Page:History of Joseph & his brethren.pdf/24

 upon the same day, though different kinds of death. will have it that they suffered on the same day of the year, but at a year's distance ; and others affirm that St. Paul suffered several years after St. Peter ; but all agree that Paul, as a Roman, had the favour to be beheaded, and not crucified. His execution was at the Aquæ Salviæ, 3 miles from Rome ; and he is said to have converted the three soldiers that guarded him thither, who also suffered for the faith. Some of the fathers add, that upon his death there flowed from his veins a liquor more like milk than blood, the sight whereof (saith St. Crysostom) converted the executioner.

He was buried about two miles from Rome, in the way called Via, Ostiensis, where Lucina, a noble Roman matron, not long after settled a farm for the maintenance of the church. Here he lay but indifferently entombed for several ages, till the reign of Constantine the Great, who in the year of our Lord, 318, at the request of Sylvester, bishop of Rome, built a very sumptuous church, supported with a hundred stately pillars, and beautified with a most rare and exquisite workmanship, and after all richly gifted and endowed by the emperor him- self. Yet was all this thought too mean au honour for so great an apostle by the emperor Valentinian, who sent an order to his Præfect Salustinus, to take that church down, and to erect in its room one more largo and stately, which, at the instance of the Pope Leo, was richly adorned, and endowed by the Empress Placidia, and doubtless, hath received great additions ever since, from age to age.

Thus was brought up, became converted, and a preacher of the gospel, and thus was put to death and buried, this great apostle of the Gentiles, superior in learning and natural parts, and not inferior in zeal to any of the rest of the apostles.