Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/639

 the first epistle to Timothy, Mark was also with Paul, and joined in saluting the Colossians; in this, Timothy is instructed to bring him to Paul, because he is profitable to him in the ministry. In the fourth chapter, Paul says that "Erastus abode at Corinth;"—an expression which implies that Erastus abode in Corinth when Paul left it. But Paul took no journey from Corinth before his first imprisonment; for when he left that place for the last time before his journey to Jerusalem,—when he was seized and sent to Rome,—he was accompanied by Timothy; and there could therefore be no need of informing him of that fact. In the same passage of this epistle he also says, that he had left Trophimus sick at Miletus; but when Paul passed through Miletus, on that journey to Jerusalem, Trophimus certainly was not left behind at Miletus, but accompanied him to Jerusalem; for he was seen there with him by the Asian Jews. These two passages therefore, refer to a journey taken subsequent to Paul's first imprisonment,—and the epistle which refers to them, and purports in other passages to have been written during an imprisonment in Rome, shows that he returned thither after his first imprisonment.

The most striking passage in this epistle also refers with great distinctness to his expectation of being very speedily removed from apostolic labors to an eternal apostolic reward. "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith: henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of life, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day." All these expressions are utterly at variance with those hopes of release and of the speedy renewal of his labors in an eastern field; and show very plainly that all the tasks to which he once looked forward were now completed, and that he could hope for no deliverance, but that which should call him from chains and toils to an eternal crown.

HIS DEATH.

The circumstance of his being again in Rome a prisoner, after having been once set free by the mandate of the emperor himself, after a full hearing, must at once require a reference to a state of things, in which Paul's religious profession and evangelizing labors, before esteemed so blameless that no man in Rome forbade him to preach the gospel there,—had now, by a mighty revolution in opinions, become a crime, since for these, he was now held in bondage, without the possibility of escape from the threatened