fierceness to the Christians as semi-Judeans and as people who were despised by their own singular brethren. Neither can it be doubted that persecution thereupon broke out in the other countries of the Roman empire, and that very soon many hundreds, or even thousands, in some places if not everywhere, fell a prey to the same barbarities. Hatred of the Christians, fed and sustained especially by Judeans and Proselytes, could then ravage freely everywhere where a heathen magistracy thought well to follow the imperial example. A time of fiercest trial and purification had suddenly overtaken the Christian Church, which was already spread so far and wide. How large a number of martyrs may then have fallen in the numerous countries of the Roman empire! And how often must precisely the most faithful and longest tried, as well as the most illustrious, members of the Church have succumbed to the ravages of this terrible storm! We are not now in a position to prove this in detail; but the Apocalypse, written only a few years afterwards, supplies general evidence of the most distinct character, alluding as it does in the strongest terms to all such slaying of the prophets, saints, and other Christians;' being, in fact, mainly occasioned by these persecutions as we shall soon see. On one occasion the Apocalypse expressly mentions Antipas in Pergamos, as a famous martyr of those days, who had undoubtedly fallen likewise on account of the very peculiar position of Christianity in that city. Indeed, it is as if the entire first generation of Christians had been drowned in these rivers of blood at Rome and Jerusalem, and then in so many other places, not much more than thirty years after the crucifixion of Christ: so that we shall see that from that time there gradually arises from these furious devastations an For which reason our scholars of an earlier generation doubt the fact altogether. In my early work, Commentarius in Apocalypsin [Gött. 1828], I put the matter in the proper light. As a fact, Suetonius, Nero, cap. xvi., does not place the persecution of the Christians under Nero, briefly as he refers to it, in any connection with the conflagratiou in Rome, and does not limit it to Rome; and although it must be granted that a Roman law, in the strict sense, regarding the persecution of the Christians, does not appear to have been made at that time, inasmuch as neither Suetonius nor Tacitus says anything about it; the concise words of Tertullian, sub Nerone damnatio invaluit' (Ad Nationes, i. 7), nevertheless correctly represent the true state of the case. How 3 PETER'S CRUCIFIXION IN ROME. 469 entirely new, and in many respects, very different generation of Christians. But the most precious blood that could be shed in consequence of this furious outbreak of persecution, was beyond doubt that of the two Apostles Peter and Paul; and they certainly belonged in a special way to the host of martyrs of whom the Apocalypse speaks. Yet we must not imagine that both fell at the same time; this close connection of both in the memory of their death had, it is true, gradually become more and more usual after the middle of the second century,' but it is opposed to all the vestiges of definite reminiscences and traditions as far as we can yet recover them. Strictly speaking, we learn from the New Testament itself that Peter was crucified; and he may really have been of the number of those who were then crucified in Nero's gardens; it became an established tradition that he was crucified in Rome under Nero, as we see from the Fathers; and, as we above found him actually in Rome about that time, and Tacitus speaks expressly of those who met their death by crucifixion, we may with confidence suppose that he was crucified then. When he saw his wife being also led to death, he is reported to have rejoiced that she likewise was called to make the ascent to the celestial home, and to have encouraged her by calling out to her to remember the Lord.3 But it is a later invention that he expressly desired to be crucified head downwards, so as not to die like his Lord; the earliest allusion to his crucifixion which we possess presupposes", on the contrary, a simple cruci Bishop Dionysius of Corinth was the first, as far as we know (and not Irenæus, Adv. Hær. iii. 3. 2, with his much more general language), who recorded, in his Epistle to the Romans (in Euseb. Ecc. Hist. ii. 25) that the two Apostles had in Italy taught contemporaneously, and both together sealed their testimony with martyrdom. Clement of Rome, in his epistle, 1 Cor. ch. v., is so far from intimating this that, on the contrary, he speaks first of Peter alone, and then of Paul, and keeps both separate in his narrative; and his account is of far greater importance. The probable source of all such arbitrary suppositions regarding Paul and Peter, e.g., their numerous contentions and final amicable meeting and companionship in death at Rome, is the Κήρυγμα Παύλου, a production similar to the above-named Clementine fiction, of which an idea can be formed from the fragments in Lactantius' De vera Sapientia, iv. 21, and the anonymous writer De hapt, non iter., attached to Cyprian's 2 See ante, p. 71. 