Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/223



Natalis Alexander fixes Peter's escape in the second year of Claudius, and the forty-fourth from Christ's birth, which is, according to his computation, the tenth from his death. (Hist. Eccles. Saec. I. Cap. vi.)

A chain on each side.—That this was a common mode of fastening such prisoners among the Romans, appears from the authorities referred to by Wolf, (Cur. Phil. in Acts Xii. 6,) Kuinoel and Rosenmueller, (quoting from Walch,) and Bloomfield, all in loc.

Quaternion.—That is, a band of four. See Bloomfield in defense of my mode of disposing them about the prison,—also Rosenmueller, &c. Wolf quotes appositely from Polybius; but Kuinoel is richest of all in quotations and illustrations. (Acts xii. 4, 5.)

THE DELIVERANCE.

Peter was now quietly sleeping between his two guards, when his rest was suddenly broken by a smart blow on the side, too energetically given to be mistaken for an accidental knock from the elbow of one of his heavy bed-fellows. Rousing his senses, and opening his eyes, he was startled by a most remarkable light shining throughout his dungeon, which his last waking glance had left in utter darkness. In this unaccountable illumination, he saw standing before him and bending over him, a form in which he could recognize only the divine messenger of deliverance. The shock of such a surprise must have been overwhelming;—to be waked from a sound sleep by an appearance so utterly unearthly, might have struck horror into the stoutest heart; but Peter seems to have suffered no such emotion to hinder his attendance to the heavenly call. The apparition, before he could exercise thought enough to sit up of himself, had raised him up from his bed, and that without the slightest alarm to his still slumbering keepers,—for "immediately the chains fell from his hands,"—a motion which by the rattling of the falling irons should have aroused the sleepers if any sound could have impressed their senses. The impulse of the now unmanacled captive might have been to spring forth his dungeon without the slightest delay, but his deliverer's next command forbade any such unnecessary haste. His first words were, "Gird thyself; and tie on thy sandals." Before laying himself down, he had, as usual, thrown off his outer garments and loosened his girdle, so that his under dress need not so much confine him in sleep as to prevent that perfect relaxation which is necessary for comfortable repose. Just as now-a-days, a man in taking up such a lodging as often falls to a traveler's lot, will seldom do more than pull off his coat and boots, as Peter did, and perhaps unbutton his waist-band and suspenders, so that on a sudden alarm from his rest, the first direction would very properly be, to "gird himself," (button his