The life and work of St. Paul

CLOSING OATS. 669
post of Prsatorian Praefect, a political prisoner was at least sure that he would
not be treated with wanton severity; but with a Tigellinus in that office a
Tigellinus whose foul hands were still dripping with Christian blood, and
whose foul life was stained through and through with every form of detestable
wickedness what could be expected ? We catch but one glance of this last
imprisonment before the curtain falls, but that glimpse suffices to show how
hard it was. Through the still blackened ruins of the city, and amid the
squalid misery of its inhabitants perhaps with many a fierce scowl turned
on the hated Christian Paul passed to his dungeon, and there, as the gate
clanged upon him, he sat down, chained night and day, without further hope
a doomed man.
To visit him now was 110 longer to visit a man against whom nothing
serious was charged, and who had produced a most favourable impression on
the minds of all who had been thrown into relation with him. It was to visit
the bearer of a name which the Emperor and his minions affected to detest ;
it was to visit the ringleader of those who were industriously maligned as the
authors of a calamity more deadly than any which had afflicted the city since
its destruction by the Gauls. Merely to be kind to such a man was regarded
as infamous. No one could do it without rendering himself liable to the
coarse insolence of the soldiers. 1
Nay, more, it was a service of direct political
danger. Rome swarmed with spies who were ready to accuse any one of
laesa majestas on the slightest possible occasion. Now who but a Christian
would visit a Christian? What could any respectable citizen have to do
with the most active propagandist of a faith which had at first been ignored
as contemptible, but which even calm and cultivated men were beginning to
regard as an outrage against humanity P 2 And if any Christian were charged
with being a Christian on the ground of his having visited St. Paul, how could
he deny the charge, and how, without denying it, could he be saved from
incurring the extremest danger P
Under these circumstances the condition of the Apostle was very different
from what it had been three years before. His friends had then the freest
access to him, and he could teach Christ Jesus with all boldness undisturbed.
Now there were few or no friends left to visit him; and to teach Jesus Christ
was death. He knew the human heart too well to be unaware how natural
it was that most men should blush to associate themselves with him and his
chain. One by one his Asiatic friends deserted him. 3 The first to leave
him were Phygellus and Hermogenes. 4 Then the temptations of the present
course of things, the charm of free and unimperilled life, were too much for
Demas, and he too though he had long been his associate now forsook him.
1 See Juv. Sat. xvi. 812.
* "
Odio generis human! convicti sunt." (Tao, Ann. XT. 44 ; of. H. v. 5.)
2 Tim. i. 15.
4
Nothing whatever is known of these two. In later days the Christians, under the
stress of persecution, had learnt their lessons better, so that their tender faithfulness
to one another in distress excited the envious astonishment of Pagans (Lucian, De Morte
Pertgr. 13).