3 Clemen. Alex. Strom, vii. 11, 63, and in Euseb. Ecc. Hist. iii. 30. 4 As is narrated in a source already used by Origen, Euseb. Ecc. Hist. iii. 1, but unknown to us; and still more plainly by Jer. Catal. Scriptt. Eccles, ch. i. This feature of the tradition was probably likewise first invented in the above Predicatio Pauli. 5 The utterance of the Lord recorded John xxi. 18, 19, comp. xiii. 36, comp. ante, p. 71, and Jahrbb. d. B. W. iii. p. 171. There is in that passage simply an allusion to the girdle which the otherwise completely naked crucified man wore, and which he could not himself put on, but which the executioner fastened round him, and carried him thus to his painful death.-The above facts as regards Peter's relation to Rome may all be granted, and, nevertheless, the Papist fixion in the ordinary manner; although such intensifications of the horrors of death by crucifixion probably occurred.' Paul, on the other hand, really attained the long-cherished wish of his life, of being able to visit Spain as the best known of the western countries of the Roman Empire. If we have no express evidence on this point from his own hand, the oldest account of his martyrdom, which has been preserved in the Epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians,3 really leaves no doubt about it. It was not the design of Clement to give in this passage a complete account of Paul's or Peter's martyrdom; but the incidental language he uses does not allow us to doubt but that Paul met his death later than Peter, and that it was not until after he had gone into the extreme west that it occurred. When he heard in Spain of the persecutions of the Christians in Rome, he perhaps hastened back thither, that he might the more plainly bear witness for the truth of Christianity; but he was then again arrested, brought up for trial, and condemned to die. As a Roman citizen, however, he was not crucified, but met the more honourable death of decapitation, as tradition always related of him." The sepulchres of these two great Apostles were subsequently shown in two quite different places." Though we do not know precisely the date of Paul's execution, we may view of him is wholly without foundation, although it was still defended in 1867 by Pius B. Gams (Das Jahr des Martyrtodes der Apostel Petrus und Paulus, Regensburg). As the great instance in Jos. Bell. Jud. v. 11. 1 shows. It is an entirely baseless conjecture of some modern scholars that Paul made another journey to Asia after his liberation, the motive of that conjecture being the explanation thereby of some passages in the Pastoral Epistles. Eusebius even, who records, Ecc. Hist. ii. 22, Paul's second captivity in Rome according to early tradition, knows nothing of fresh journeys to Asia, which Paul, it is true, had in prospect, according to his epistles from Rome, but which he certainly never carried out. a Ch. v. These words are in their connection so perfectly clear that it is incomprehensible that they could be so completely misunderstood, or rather perverted, as they have been in our time. Moreover, this epistle, as despatched from Rome (comp. the next vol.), could not possibly speak of Rome as the limit of the whole earth. We possess, too, in the Muratorian Fragment evidence quite independent of Clemens, comp Jahrbb.d. B. W. viii. pp. 126 sq. 6 4 In Euseb. Ecc. Hist. ii, 25 this is related, like the journey of Peter to Rome under Claudius (see ante, p. 460), with out any further mention of authorities, comp. Lactantius De Mort. Persec. ch. ii., with his narrative. The same fact is also who, after his fashion, mixes rhetoric implied in the brief rhetorical sentences of Tertullian, Roma Petrus passioni dominice adæquatur (after all, therefore, not with such exaggeration as some other Paulus Joannis (Baptistæ) exitu coronatur, narratives above, p. 469, referred to) De Præscrip. Haret, xxxvi. 5 That of Peter on the Vatican hill, that of Paul on the Ostian road, as the Roman bishop Caius asserts in the second century, Euseb. Ecc, Hist. ii. 25. Even in the book on the Dormitio Marie, Peter is fetched from Rome, but Paul from a town on the Tiber (which is undoubtedly meant pp. 99, 101. to be Ostia), Tischendorf's Apocal, Apocr. The attempt has been made to infer the date from the words μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ Tŵr youμévwv in the Epistle of Clement, ch. v. But those words are not at all intended to indicate the time, and would not in any way indicate it; they denote PAUL'S TRUE FAME AND MERITS. 