LECTURE V.

ST. PAUL IN HIS OWN HIRED HOUSE.

And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him;

Preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.-ACTS, xxviii. 30, 31.

A TRADITION preserved in the Roman Church points out the site of St. Paul's hired house. It is a tradition which one would wish to be able to believe. It belongs to that kind of tradition which is the least likely to be untrue. As St. Paul certainly resided in Rome, it would not have been strange if Christian affection and respect had faithfully transmitted from age to age the memory of the place of his abode.

The subterranean chapel of the Church St. Maria Via Lata is indicated as the site of Paul's hired house, on the authority of a tradition which is traced no higher than to St. Jerome. He, however, only mentions that his house was on the Via Lata. Later tradition fixes it at the site of St. Maria. The Via Lata started from the Capitol, and issuing from the then wall of Rome, near the present piazza Venezia, traversed the Campus Martius on the line of the modern Corso. If tradition had pointed out some site within the walls, near the Capitol, it would

have been readily accepted. But the Church St. Maria Via Lata is in the then Campus Martius, in which there were baths, porticoes, sepulchers, colonnades, and other structures, but in which, if there could have been any private dwellings, they must have been very few, and those near the walls. Canina refers the remains of an ancient structure under St. Maria, too massive evidently for a private dwelling, to one of the three arches that adorned the Via Lata, the new arch of Diocletian, and to a colonnade, constructed by Agrippa, in the site of the Septi,-an inclosure where the people of Rome assembled to vote on questions submitted to their decision. Cardinal Wiseman, in his tale of Fabiola, forgetful apparently of the decision of his church, makes the same statement as to the character of these remains. Thus where the tradition of the Roman Church locates the house of St. Paul, the learned antiquarian and scholar, and the illustrious cardinal, place an arch and a colonnade. We are compelled, therefore, to discredit the tradition which fixes St. Paul's house under St. Maria Via Lata, and to conclude that it must have been near to the wall, and immediately under the shadow of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

The text gives us a general description of the mode in which St. Paul employed the two whole years which he passed in Rome in his own hired house. It was in "preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus." He remembered, no doubt constantly, that solemn night in the tower of Antonia, when his Master stood by him and said, "Be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified of me at Jerusalem,

so must thou bear witness also at Rome." Hence, when as free, so in bonds, he determined to know nothing among those to whom he ministered but Christ and Him crucified.

I. When we remember how soon after this period Nero persecuted the church, it seems strange to read that Paul was permitted at that time so openly to preach and to testify, "with all confidence, no man forbidding him.”

In order to understand this, it will be necessary to refer briefly to the then condition and spirit of the Roman government.

Nero had succeeded to the empire, in the year A.D. 54, nearly seven years before the arrival of St. Paul in Rome. His character from his earliest youth gave fearful promise of its development into those portentous vices which have made his name preeminent in infamy. It was the policy of his evil mother, Agrippina, to foster all his private vices, in order that she might withdraw him from the cares of state, and rule the empire through him as she had through her dull husband, the Emperor Claudius. She indulged all his tastes for the circus and theater, and association with players and charioteers and pantomimists; and surrounded him with a host of polluting parasites, freedmen, and teachers in all the luxuriant vices of that most degenerate age. It may readily be supposed how rapidly a youth of seventeen, with bad blood in him, and prone to all the vices, would ripen in iniquity in such a school, when put in possession of the vast and irresponsible imperial power,-the greatest power ever enjoyed by man.

1. Against these powerful influences of evil, in

the beginning of his reign, Seneca and Burrus, his chief advisers and ministers, struggled not altogether in vain. Seneca had been Nero's tutor. His fame for wisdom and probity were so high that he had been talked of as the successor of Claudius to the empire. He retained, for a time, his ascendency over the mind of the Emperor, restraining somewhat at least, the outward manifestations of his private vices, and giving a mild, popular, and just character to his public administration. Burrus, the Prætorian prefect, the constant friend and helper of Seneca, and having more of the spirit of the old and virtuous Roman in him, was less afraid of Agrippina, and more peremptory with Nero, than the timid and politic philosopher. Nero, having full sweep to all his will in the direction of his youthful tastes and vices, was rather amused than offended to see the struggle between his astute mother on the one hand, and the philosopher and soldier on the other, for that control of the public administration which he knew that he himself could at any time assume. Under the guidance of these two wise and prudent statesmen, the public administration continued to be beneficent and just, long after Nero had emancipated his private life from the control of them and of Agrippina, and had given himself up to utter license, self-will, and evil passion, and had become the deliberate murderer of his brother and his mother. The contrast between his private life and his public administration was indeed remarkable. It may be doubted whether there had been any period since the reign of Augustus in which the empire had been so wisely, justly, and beneficently administered, as during the first six or seven years

of Nero's reign. Trajan, an emperor so just that Gregory the Great is said to have prayed God to make an exception in his case and admit him into Paradise, expressed the wish that the best years of his reign might resemble the first years of Nero's administration.

The Roman people must indeed have greatly enjoyed that bright and peaceful lull in the long, dark storm of tyranny under which they had timidly cowered or recklessly reveled. Instead of the suspicion, espionage, banishments and beheadings, the dull void created by the absence of the Emperor and court from Rome, the comparative rarity of games and shows, which were the characteristics of the reign of the morose, suspicious, and gloomy Tiberius, there was a sudden disappearance of spies and informers; a revival of literature, poetry, and art; the Palatine hill became alive and gay with imperial pomp and activity; games and shows were profusely multiplied, and largess and bread were freely scattered among the people. In place of the capricious tyranny of the mad Caligula, whose fantastic atrocities kept the whole city and empire in a state of nervous apprehension, there was an assurance, on the part of the citizens, that the strong hand of Burrus would direct the Prætorian cohorts for their protection and not for their destruction, and that the civil administration under Seneca would assure and not rob them of their rights. Instead of the degrading rule of freedmen and of Messalina and Agrippina, a mixed anarch reign, as it were, of satyrs and of furies, in which all the old Roman dignity disappeared, and in which the lives and property of citizens were at the mercy of their spies