Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/211

 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