Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/222

 *losophy, 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 "Critica Historico-Chronologica in Ann. 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.)