of Nero, his execution must have taken place not later than the beginning of June. We have endeavored to show (in the article on the Pastoral Epistles in Appendix II.) that this date satisfies all the necessary conditions. 4 Such is the universal tradition; see note 1 4 the port of Rome. As he issued forth from the gate, his eyes must have rested for a moment on that sepulchral pyramid which stood beside the road, and still stands 'unshattered, amid the wreck of so many centuries, upon the same spot. That spot was then only the burial-place of a single Roman; it is now the burial-place of many Britons. The mausoleum of Caius Cestius' rises conspicuously amongst humbler graves, and marks the site where Papal Rome suffers her Protestant sojourners to bury their dead. In England and in Germany, in Scandinavia and in America, there are hearts which turn to that lofty cenotaph as the sacred point of their whole horizon; even as the English villager turns to the gray church-tower which overlooks the gravestones of his kindred. Among the works of man, that pyramid is the only surviving witness of the martyrdom of St. Paul; and we may thus regard it with yet deeper interest, as a monument unconsciously erected by a pagan to the memory of a martyr. Nor let us think that they who lie beneath its shadow are indeed resting (as degenerate Italians fancy) in unconsecrated ground. Rather let us say, that a spot where the disciples of Paul's faith now sleep in Christ, so near the soil once watered by his blood, is doubly hallowed; and that their resting-place is most fitly identified with the last earthly journey and the dying glance of their own Patron Saint, the Apostle of the Gentiles. As the martyr and his executioners passed on, their way was crowded with a motley multitude of goers and comers between the metropolis and its harbor-merchants hastening to superintend the unloading of their cargoes sailors eager to squander the profits of their last voyage in the dissipations of the capital-officials of the government, charged with the administration of the Provinces, or the command of the legions on the Euphrates or the Rhine - Chaldean astrologers-Phrygian eunuchs — dancing-girls from Syria with their painted turbans- mendicant priests from Egypt howling for Osiris Greek adventurers, eager to coin their national cunning into Roman gold-representatives of the avarice and ambition, the fraud and lust, the superstition and intelligence, of the Imperial world. Through the dust and tumult of that busy throng, the small troop of soldiers threaded their way silently, under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were marching, though they knew it not, in a procession more truly triumphal than any they had ever followed, in the train of General or Emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at last and forever delivered from his captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord "without the gate." The place of execu 1 The pyramid of Caius Cestius, which now marks the site of the Protestant buryingground, was erected in, or just before, the reign of Augustus. It was outside the walls 2 in the time of Nero, though within the present Aurelianic walls. 2 Heb. xiii. 12, "He suffered without the gate." tion was not far distant; and there the sword of the headsman' ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths,2 where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted Church found refuge for the living, and sepulchres for the dead. Thus died the Apostle, the Prophet, and the Martyr; bequeathing to the Church, in her government and her discipline, the legacy of his Apostolic labors; leaving his Prophetic words to be her living oracles; pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a thousand Martyrdoms. Thenceforth, among the glorious company of the Apostles, among the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, among the noble army of Martyrs, his name has stood pre-eminent. And wheresoever the Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge God, there Paul of Tarsus is revered, as the great teacher of a universal redemption and a catholic religion - the herald of Glad-tidings to all mankind. 1 The death of St. Paul is recorded by his contemporary Clement, in a passage already quoted; also by the Roman presbyter Caius (about 200 A. D.) (who alludes to the Ostian Road as the site of St. Paul's martyrdom), by Tertullian, Eusebius (in the passage above cited), Jerome, and many subsequent writers. The statement of Caius is quoted by Eusebius. That of Jerome is the most explicit. The statement that Paul was beheaded on the Ostian Road agrees with the usage of the period, and with the tradition that his decapitation was by the sword, not the axe. We have this tradition in Orosius and Lactantius. It was not uncommon to send prisoners, whose death might attract too much notice in Rome, to some distance from the city, under a military escort, for execution. Wieseler compares the execution of Calpurnius Galerianus, as recorded by Tacitus, "who was sent under a military escort some distance along the Ap The great Basilica of St. Paul now stands outside the walls of Rome, on the road to Ostia, in commemoration of his martyrdom, and the Porta Ostiensis (in the present Aurelianic wall) is called the gate of St. Paul. The traditional spot of the martyrdom is the tre fontane not far from the basilica. The basilica itself (S. Paolo fuori le mura) was first built by Constantine. Till the Reformation it was under the protection of the Kings of England, and the emblem of the Order of the Garter is still to be seen among its decorations. 2 Eusebius (ii. 25) says that the original burial-places of Peter and Paul, in the Catacombs, were still shown in his time. This shows the tradition on the subject. Jerome, however, in the passage above cited, seems to make the place of burial and execution the same. CHAPTER XXVIII. The Epistle to the Hebrews. — Its Inspiration not affected by the Doubts concerning its Authorship. — Its Original Readers. — Conflicting Testimony of the Primitive Church concerning its Arthor. His Object in writing it. - Translation of the Epistle. THE HE origin and history of the Epistle to the Hebrews was a subject of controversy even in the second century. There is no portion of the New Testament whose authorship is so disputed, nor any of which the inspiration is more indisputable. The early Church could not determine whether it was written by Barnabas, by Luke, by Clement, or by Paul. Since the Reformation, still greater diversity of opinion has prevailed. Luther assigned it to Apollos, Calvin to a disciple of the Apostles. The Church of Rome now maintains by its infallibility the Pauline authorship of the Epistle, which in the second, third, and fourth centuries, the same Church, with the same infallibility, denied. But notwithstanding these doubts concerning the origin of this canonical book, its inspired authority is beyond all doubt. It is certain, from internal evidence, that it was written by a contemporary of the Apostles, and before the destruction of Jerusalem; that its writer was the friend of Timotheus; and that he was the teacher of one of the Apostolic Churches. Moreover, the Epistle was received by the Oriental Church as canonical from the first. Every sound reasoner must agree with St. Jerome, that it matters nothing whether it were written by Luke, by Barnabas, or by Paul, since it is allowed to be the production of the Apostolic age, and has been read in the public service of the Church from the earliest times. Those, therefore, who conclude with Calvin, that it was not written by St. Paul, must also join with him in thinking the question of its authorship a question of little moment, and in "embracing it without controversy as one of the Apostolical Epistles." 3 2 But when we call it an Epistle, we must observe that it is distinguished 1 See Heb. vii. 25, xiii. 11-13, and other passages which speak of the Temple services as going on. 2 See xiii. 23. See xiii. 19. Restored to you. For this we can refer to Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, also to passages of Jerome. Our larger editions give at length in the notes the passages from the Fathers referred to in the introductory part of this chapter. |