[239] It is very curious how perpetually St. Paul escaped the plots of the Jews at Corinth, Ephesus, and elsewhere. At Corinth the plot formed was revealed as it would seem just as he was about to go on board his vessel (ch. xx. 3). Doubtless there were concealed Christians to whose ears the plots came and by whom they were revealed.
[240] See Lewin's Fasti Sacri, pp. 314-16, for an elaborate account of each day's proceedings, and a discussion of the various problems, chronological and otherwise, which they raise.
[241] The Romans were always afraid of Jewish seditions. Seven years before St. Paul's imprisonment there had been a terrible outburst, in which Ananias the high priest had been himself involved, and which led to the despatch of Felix himself as procurator. He had effectually put down all disturbances, which led to the prolongation of his rule in Palestine for the very unusual period of eight years, from 52 to 60 A.D. This accounts for the words of Tertullus (ch. xxiv. 2): "Seeing that by thee we enjoy much peace, and that by thy providence evils are corrected for this nation." See Lewin's Fasti, pp. 296-98, 315, 320; Conybeare and Howson, ch. xxii.; and for the latest authority, Schürer's Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, i. 477-83, ii. 170 (Leipzig, 1886).
[242] Drusilla perished with her child by this union with Felix in the famous eruption of Vesuvius A.D. 79.
[243] See my remarks in the next chapter on the case of the church at Puteoli, which St. Paul found flourishing there on his voyage to Rome.
[244] This prophecy was not literally fulfilled. The Jews did not bind St. Paul, nor deliver him into Gentile hands. The Romans took him out of Jewish hands, and bound him for their own purposes. The Jews, however, brought this binding about, and were the cause of his captivity in Roman hands. On the question of prophets and prophesying in the primitive Church, see Dr. Salmon's article on Hermas, in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. ii., pp. 916-19.
[245] St. Paul, writing twelve months earlier than his arrest, expressly lays down this principle in 1 Corinthians vii. 18-20: "Was any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Hath any been called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called."
[246] We see enough of this in politics. We see it in the Church as well. Writing as one with nearly a quarter of a century's experience of a disestablished, and therefore of a popularly governed Church, I have seen a great deal of this tendency in ecclesiastical matters. Prominent and ambitious men are ever apt to fall into the snare here noted. The tendency of popular assemblies is ever to develop a class of men who will have but little backbone, and will be always ready to rectify their convictions to suit their constituencies. "Show thou me the way I should walk in," but in a very different sense from the Psalmist's, is the unuttered prayer of their lives, addressed to the popular audiences of whose opinions they are the mere expressions, not the guides. For such men this typical history has many a reproof in St. Paul's brave conduct upon this and every other occasion. He was never afraid of a little temporary misrepresentation, and therefore he proved a real guide to the Church of his own and of every age.
[247] See Eusebius, H. E., iii. 5, and the notes of Valesius on that passage.
[248] There is no necessity to adopt forced and unnatural explanations when an easy one lies ready to our hand, and we all have daily experience how hard it is for even a keen-sighted man to distinguish among a crowd the person who utters a brief exclamation; a fact which the debates in the House of Commons often illustrate. I can myself quite appreciate St. Paul's difficulty. I am extremely short-sighted, and am never able to discern—say in a meeting of one of our synods—who it is that interrupts or contradicts me.