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,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida. * * *
The moral energy of the Roman character made the exemplifications of
this fair ideal not uncommon, even in these latter days of Roman glory.
There were some like Petronius, who gave life and reality to this
poetical conception of Horace,――“A man just and resolute, unshaken
from his firm purpose alike by the wild impulses of popular rage, and
by the frown of an overbearing tyrant.” And these were among the chief
blessings of the Roman sway, to those lands in which it ruled,――that
the great interests of the country were not subjected to the blind
movements of a perverse public opinion, changing with each year,
and frustrating every good which required a steady policy for its
accomplishment,――that the majority of the people were not allowed to
tyrannize over the minority, nor the minority over the majority;――and
that a mighty power amenable to neither, but whose interest and glory
would always coincide with the good of the whole, held over all a
dominion unchecked by the demands of popular caprice. But, alas! for
the imperfections of all human systems;――among the curses of that Roman
sway, must be numbered its liability to fall from the hands of the wise
and amiable, into those of the stupid and brutal; changes which but
too often occurred,――overturning, by the mismanagement of a moment,
the results of years of benevolent and prudent policy. And in this
very case, all the benefits of Petronius’s equitable and considerate
rule, were utterly neutralized and annihilated by the foolishness or
brutality of his successors, till the provoked irritability of the
nation at last broke out with a fierceness that for a time overcame the
securities even of Roman dominion, and was finally quieted only in the
utter ruin of the whole Jewish nation. But during the period of several
years following the exit of Pilate, its beneficial energy was felt in
the quiet tolerance of religious opinion, which he enforced on all,
and which was most highly advantageous to the progress of the doctrine
of Christ. To this circumstance may justly be referred that remarkable
repose enjoyed by the apostles and their followers from all the
interference with their labors by the Roman government. The death of
Jesus Christ himself, indeed, was the only act in which the civil power
had interfered at all! for the murder of Stephen was a mere freak of
mob-violence, a mere Lynch-law proceeding, which the Roman governor
would not have sanctioned, if it had been brought under his cognizance,
――being done as it was, so directly in the face of those principles
of religious tolerance which the policy of the empire enforced every
where, excepting cases in which sedition and rebellion against their
dominion was combined with religious zealotism, like the instances
of the Gaulanitish Judas, Theudas, and others. Even Jesus himself,
was thus accused by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate for his
alleged endeavors to excite a revolt against Caesar, and opposing the
payment of the Roman taxes,――as is shown by the statement of all the
evangelists, and more particularly by Pilate’s inscription on the cross.
The persecution which followed the murder of Stephen was not carried
on under the sanction of the Roman government, nor yet was it against
their authority; for they permitted to the Sanhedrim the punishment of
most minor offences, so long as they did not go beyond imprisonment,
scourging, banishment, &c. But the punishment of death was entirely
reserved to the civil and military power; and if the Jewish magnates
had ever formally transgressed this limitation, they would have been
instantly punished for it, as a treasonable assumption of that supreme
power which their conquerors were determined to guard with the most
watchful jealousy. The Sanhedrim, being thus restricted in their means
of vengeance, were driven to the low expedient of stirring up the
lawless mob to the execution of these deeds of desperate violence,
which their religious rulers could wink at, and yet were prepared to
disown, when questioned by the Romans, as mere popular ferments, over
which they had no control whatever. So they managed with Stephen; for
his murder was no doubt preconcerted among the chief men, who caused
the formal preamble of a trial, with the design of provoking the mob,
in some way, to this act; in which scheme they were too much favored
by the fiery spirit of the martyr himself, who had not patience enough
with their bigotry, to conceal his abhorrence of it. Their subsequent
systematic and avowed acts of violence, it should be observed, were
all kept strictly within the well-defined limits of their penal
jurisdiction; for there is no evidence whatever that any of the
persecuted Hellenists ever suffered _death_ by the condemnation of
the Sanhedrim, or by the sentence of a Roman tribunal. The progress
of these events, however, showed that this irritating and harassing
system of whippings, imprisonments and banishments, had a tendency
rather to excite the energies of these devoted heretics, than to
check or crush their spirit of innovation and denunciation. Among
the numerous instances of malignant assault on the personal rights of
these sufferers, and the cruel violation of the delicacy due to the
weaker sex, there must have been, also, many occasions in which the
ever-varying feelings of the public would be moved to deep sympathy
with sufferers who bore, so steadily and heroically, punishments
manifestly disproportioned to the offense with which they were
charged,――a sympathy which might finally rise to a high and resistless
indignation against their remorseless oppressors. It is probable,
therefore, that this persecution was at last allayed by other causes
than the mere defection of its most zealous agent. The conviction must
have been forced on the minds of the persecutors, that this system,
with all its paltry and vexatious details, must be given up, or
exchanged for one whose operations should be so vast and sweeping in
its desolating vengeance, as to overawe and appal, rather than awaken
zeal in the objects of the punishment, or sympathy in the beholders.
The latter alternative, however, was too hopeless, under the steady,
benignant sway of Petronius, to be calculated upon, until a change
should take place which should give the country a ruler of less
independent and scrupulous character, and more disposed to sacrifice
his own moral sense to the attainment of favor with the most important
subjects of his government. Until that desirable end should be attained,
in the course of the frequent changes of the imperial succession, it
seemed best to let matters take their own course; and they accordingly
dropped all active proceedings, leaving the new sect to progress as it
might, with the impulse gained from the re-action consequent on this
late unfortunate excitement against it. But they still kept a watchful
eye on their proceedings, though with hands for a while powerless; and
treasured up accumulating vengeance through tedious years, for the day
when the progress of political changes should bring the secular power
beneath their influence, and make it subservient to their purpose of
dreadful retribution. That day had now fully come.