471 very well suppose that it took place as early as the year 65.Timothy also was imprisoned about that time, while he was on a visit to the parent church, but afterwards set at liberty again ;1 the last certain fact that is known of his life. With Paul the strongest human stay of the Christianity of that period, and at the same time the chief opponent, as the heads of the Hagiocracy and their dupes believed, of the Judeanism of the age, had fallen. These enemies of his, to whom he bore no hostility, could then greatly rejoice, and his death occurred only about a year before the wild outbreak of the ultimate intentions, which we shall soon have to describe, of the heads of the Hagiocracy in Jerusalem, who were destined soon to learn how little ground they had for such rejoicing. He fell as the noblest and most vigorous, but at the same time the most willing and devoted, sacrifice for Christ's cause which this generation of Christians, now verging to its end, had in its ranks; but he fell also as one of the last in whom the whole elevation and energy of the immortal aims of the ancient people of the true religion were once more concentrated, as if in this late Benjaminite the ancient ravening wolf Benjamin had arisen in a bodily form, though only that he might snatch. innumerable souls from the heathen and Judeans as prey for Christ. And yet in reality his meritorious claims as a man are simply these, that by seeking and finding the simple truth alone, instead of all the error of his time, he correctly perceived in the cause of Christ and his kingdom what was the right thing to be done at that particular time; and his renown was simply that he firmly, with unshaken faithfulness through all the vicissitudes, triumphs, and sufferings of his life, maintained what he had perceived to be the right thing, even to his martyrdom. It is idle to compare him with Christ; it would be most offensive to his own feeling. With Christ the highest religious mirror and model, incentive and motive, that could be presented in history had been given. But in every simply that Paul was condemned by customary judicial procedure (not like Peter in the persecution under Nero) before the magistracy (comp. 1 Peter ii. 13, 14). It has been shown above (pp. 24 sq.) that the Acts of the Apostles by its plan points to the death of Paul and Peter in Rome; and it follows plainly, from the anticipatory hints of the book as to their end, ix. 15, xxiii. 11, which, when carefully considered, cannot be otherwise understood, that it intends in this reference a magisterial accusation and condemnation new age fresh hindrances and obscurations meet the highest truth of religion, even when it has been clearly supplied, whether men seek or not to be guided through them by that religion. So in the Apostolic age the heaviest clouds of misconception, uncertainty, and hostility at once gathered around the divine word, which had at last appeared in fullest truth. In that early age it must have been in so many respects still more difficult to break through such clouds, if the historical light of Christ's own appearance had not still immediately and most forcibly shone upon the believer, and if the fire of the first Christian hope had not continued still to inspire him most vividly. But Paul overcame those dark clouds more perfectly than any other man of his time in the spheres of perception, labour, and of practice equally; and on that account he will always rank as a model of the truest Christian. In estimating his worth, the decisive thing is not his particular doctrines, still less an artificial system; his mind thinks acutely and correctly, but it is always everything with him to correctly perceive all earthly things in the light that has once been given from heaven, and every moment to do with divine. joy and assurance the most difficult tasks that follow from that perception; and for all true Christians this must always be everything. That man had appeared in the Christian Church who, as the most prominent teacher and worker, missionary and martyr amongst the heathen, lived and moved perfectly as Christ himself would have done if he had then been amongst them on the earth. The Christian Church of that time waited for such a man; and after he had fulfilled his divine mission so perfectly and so luminously before all the world, all the great difficulties which, as we have seen,' were about to impede the course of Christianity throughout the world in the period of its infancy were already practically removed. The Epistle to the Hebrews. The consequences of these great calamities in Rome, which so soon followed those in Jerusalem, must have been farreaching. Christianity, in the form it had to assume when bereft of the visible Christ, had come into the world as an almost too tender and purely celestial thing, and in order to be able at all to remain and work in the world had, therefore, to cling in child-like ingenuousness and love of existence, in the first instance, to its own terrestrial mother on the sacred hill of Zion. Having been soon rudely repulsed by her, it |