Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/617

 very night, to Caesarea, designing to have him left there with the governor of the province, as a prisoner of state, and thus to rid himself of all responsibility about this very difficult and perilous business. He ordered two centurions to draw out a detachment, of such very remarkable strength, as shows the excess of his fears for Paul. Two hundred heavy-armed soldiers, seventy horse-*men, and two hundred lancers, were detached as a guard for Paul, and were all mounted for speed, to take him beyond the reach of the Jerusalem desperadoes, that very night. He gave to that portion of the detachment that was designed to go all the way to Caesarea, a letter to be delivered to Felix the governor, giving a fair and faithful account of all the circumstances connected with Paul's imprisonment and perils in Jerusalem.

RETURN TO CAESAREA.

The strong mounted detachment, numbering four hundred and seventy full-armed Roman warriors, accordingly set out that night at nine o'clock, and moving silently off from the castle, which stood near one of the western gates of the city, passed out of Jerusalem unnoticed in the darkness, and galloped away to the north-*west. After forty miles of hard riding, they reached Antipatris before day, and as all danger of pursuit from the Jerusalem assassins was out of the question there, the mounted infantry and the lancers returned to Jerusalem, leaving Paul however, the very respectable military attendance of the seventy horse-guards. With these, he journeyed to Caesarea, only about twenty-five miles off, where he was presented by the commander of the detachment to Felix, the Roman governor, who always resided in Caesarea, the capital of his province. The governor, on reading the letter and learning that Paul was of Cilicia, deferred giving his case a full hearing, until his accusers had also come; and committed him for safe keeping in the interval, to an apartment in the great palace, built by Herod the Great, the royal founder of Caesarea.

After a delay of five days, the high priest and the elders came down to Caesarea, to prosecute their charges against Paul before the governor. They brought with them, as their advocate, a speech-maker named Tertullus, whose name shows him to have been of Roman connections or education, and who, on account of his acquaintance with the Latin forms of oratory and law, was no doubt selected by Ananias and his coadjutors, as a person better qualified than themselves to maintain their cause with effect, before the governor. Tertullus accordingly opened the case, and