Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/266

 *suance of the same great design, the apostle calls their attention with peculiar earnestness to the bright example of Jesus Christ, whose behavior in suffering was now held up to them as a model and guide in their afflictions. With this noble pattern in view, the apostle calls on them to go on in their blameless way, in spite of all that affliction might throw in the path of duty.

No proof that he ever visited them.—The learned Hug, truly catholic (but not papistical) in his views of these points, though connected with the Roman church, has honestly taken his stand against the foolish inventions on which so much time has been spent above. He says, "Peter had not seen the Asiatic provinces; they were situated in the circuit of Paul's department, who had traveled through them, instructed them, and even at a distance, and in prison, did not lose sight of them." (As witness his epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians, all which are comprehended within the circle to which Peter wrote.) He was acquainted with their mode of life, foibles, virtues and imperfections; their whole condition, and the manner in which they ought to be treated." The learned writer, however, does not seem to have fully appreciated Peter's numerous and continual opportunities for personal communications with these converts at Jerusalem. In the brief allusion made in Acts ii. 9, 10, to the foreign Jews visiting Jerusalem at the pentecost, three of the very countries to which Peter writes, "Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia," are commemorated with other neighboring regions, "Phrygia and Pamphylia." Hug goes on, however, to trace several striking and interesting coincidences between this epistle and those of Paul to the Ephesians, to the Colossians and to Timothy, all which were directed to this region. (Hug's introduction to N. T., volume II. § 160.) He observes that "Peter is so far from denying his acquaintance with the epistles of Paul, that he even in express terms refers his readers to these compositions of his 'beloved brother,' (2 Peter iii. 15.) and recommends them to them." Hug, also, in the succeeding section, (§ 161,) points out some still more remarkable coincidences between this and the epistle of James, which, in several passages, are exactly uniform. As 1 Pet. i. 6, 7, and James i. 2:—1 Pet. i. 24, and James i. 10:—1 Pet. v. 5, 6, and James iv. 6-10.

Asia.—It must be understood that there are three totally distinct applications of this name; and without a remembrance of the fact, the whole subject will be in an inextricable confusion. In modern geography, as is well known, it is applied to all that part of the eastern continent which is bounded west by Europe and Africa, and south by the Indian ocean. It is also applied sometimes under the limitation of "Minor," or "Lesser," to that part of Great Asia, which lies between the Mediterranean and the Black sea. But in this passage it is not used in either of these extended senses. It is confined to that very narrow section of the eastern coast of the Aegean sea, which stretches from the Caicus to the Meander, including but a few miles of territory inland, in which were the seven cities to which John wrote in the Apocalypse. The same tract also bore the name of Maeonia. Asia Minor, in the modern sense of the term, is also frequently alluded to in Acts, but no where else in the N. T. unless we adopt Griesbach's reading of Rom. xvi. 5, (Asia instead of Achaia.)

In the outset of his address, he greets them as "strangers" in all the various lands throughout which they were "scattered,"—bearing every where the stamp of a peculiar people, foreign in manners, principles and in conduct, to the indigenous races of the regions in which they had made their home, yet sharing, at the same time, the sorrows and the glories of the doomed nation from which they drew their origin,—a chosen, an "elect" order of people, prepared in the counsels of God for a high and holy destiny, by the consecrating influence of a spirit of truth. Pointing them to that hope of an unchanging, undefiled, unfading heritage in