Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/249

 now sent, goes on with a catalogue of the persons, and of the places where they became finally established in their bishoprics. But it would be honoring such fables too much, to record the long string of names which are in the papist annals, given to designate the missionaries thus sent out, and the particular places to which they were sent. It is enough to notice that the sum of the whole story is, that preachers of the gospel were thus sent not only into the western regions alluded to, but into many cities of Italy and Sicily. In Gaul, Spain and Germany, many are said to have been certainly established; and to extend the fable as far as possible, it is even hinted that Britain received the gospel through the preaching of some of these missionaries of Peter; but this distant circumstance is stated rather as a conjecture, while the rest are minutely and seriously given, in all the grave details of persons and places.

In various works of this character, Peter is said by the propagators of this fable to have passed seven years at Rome, during all which time he is not supposed to have gone beyond the bounds of the city. The occasion of his departure at the end of this long period, as stated by the fabulous records from which the whole story is drawn, was the great edict of Claudius Caesar, banishing all Jews from Rome, among whom Peter must of course have been included. This imperial sentence of general banishment, is not only alluded to in the Acts of the Apostles, but is particularly specified in the Roman and Jewish historians of those times; from which its exact date is ascertained to have been the ninth year of the reign of Claudius, from which, as Peter is supposed to have gone to Rome in the second year of that reign, the intervening time must have been, as above stated, seven years. The particulars of this general banishment, its motives and results, will be better given in that part of this work where important points in authentic true history are connected with the event. Under these circumstances, however, the great first bishop of Rome is supposed to have left this now consecrated capital of Christendom, and traveled off eastward, along with the general throng of Jewish fugitives. Some of the papist commentators on this story are nevertheless, so much scandalized at the thought of Peter's running away in this seemingly undignified manner, (though this is in fact the part of the story which is most consistent with the real truth, since no apostle was ever taught to consider it beneath his dignity to get out of danger,) that they therefore strive to make it