Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

Thus sublimely calm, sat Peter in his prison, waiting for death. Day after day, all day long, the joyous feast went on beneath him:——the offering, the prayer and the hymn varying the mighty course, from the earliest morning supplication to the great evening sacrifice. Up rolled the glorious symphony of the Levites’ thousand horns, and the choral harmony of their chanting voices,——up rolled the clouds of precious incense to the skiey throne of Israel’s God,——and with this music and fragrance, up rolled the prayers of Israel’s worshiping children; but though the glorious sound and odor fell delightfully on the senses of the lonely captive, as they passed upwards by his high prison-tower, no voice of mercy came from below, to cheer him in his desolation. But from above, from the heaven to which all these prayer-bearing floods of incense and harmony ascended, came down divine consolation and miraculous delivery to this poor, despised prisoner, with a power and a witness that not all the solemn pomp of the passover ceremony could summon in reply to its costly offerings. The feeble band of sorrowing Nazarenes, from their little chamber, were lifting unceasing voices of supplication for their brother, in his desperate prospects, which entered with his solitary prayer into the ears of the God of Hosts, while the ostentatious worship of king Agrippa and his reverend supporters, only brought back shame and woful ruin on their impious supplications for the divine sanction to their bloody plans of persecution. At last the solemn passover-rites of “the last great day of the feast” were ended;——the sacrifice, the incense and the song, rose no more from the sanctuary,——the fires on the altars went out, the hum and the roar of worshiping voices was hushed, and the departing throngs poured through the “ETERNAL” and the “BEAUTIFUL” gates, till at last the courts and porches of the temple were empty through all their vast extent, and hushed in a silence, deep as the ruinous oblivion to which the voice of their God had doomed them shortly to pass; and all was still, save where the footfall of the passing priest echoed along the empty colonnades, as he hurried over the vast pavements into the dormitories of the inner temple; or where the mighty gates thundered awfully as they swung heavily together under the strong hands of the weary Levites, and sent their long reverberations among the walls. Even these closing sounds soon ceased also; the Levite watchmen took their stand on the towers of the temple, and paced their nightly rounds along the flat roofs, guarding with careful eyes their holy shrine, lest the impious should, under cover of night, again profane it, (as the Samaritans had secretly done a few years before.) And on the neighboring castle of Antonia, the Roman garrison, too, had set their nightly watch, and the iron warriors slumbered, each in his turn, till the round of duty should summon him to relieve guard. Within the dungeon keep of the castle, was still safely held the weighty trust that was to be answered for, on peril of life; and all arrangements were made which so great a responsibility seemed to require. The prisoner already somewhat notorious for making unaccountable escapes from guarded dungeons, was secured with a particularity, quite complimentary to his dexterity as a jail-breaker. The quaternion on duty was divided into two portions; each half being so disposed and posted as to effect the most complete supervision of which the place was capable,——two men keeping watch outside of the well-bolted door of the cell, and two within, who, not limited to the charge of merely keeping their eyes on the prisoner, had him fastened to their bodies, by a chain on each side. In this neighborly proximity to his rough companions, Peter was in the habit of passing the night; but in the day-time was freed from one of these chains, remaining attached to only one soldier. (This arrangement was in accordance with the standard mode of guarding important state-prisoners among the Romans.) Matters being thus accommodated, and the watch being set for the next three hours, Peter’s two fast companions, finding him but indifferent company, no doubt, notwithstanding his sociable position, soon grew quite dull in the very tame employment of seeing that he did not run away with them; for as to getting away from them, the idea could have no place at all in the supposition. These sturdy old veterans had probably, though Gentiles, conformed so far to Judaical rituals as to share in the comfortable festivities of this great religious occasion, and could not have suffered any heathenish prejudices to prevent them from a hearty participation in the joyous draughts of the wine, which as usual did its part to enliven the hearts and countenances of all those who passed the feast-day in Jerusalem. The passover coming so many months after the vintage too, the fermentation of a long season must have considerably energized “the pure juice of the grape,” so that its exhilarant and narcotic powers could have been by no means feeble; and if the change thus wrought by time and its own inherent powers, at all corresponds to that which takes places in cider in this country under the same circumstances, the latter power must have so far predominated, as to leave them rather below than above the ordinary standard of vivacity, and induce that sort of apathetic indifference to consequences, which is far from appropriate in a soldier on duty over an important trust. Be that as it may, Peter’s two room-mates soon gave themselves quietly up to slumber. If any scruple arose in their heavy heads as to the risk they ran in case of his escape, that was soon soothed by the consideration of the vast number of impassable securities upon the prisoner. They might well reason with themselves, “If this sharp Galilean can manage to break his chains without waking us, and burst open this stout door in spite of bars, without rousing the sentinels who are posted against it on the outside, and make his way unseen and unchecked through all the gates and guards of Castle Antonia——why, let him. But there’s no use in our losing a night’s rest by any uneasiness about such a chance.” So stretching themselves out, they soon fell into a sound sleep, none the less pleasant for their lying in such close quarters; for it is natural to imagine, that in a chilly March night in Jerusalem, stowing three in a bed was no uncomfortable arrangement. Circumstanced as he was, Peter had nothing to do but conform to their example, for the nature of his attachment to them was such, that he had no room for the indulgence of his own fancies about his position; and he also lay down to repose. He slept. The sickening and feverish confinement of his close dungeon had not yet so broken his firm and vigorous frame, nor so drained its energies, as to hinder the placid enjoyment of repose; nor did the certainty of a cruel and shameful death, to which he was within a few hours to be dragged, before the eyes of a scoffing rabble, move his high spirit from its self-possession:——

