Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/272

 charge just mentioned. The date of the first instances of such persecutions was the eleventh year of the reign of Nero, under the consulships of Caius Lecanius Bassus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, according to the Roman annals. The commencement of the burning of Rome, which was the occasion of this first attack on the Christians, was in the last part of the month of July; but the persecution did not begin immediately. After various contrivances to avert the indignation of the people from their imperial destroyer, the Christians were seized as a proper expiatory sacrifice, the choice being favored by the general dislike with which they were regarded. This attack being deferred for some time after the burning, could not have occurred till late in that year. The epistle cannot have been written before its occurrence, nor indeed until some time afterwards; because a few months must be allowed for the account of it to spread to the provinces of Asia, and it must have been still later when the news of the difficulty could reach the apostle, so as to enable him to appreciate the danger of those Christians who were under the dominion of the Romans. It is evident, then, that the epistle was not written in the same year in which the burning occurred; but in the subsequent one, the twelfth of Nero's reign, and the sixty-fifth of the Christian era. By that time the condition and prospects of the Christians throughout the empire were such as to excite the deepest solicitude in the great apostle, who, though himself residing in the great Parthian empire, removed from all danger of injury from the Roman emperor, was by no means disposed to forget the high claims the sufferers had on him for counsel and consolation. This dreadful event was the most important which had ever yet befallen the Christians, and there would certainly be just occasion for surprise, if it had called forth no consolatory testimony from the founders of the faith, and if no trace of it could be found in the apostolic records.

Committing the keeping of their souls to God.—This view of the design of the epistle gives new force to this passage, (iv. 19.)

First mentioned in Roman history.—This is by Tacitus, (Annal. xv. 44,) who thus speaks of them:—"Nero condendae urbis novae et cognomento suo appellandae gloriam quaerere, et sic jussum incendium credebatur. Ergo abolendo rumori subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat," &c.—"It was believed that Nero, desirous of building the city anew, and of calling it by his surname, had thus caused its burning. To get rid of this general impression, therefore, he brought under this accusation, and visited with the most exquisite punishments, a set of persons, hateful for their crimes, commonly called Christians. The name was derived from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was seized and punished by Pontius Pilate, the procurator. The ruinous superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, not only in Judea, the source of the