If, then, it is reasonable to suppose that the first audience of St. Paul was before Nero himself and at Rome; it was an audience between the spring and the summer of U. C. 819. He seems to have written his Epistle to Timothy soon after the result of the audience, and consequently in the course of the same quarter; which agrees with what has been already

established. But before this, it is clear from i. 15. that he must have had some trial or examination in Asia also; with the nature and results of which Timothy himself was acquainted, so that he is only reminded of them. If that was the case, we may reasonably conjecture that it was at his first apprehension, and probably before the proconsular governor; who, in the first half of the twelfth of Nero, U. C. 818, seems to have been Lucius Antistius Vetus, consul along with Nero U. C. 808, or more probably, Barea Soranus °. But this is a point of no consequence.

It is with much more probability to be conjectured that, if Paul was apprehended and tried in Asia before he was sent to Rome, he was apprehended and tried at the very beginning of U. C. 819; and it is probable, as in the former instance, that he was subsequently sent to Rome, to be tried in person before the emperor, because he was a Roman citizen. His privilege, as that of such a citizen, seems to have been respected in the manner of his death at least, which all authorities are agreed in attesting was decapitation; whereas that of St.Peter, who was not a Roman citizen, was crucifixion.

The day of the martyrdom, both of St. Paul and of St. Peter, is traditionally reported to have been June 29, and the tradition may be so far founded in fact, as that the 29th of June might be the day of the martyrdom of one of them, if not of the other: and if St. Paul actually suffered upon any second audience and soon after his first, it might actually be the day of his martyrdom for his first audience must have been earlier than the month of June at least.

When Nero set out to go to Achaia, he left his freedman Helius at the head of affairs, entrusted with absolute powers P; and Helius continued at Rome in p Dio, lxiii. 12-19. Suetonius, Nero, 23.

o Tacitus, Annales, xvi. 10. 23. Tacitus, Annales, xiii 1.

possession of this authority, until a short time before the emperor's return. The character and cruelty of this man were as atrocious as those of his master; and every day, during his administration, witnessed some execution or other *. By one of these two, it seems most probable that St. Paul was put to death, and soon after writing his Epistle to Timothy itself; for there is no reason to suppose that he survived until Timothy, in obedience to his wish, came to Italy. On that principle, though we have rendered it probable that he arrived in the spring, he must have survived until after the autumnal equinox at least.

This circumstance in the situation of the times, when St. Paul suffered, viz. that the Roman empire, or the city of Rome, was then subject to more than one master, seems to be implied in the words of Clemens Romanus, ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων, the meaning of which has been much perverted. The expression may be understood of Nero and Helius; and it is but parallel to a similar observation of the historian Dio's, with reference to the same state of thingss: οὕτω μὲν δὴ τότε ἡ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχὴ δύο αὐτοκράτορσιν ἅμα ἐδούλευσε, Νέα ρωνι καὶ Ἡλίῳ.

As to St. Peter-when he first came to Rome before his death, and how long he had been there when that happened; whether he was brought there as a prisoner, or whether he was apprehended in Rome itself; before whom he was tried, and at what time of the year he suffered; these are points on which we are destitute of positive information, and can advance only conjectures. The total absence of any allusion to him, in the Epistle to Timothy, seems to me a strong presumptive argument that he was either not * Dio, lxiv. 3. he was put to death by Galba, U. C. 821.

alive, or not present at Rome when that Epistle was written; and this we may presume would be the case, if the reasons, which we have assigned, render it probable that he died sometime in U. C. 818, and not in U. C. 819.

As to the time of his death, it is possible that it might happen U. C. 818, about the same time as St. Paul's in the next, U. C. 819. It is a singular circumstance in reference to this point, that the Chronographia of Nicephorus, in contradistinction to many other ancient computations of the same thing, makes the length of his sitting at Rome two years' time. If this implies that he came there two years before his death, it implies that he came there U. C. 816, or at the latest, U. C. 817; and this would agree very well with the probable date of his Second Epistle, which might thus be written from Rome just before, or in the midst of the persecution against Christianity; and the allusion to his own death, as at hand", would in that case be any thing but out of place. There is no way, as it appears to me, of accounting for the assertion of Nicephorus, except this; either that Peter stayed two years at Rome on his first visit, or came back thither two years before his death on his second; in which case he might be said to have sate there two years. The first of these facts has, indeed, been rendered probable elsewhere; but the latter appears more naturally to be what Nicephorus meant. In this case, the date of his martyrdom would be U. C. 818, A. D. 65, as that of St. Paul's was the ensuing year, U. C. 819, A. D. 66*.

* The same chronologer, (Syncellus, i. 746. 18,) places the martyrdom of Peter and Paul at Rome, under Nero,

t Apud Syncellum, i. 768. 5. vol. i. 114, 115.

and that of St. James, stoned by the Jews, each about the same time.

u 2 Pet. i. 13, 14, 15.

v Dissertation ii.

APPENDIX.

SUPPLEMENT TO DISSERTATION XV. AND

APPENDIX DISSERTATION XIX.

On the Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks.

THE Exposition of the Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, which has just been completed, has been principally directed to shew the historical fulfilment of the prophecy, agreeably to those principles of interpretation which were previously laid down. A careful revision of that Exposition, which I have thought it necessary to institute at the end of the whole, has induced me to think, that though nothing perhaps can be added to the completeness of the proof of the fulfilment of the prophecy, in all its parts; the principles on which the interpretation proceeds are too generally stated to be considered placed on a solid and substantial footing; and that in order to shew their reasonableness and their truth, it is advisable to explain and defend them somewhat at large. With this view, I propose to resume the discussion of the prophecy; yet so as to avoid all unnecessary repetition, and to confine myself as much as possible to such points as are strictly supplementary.

It will be found of material advantage to this discussion, that we should possess the means of referring both to the original text of the prophecy, and to some of the most esteemed of the versions, distinct from our own, which were made of it in ancient times. I shall produce, therefore, first of all, the text of the prophecy, from Kennicott's Hebrew Bible, and side by side our own Bible translation, with the marginal variations: afterwards the versions of Theodotion and of the Septuagint, both from the text of Holmes' edi