[♠] “emboldenened” replaced with “emboldened”
Herod Agrippa.——All the interesting details of this richly romantic life, are given in a most delightful style by Josephus. (Antiquities, XVIII. v. 3,–viii. 9. and XIX. i–ix.) The same is more concisely given by the same author in another place. (Jewish War, II. ix. 5,–xi. 6.) The prominent events of Petronius’s administration, are also given in the former.
THE PEACEFUL PROGRESS OF THE FAITH.
The apostles, after the great events last narrated, gave themselves with new zeal to the work which was now so vastly extended by the opening of the wide field of the Gentiles. Others of the refugees from the popular rage, at the time of Stephen’s murder, had gone even beyond the boundaries of Palestine, bringing into the sphere of apostolic operations a great number of interesting subjects, before unthought of. Some of the bold, free workers, who had heard of the late changes in the views of the apostles, respecting the characters of those for whom the gospel was designed, now no longer limited their efforts of love to the children of the stock of Abraham, but proclaimed the faith of Jesus to those who had before never heard his name. The gospel was thus carried into Syria and Cyprus, and thence rapidly spread into many other countries, where Macedonian conquest and Hellenic colonization had made the Greek the language of cities, courts, commerce, and, to a great extent, of literature. The great city of Antioch soon became a sort of metropolis of the numerous churches, which sprang up in that region, beyond the immediate reach of Jerusalem, now the common home of the apostles, and the center of the Christian, as of the Jewish faith. Grecians as well as Jews, in this new march of the gospel, were made sharers in its blessings; and the multiplication of converts among them was so rapid as to give a new importance, at once, to this sort of Christians. The communication of these events to the apostles at Jerusalem, called for some systematic action on their part, to confirm and complete the good work thus begun by the random and occasional efforts of mere wandering fugitives from persecution. They accordingly selected persons especially fitted for this field of labor, and despatched them to Antioch, to fulfil the duties imposed on the apostles in [♦]reference to this new opening. The details of the operations of these new laborers, will be given in their lives hereafter.
[♦] “refereuce” replaced with “reference”
In performing the various offices required in their domestic and foreign fields of labor, now daily multiplying, Peter and his associates had continued for several years steadily occupied, but achieving no particular action that has received notice in the history of their acts; so that the most of this part of their lives remains a blank to the modern investigator. All that is known is, that between the churches of Syria and Palestine there was established a frequent friendly intercourse, more particularly between the metropolitan churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. From the former went forth preachers to instruct and confirm the new and untaught converts of the latter, who had been so lately strangers to God’s covenant of promise with his people; while from the thriving and benevolent disciples of Antioch were sent back, in grateful recompense, the free offerings of such aid as the prevalence of a general dearth made necessary for the support of their poor and friendless brethren in Jerusalem; and the very men who had been first sent to Antioch with the commission to build up and strengthen that infant church, now returned to the mother church at Jerusalem, with the generous relief which gratitude prompted these new sons to render to the authors of their faith.
ROMAN TOLERANCE.
These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,——thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against the growing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,——wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,——a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses, either of popular or imperial tyranny. A noble personification of independent and invincible justice; but one not beyond the range of the moral conceptions of a Roman, even under the corrupt and corrupting rule of the Caesars;——for thus wrote the great moral poet of the Augustan age, though breathing the enervating air of a servile court, and living on the favor of a monarch who exacted from his courtiers a reverence truly idolatrous:
Justum et tenacem propositi virum,
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,