“And still he slumbered

While in ‘decree, his hours’ were numbered.”

He slept. And from that dark prison-bed what visions could beguile his slumbering thoughts? Did fancy bear them back against the tide of time, to the humble, peaceful home of his early days,——to the varied scenes of the lake whereon he loved to dwell, and along whose changeful waters he had learned so many lessons of immortal faith and untrembling hope in his Lord? Amid the stormy roar of its dark waters, the voice of that Lord once called him to tempt the raging deep with his steady foot, and when his feeble faith, before untried, failed him in the terrors of the effort, His supporting hand recalled him to strength and safety. And had that lesson of faith and hope been so poorly learned, that in this dark hour he could draw no consolation from such remembrances? No. He could even now find that consolation, and he did. In the midst of this “sea of troubles,” he felt the same mighty arm now upholding him, that bore him above the waters, “when the blue wave rolled nightly on deep Galilee.” Again he had stood by those waters, swelling brightly in the fresh morning breeze, with his risen Lord beside him, and received the solemn commission, oft-renewed, to feed the flock that was so soon to lose the earthly presence of its great Shepherd. In the steady and dauntless execution of that parting commission, he had in the course of long years gone on in the face of death,——“feeding the lambs” of Christ’s gathering, and calling vast numbers to the fold; and for the faithful adherence to that command, he now sat waiting the fulfilment of the doom that was to cut him down in the midst of life and in the fullness of his vigor. Yet the nearness of this sad reward of his labors, seemingly offering so dreadful an interpretation of the mystical prophecy that accompanied that charge, moved him to no desperation or distress, and still he calmly slept, with as little agitation and dread as at the transfiguration, and at the agony of the crucifixion eve; nor did that compunction for heedless inattention, that then hung upon his slumbering senses, now disturb him in the least. It is really worth noticing, in justice to Peter, that his sleepiness, of which so many curious instances are presented in the sacred narrative, was not of the criminally selfish kind that might be supposed on a partial view. If he slept during his Master’s prayers on Mount Hermon, and in Gethsemane, he slept too in his own condemned cell; and if in his bodily infirmity he had forgotten to watch and pray when death threatened his Lord, he was now equally indifferent to his own impending destruction. He was, evidently, a man of independent and regular habits. Brought up a hard-working man, he had all his life been accustomed to repose whenever he was at leisure, if he needed it; and now too, though the “heathen might rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,——though the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took counsel together” against him, and doomed him to a cruel death,——in spite of all these, Peter would sleep when he was sleepy. Not the royal Agrippa could sleep sounder on his pavilioned couch of purple. In the calm confidence of one steadily fixed in a high course, and perfectly prepared for every and any result, the chained apostle gave himself coolly to his natural rest, without borrowing any trouble from the thought, that in the morning the bloody sword was to lay him in “the sleep that knows no earthly waking.” So slept the Athenian sage, on the eve of his martyrdom to the cause of clearly and boldly spoken truth,——a sleep that so moved the wonder of his agonizing disciples, at the power of a good conscience and a practical philosophy to sustain the soul against the horrors of such distress; but a sleep not sounder nor sweeter than that of the poor Galilean outcast, who, though not knowing even the name of philosophy, had a consolation far higher, in the faith that his martyred Lord had taught him in so many experimental instructions. That faith, learned by the painful conviction of his own weakness, and implanted in him by many a fall when over confident in his own strength, was now his stay and comfort, so that he might say to his soul, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him, who is the help of my countenance and my God.” Nor did that hope prove groundless. From him in whom he trusted, came a messenger of deliverance; and from the depths of a danger the most appalling and threatening, he was soon brought, to serve that helping-God through many faithful years, feeding the flock till, in his old age, “another should gird him, and carry him whither he would not.” He who had prayed for him in the revelation of his peculiar glories on Mount Hermon, and had so highly consecrated him to the great cause, had yet greater things for him to do; and to new works of love and glory he now called him, from the castle-prison of his royal persecutor.

