Page:History of Joseph and his brethren.pdf/23

23 Emperors concubines, or which he was curbed in the reer of his insatiate appetite. Neither can it be resolved how long he remained in prison, what the certain time of his suffering was, and whether (according to the custom) he was first scourged, only Bar n ous speaks of two pillar's in the church of St. Mary, beyond the bridge in Rome to which both he and St. Peter were bound, when they were scourged.

It is affirmed that St. Paul and St. Peter suffered upon the same day, though different kinds of death. Others 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 S. Peter ; but all agree. that Paul, as a Roman, bail the favour to be beheaded, and not crucified. His execution was at the Aqure 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, (as we may well suppose) entombed for several ages, that is, till the reign of Constantine the Great, who in the year of our Lord, 318, at the request of Sylvester, that 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 himself Yet was all this thought too mean an 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 large and statelier, which, at the instance of the Pope Leo, was richly adorned, and endowed by the Empress Placidia, and doubtless, hath received great additious ever since, from age to age.

Thus was brought up, became converted, and a preacher of the gospel, and thus was put death and buried, this