Page:Jerusalem's captivities lamented, or, The history of Jerusalem.pdf/20

 God, and Christ Jesus. Our Lord being ascended into heaven and having fulfilled his promise of sending the Holy Ghost, the apostles and deeiplesdeciples [sic] continued a while at Jerusalem, being tossed about with gentle storms, but upon aeeasionoccasion [sic] of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, a violent persecution fell upon them, which dispersed them into several countries; about the end of the reign of Caligula, the barbarous Roman Emperor; Peter having visited the churches, returned to Jerusalem, and Herod Agrippa, grandson to Herod the Great, having attained the kingdom of Judea, he, to ingratiate himself with the people, put St. James to death, and finding this grateful to the vulgar, apprehended St. Peter; and sent him to prison, placing strong guards to secure him, but the angels of the Lord delivered him in the night before his enemies designed to execute him; but before this, he is said to have gone down to Antioch, and to have planted the Christian faith, and founded a church there, as Eusebius and others reeordrecord [sic].

After this he went to Rome, about the seeondsecond [sic] year of the emperor Claudius, and being mindful of the ehureheschurches [sic] whiehwhich [sic] he had gathered in Pontus, Galatia, CappadoeiaiCappadociai [sic] Bithynia an Asia the less, writ his first epistle to them, and then took care to propagate the Christian faith, in the western parts of the world after he had eontinuedcontinued [sic] some years at Rome, the Jews raising seditious tumults in the city, they were banished from thence; among whom was St. Peter, who from thence returned back to Jerusalem, and was present at the great apostoical synod, where the eontroversycontroversy [sic] about MosaiealMosaical [sic] rites was determined, some report, that he was in Britain, and eonvertedconverted [sic] many to ehristianitychristianity [sic]: but toward the end of Nero's reign, he returned to Rome, where he found the peoples minds hardened against embraeingembracing [sic] the Christian religion, by the subtilities and magiemagic [sic] arts of Simon Magus; this impostor