Ten years.——This piece of chronology is thus settled. Jesus Christ, according to all common calculation, was crucified as early as the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius. Irenaeus maintains that it was in the fifteenth of that reign. Eusebius and Epiphanius fix it in the eighteenth, or, according to Petavius’s explanation of their meaning, in the seventeenth of his actual reign. Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Jerome, and Augustin, put it in the sixteenth. Roger Bacon, Paulus Burgensis, and Tostatus, also support this date, on the ground of an astronomical calculation of the course of the moon, fixing the time when the passover must have occurred, so as to accord with the requirement of the Mosaic law, that it should be celebrated on a new moon. But Kepler has abundantly shown the fallacy of this calculation. Antony Pagus, also, though rejecting this astronomical basis, adheres to the opinion of Tertullian, Jerome, &c. Baronius fixes it in the nineteenth of Tiberius. Pearson, L. Cappel, Spanheim, and Witsius, with the majority of the moderns, in the twentieth of Tiberius. So that the unanimous result of all these great authorities, places it as early as this last mentioned year. A full and highly satisfactory view of all these chronological points and opinions, is given by the deeply learned Antony Pagus, in his great “Critical Historico-Chronological Review of Baronii.” Saecul. I. Ann. Per. Gr.–Rom. 5525. ¶ 3–13.

Now, from Josephus it is perfectly evident that Agrippa did not leave Rome until some time after the beginning of the reign of Claudius, and it is probable not before the close of the first year. Counting backwards through the four years of Caligula, this makes five years after the death of Tiberius, and eight on the latest calculation from the death of Christ; while according to the higher and earlier authority, it amounts to nine, ten, eleven, or to twelve years from the crucifixion to Agrippa’s arrival in Judea. And moreover, it is not probable that the persecution referred to occurred immediately on his arrival. Indeed, from the close way in which Luke connects Agrippa’s death with the preceding events, it would seem as if he would fix his “going down from Jerusalem to Caesarea,” and his death at the latter place, very soon after the escape of Peter. This of course being in the end of Claudius’s third year, brings the events above, down to the eleventh or twelfth from the crucifixion, even according to the latest conjecture as to the date of that event. Probably, however, the connection of the two events was not as close as a common reading of the Acts would lead one to suppose.

So also Lardner, in his Life of Peter, says, “The death of Herod Agrippa happened before the end of that year,” in which he escaped. (Lardner’s Works 4to. Vol. III. p. 402, bottom.)

Natalis Alexander fixes Peter’s escape in the second year of Claudius, and the forty-fourth from Christ’s birth, which is, according to his computation, the tenth from his death. (Church History, Saec. I. Cap. vi.)

A chain on each side.——That this was a common mode of fastening such prisoners among the Romans, appears from the authorities referred to by Wolf, (Cur. Philology in Acts xii. 6,) Kuinoel and Rosenmueller, (quoting from Walch,) and Bloomfield, all in loc.

Quaternion.——That is, a band of four. See Bloomfield in defense of my mode of disposing them about the prison,——also Rosenmueller, &c. Wolf quotes appositely from Polybius; but Kuinoel is richest of all in quotations and illustrations. (Acts xii. 4, 5.)