The life and work of St. Paul

504 THE LItfE AND WOEK OF Si, PA.VL.
as a Terres had once been provincial governors ;
a Barea Soranus as well as a
Felix The Roman government, corrupt as it often was in special instances,
was yet the one grand power which held in check the anarchic forces which
but for its control were "nursing the impatient earthquake." If now and
then it broke down in minor matters, and more rarely on a large scale, yet the
total area of legal prescriptions was kept unravaged by mischievous injustice.
St. Paul had himself suffered from local tyranny at Philippi, but on the
whole, up to this time, he had some reason to be grateful to the impartiality of
Roman law. At Corinth he had been protected by the disdainful justice of
Gallic, at Ephesus by the sensible appeal of the public secretary; and not
long afterwards he owed his life to the soldier-like energy of a Lysias, and
the impartial protection of a Festus, and even of a Felix. Nay, even at his
first trial his undefended innocence prevailed not only over all the public
authority which could be arrayed against him by Sadducean priests and
a hostile Sanhedrin, but even over the secret influence of an Aliturns and a
Poppsea. Nor had the Jews any reason to be fretful and insubordinate. If
the ferocity of Sejanus and the alarm of Claudius had caused them much
suffering at Rome, yet, on the other hand, they had been protected by a
Julius and an Augustus, and they were in possession of legal immunities
which gave to their religion the recognised dignity of a religio licita. It may
safely be said that, in many a great city, it was to the inviolable strength and
grandeur of Roman law that they owed their very existence ; because, had it
not been for the protection thus afforded to them, they might have been liable
to perish by the exterminating fury of Pagan populations by whom they were
at once envied and disliked. 1
No doubt the force of these considerations would be fully felt by those
Jews who had profited by Hellenistic culture. It is obvious, however, that
St. Paul is here dealing with religious rather than with political or even theo-
Essene and
cratic prejudices. The early Church was deeply affected by
Ebionitic elements, and St. Paul's enforcement of the truth that the civil
power derives its authority from God, points to the antithesis that it was not
the mere vassalage of the devil. It was not likely that at Rome there should
be any of that zealot fanaticism which held it unlawful for a Jew to recognise
any other earthly ruler besides God, and looked on the payment of tribute as
8
a sort of apostasy. It is far more likely that the Apostle is striving to
counteract the restless insubordination which might spring from the prevalence
of chiliastic notions such as those which we find in the Clementine
Homilies, that " the present world with all its earthly powers is the kingdom
of the devil," and that so far from regarding the civil governor as "the
minister of God for good," the child of the future could only look upon him
as the embodied representative of a spiritual enemy. This unpractical and
dualistic view might even claim on its side certain phrases alluding to the
1 Thus the later Eabhis found it necessary to say, with Shemuel, "The law of the
Gentile kingdom is valid " (Babha Kama, f. 113, 1).
Matt. xiii. 17.