The long expected favorite and friend of the Jewish people, having been
thus hailed sovereign by their grateful voices, and having strengthened
his throne and influence by his opening acts of liberality and devotion
to the national faith, now entered upon a reign which presented only
the portents of a course most auspicious to his own fame and his
people’s good. Uniting in his person the claims of the Herodian and
Asmonaean lines,――with the blood of the heroic Maccabees in his veins,
――crowned by the imperial lord of the civilized world, whose boundless
power was pledged in his support, by the obligations of an intimate
personal friendship, and of a sincere gratitude for the attainment
of the throne of the Caesars through his prompt and steady exertions,
――received with universal joy and hope by all the dwellers of the
consolidated kingdoms of his dominion, which had been long thriving
under the mild and equitable administration of a prudent governor,
――there seemed nothing wanting to complete the happy auspices of a
glorious reign, under which the ancient honors of Israel should be more
than retrieved from the decline of ages. Yet what avails the bright
array of happily conspiring circumstances, to prince or people, against
the awful majesty of divine truth, or the pure, simple energy of human
devotion? Within the obscurer corners of his vast territories, creeping
for room under the outermost colonnades of that mighty temple whose
glories he had pledged himself to renew,――wandering like outcasts from
place to place,――seeking supporters only among the unintellectual mass
of the people,――were a set of men of whom he probably had not heard
until he entered his own dominions. They were now suggested to his
notice for the first time, by the decided voice of censure from the
devout and learned guardians of the purity of the law of God, who
invoked the aid of his sovran power, to check and utterly uproot this
heresy, which the unseasonable tolerance of Roman government had too
long shielded from the just visitations of judicial vengeance. Nor did
the royal Agrippa hesitate to gratify, in this slight and reasonable
matter, the express wishes of the reverend heads of the Jewish faith
and law. Ah! how little did he think, that in that trifling movement
was bound up the destiny of ages, and that its results would send his
name――though then so loved and honored――like Pharaoh’s, down to all
time, a theme of religious horror and holy hatred, to the unnumbered
millions of a thousand races, and lands then unknown;――an awful doom,
from which one act of benign protection, or of prudent kindness, to
that feeble band of hated, outcast innovators, might have retrieved
his fame, and canonized it in the faithful memory of the just, till
the glory of the old patriarchs and prophets should grow dim. But,
without one thought of consequences, a prophetic revelation of which
would so have appalled him, he unhesitatingly stretched out his arm
in vindictive cruelty over the church of Christ, for the gratification
of those whose praise was to him more than the favor of God. Singling
out first the person whom momentary circumstances might render most
prominent or obnoxious to censure, he at once doomed to a bloody death
the elder son of Zebedee, the second of the great apostolic THREE. No
sooner was this cruel sentence executed, than, with a most remarkable
steadiness in the execution of his bloody plan, he followed up this
action, so pleasing to the Jews, by another similar movement. Peter,
the active leader of the heretical host, ever foremost in braving
the authority of the constituted teachers of the law, and in exciting
commotion and dissatisfaction among the commonalty, was now seized
by a military force, too strong to fear any resistance from popular
movements, which had so much deterred the Sanhedrim. This occurred
during the week of the passover; and such was king Agrippa’s profound
regard for all things connected with his national religion, that he
would not violate the sanctity of this holy festival by the execution
of a criminal, however deserving of vengeance he might seem in that
instance. The fate of Peter being thus delayed, he was therefore
committed to prison, (probably in castle Antonia,) and to prevent all
possibility of his finding means to escape prepared ruin again, he was
confined to the charge of sixteen Roman soldiers, divided into four
sets, of four men each, who were to keep him under constant supervision
day and night, by taking turns, each set an equal time; and according
to the established principles of the Roman military discipline, with
the perfect understanding that if, on the conclusion of the passover,
the prisoner was not forthcoming, the guards should answer the failure
with their lives. These decided and careful arrangements being made,
the king, with his gratified friends in the Sanhedrim and among the
rabble, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the great national
festival, with a peculiar zest, hightened by the near prospect of the
utter overthrow of the advancing heresy, by the sweeping blow that
robbed them of their two great leaders, and more especially of him who
had been so active in mischievous attempts to perpetuate the memory
of the original founder of the sect, and to frustrate the good effect
of his bloody execution, by giving out that the crucified Jesus still
lived, and would yet come in vengeance on his murderers. While such
triumphant reflections swelled the festal enjoyments of the powerful
foes of Christ, the unhappy company of his persecuted disciples passed
