Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/274

 his death in the guise of a malefactor was preordained as an atonement to effect the redemption of the world from sin. Had it been otherwise legions of angels would descend to discomfort his impious antagonists. At the same time he predicted that he would rise from the dead on the third day after the burial of his body. This promise was fulfilled, his sepulchre was found empty, and Jesus appeared again to his disciples. He discoursed with them for forty days, constituted them apostles to preach his Gospel not only to the Jews, but also to the Gentiles, and in their presence ascended into the heavens until the clouds received him out of their sight.

Such was the astounding relation elicited with some difficulty from a sect of new religionists called Christians, who, as early as the reign of Nero, were sufficiently numerous at Rome to have incurred the hatred of the populace through their austere disposition and their stern abjuration of the national gods. In the year 64 the city was devastated by an appalling conflagration of which the insensate emperor was himself accused, but he shifted the odium to the already discredited recusants, and condemned many of them to perish

Chron. of Eusebius, Consular Fasti appended to Chron. Paschal., etc. By the synoptical gospels the ministry of Jesus seems to have lasted one year only, but two, three, and even four years have been assumed from the later composition of John, e.g., in Jerome's chronicle, sb. 33.]
 * [Footnote: Jn. Malala onwards; also articles on biblical chronology in recent encyclopaedias,