through this anniversary-week with the most mournful reminiscences and
anticipations. Ten years before, in unutterable agony and despair, they
had parted, as they then supposed forever, with their beloved Lord; and
now, after years of devotion to the work for which he had commissioned
them, they were called to renew the deep sorrows of that parting, in
the removal of those who had been foremost among them in the great work,
cheering them and leading them on through toil and peril, with a spirit
truly holy, and with a fearless energy, kindred with that of their
divine Lord. Of these two divinely appointed chiefs, one had already
poured out his blood beneath the executioner’s sword, and the other,
their great leader, the _Rock_ of the church, was now only waiting
the speedy close of the festal week, to crown his glorious course, and
his enemies’ cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in
the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the
wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that
passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance
they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless
darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that
then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so
shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny
which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates
of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had
been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they
thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their
experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured
out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief
of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful
entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of
Peter.
_Castle Antonia._――For Josephus’s account of the position and
erection of this work, see my note on page 95, (section 8.)
There has been much speculation about the place of the prison
to which Peter was committed. The sacred text (Acts xii. 10,)
makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after
leaving the prison it was still necessary to enter the city by
“the iron gate.” Walch, Kuinoel and Bloomfield adopt the view
that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified the
walls. Wolf and others object to the view that it was without
the walls; because, as Wolf says, it was not customary to
have public prisons outside of the cities, since the prisoners
might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from
some hardy band of comrades, &c. But this objection is worth
nothing against castle Antonia, which, though it stood entirely
separated from the rest of the city, was vastly strong, and by
its position as well as fortification, impregnable to any common
force;――a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend
it as a secure place for one who, like Peter, had escaped once
from the common prison. There was always a Roman garrison in
Antonia. (Josephus, Jewish War, V. v. 8.)
In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the
great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the
consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few
hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty
sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted
only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great
terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the
thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up
in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers’ God, who still
remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the
bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the
anthems of praise to God which sounded along the courts and porches
of the temple, were no doubt heard, too, the thanks of many a grateful
Hebrew for the goodness of the generous king, who had pledged his
royal word to complete the noble plan of that holy pile, as suited
the splendid conceptions of the founder. And this was the king whose
decree had doomed that lonely and desolate prisoner in the castle, to
a bloody and shameful death,――as a crowning offering at the close of
the great festival; and how few among that vast throng, before whose
eyes he was to yield his life, would repine at the sentence that dealt
exterminating vengeance on the obstinately heretical preacher of the
crucified Nazarene’s faith! Well might such dark visions of threatening
ruin appal a heart whose enthusiasm had caught its flame from the
unholy fires of worldly ambition, or devoted its energies to the low
purpose of human ascendency. And truly sad would have been the lonely
thoughts of this very apostle, if this doom had found him in the spirit
which first moved him to devote himself to the cause which now required
the sacrifice of life. But higher hopes and feelings had inspired his
devoted exertions for _ten years_, and higher far, the consolations
which now sustained him in his friendless desolation. This very fate,
he had long been accustomed to regard as the earthly meed of his labors;
and he had too often been threatened with it, to be overwhelmed by
its near prospect. Vain, then, were all solemn details of that awful
sentence, to strike terror into his fixed soul,――vain the dark sureties
of the high, steep rock, the massive, lofty walls, the iron gates, the
ever-watchful Roman guards, the fetters and manacles, to control or
check the
“Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!――
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart.”
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.)