"Under these circumstances, it is very remarkable to consider, who and what manner of men were, by God's providence, gathered together in Rome. Nero, the wicked Emperor, was still there, rebuilding the city, and persecuting the Christians. And in the course of the year came thither a certain man, named Apollonius, who had made himself a great name among the heathen by seeming miracles, and prophecies, and self-denial: so that if any one could prop up the heathen faith, such as it was, against the Truth, he would be the person. There also, at the same time, as is credibly reported, had come the magician Simon, of whom we read in the 8th chapter of the Acts:—that Simon, who, bewitching men by his sorceries, and giving himself out to be the great Power of God, yet being suffered by Divine Providence to be baptized into the Christian Church, became the head and father of all the heresies which, from time to time, have troubled the Church.

"All these, it would seem, were at Rome when St. Paul came there, or soon after: and, besides all these, there was the great Apostle St. Peter, whether or no he had been there before, it seems past doubt that he came there this year, to die.

“So that here, in the chief city of the world, were assembled at this point of time, certain of the heads of the two kingdoms, into which the whole earth is, and always has been, divided,— the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of Christ's enemy. On the one hand, there were St. Peter and St. Paul, appointed to go, as chiefest Apostles, the one to the Jews, the other to the Gentiles; standing, therefore, in a way, for the whole Christian Church. On the other hand, there was Nero the head of the wicked world, a man so far lost to all goodness, that the early Christians accounted him a type or forerunner of Antichrist, of that wicked one, whom the Lord will destroy with the brightness of His coming. There was Apollonius, a sample of the world's men of learning and philosophy, professing to do in other ways what the Church only can do,-to make mankind good and happy. There was Simon the Sorcerer, the type, as was said,—the shadow and pattern of all Heretics, of all who, calling themselves Christians, corrupt the true Gospel with their vain, ungodly inventions. These several parties were, in a manner, gathered together at one time and in one place, and that the most famous place then in the world,—the place where the haters of the truth had every advantage they could have. Here they were fairly pitched one against another, and what was the consequence?

"As for Apollonius, we do not read that he came in direct opposition to the Apostles. But it is curious to observe how he, prompted no doubt by the evil spirit, went on as if in a sort of imitation of the doings of the True Deliverer. Nero, as tyrants are wont, suspected him at first, but Apollonius lost no time in shewing that he was a worshipper of the Greek and Roman idols, and so was permitted to stay awhile in Rome. There, as his admirers afterwards pretended, he wrought sundry miracles, but it is plain, on reading the accounts, that the principal one is a kind of unreal mimicry of our Lord's raising the widow's son. By and by he departed, at a hint from Nero, and it does not appear that he and his doings were ever much thought of afterwards. They disappeared, as infidel philosophy is sure to do, sooner or later, before the very truth.

"Now, as to Simon the Sorcerer, who also, (as has been said) was at Rome at this time, we are told by no improbable tradition, that, endeavouring by his sorceries to gratify Nero, who was very fond of such things, he at last pretended to fly in the air;

but upon the prayer of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the name of

Jesus Christ, the evil spirits who might otherwise have sustained him, entirely forsook him, he fell, and brake his legs, and being carried elsewhere, was so overwhelmed with shame and vexation, that he put himself to death.

"Thus perished,' says Fleury, Simon the Sorcerer, by the might of the Apostles; and this may be taken as a prophetic sign of the power of the Church to discomfit all heresy by prayer.

"And we are to observe, that in this transaction, as also in the whole work of laying the foundation of the Church of Rome, the old writers join St. Peter and St. Paul together, as if St. Peter, though he were there first, and though he was undoubtedly the senior of all the Apostles, were providentially withheld from proceeding in that work, apart from St. Paul, who was the junior of all. But when both were together, and the power of Christ with them, as shewn in the overthrow of Simon, they went on to provide for the continuance of their work after they should be taken away, establishing in Rome a regular and complete Church, as they had before done in Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and other cities."

"For they knew, both of them, that they were soon to receive their crown. St. Peter's Second Epistle, was written, no doubt, about this time. Many things in it shew that the writer was then

in close conflict with some very bad sort of heretics; and there is one passage in which he speaks of our beloved brother Paul,' as one friend might speak of another, who was with him or very near him. Now St. Peter, in that Epistle, distinctly gives this reason for his writing: I think it right, so long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up, putting you in remembrance: knowing that I must shortly put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.'

"St. Paul, for his part, plainly says in his Second Epistle to Timothy, 'I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.' When that letter was written, he was a prisoner, and had been once brought, as it seems, before Nero himself: when no man stood by him, but he was delivered by some providential interference. Still he was very forlorn, and in bonds, having St. Luke only with him; but his comfort was, that the word of God was not bound.' By which we may understand, that as before, so now, the things which happened unto him turned rather to the furtherance of the Gospel. It may be that St. Paul, having been imprisoned there before, was better known in Rome than St. Peter, and less likely to go on for any length of time, in the city without being noticed and persecuted. For he arrived, probably, late in the summer of 65, and now writing, a good while before winter, he had been already tried for his life, and was still in prison. Another reason for his especial danger is mentioned by some of the old writers that he had converted a favourite concubine of Nero, and persuaded her to withdraw from all connection with him. Whatever the grounds of the persecution were, certain it is, that St. Paul was especially persecuted during this his last visit to Rome: persecuted, and left almost alone. And so, in communion with St. Peter,-whether they were free to see each other or not,―he went on making all needful provision for the future.”

"They left, for one thing, a great treasure of prophecy to the Church; both concerning the fall of Jerusalem, which was soon to happen, and concerning the heresies which should after arise among the Christians. The fall of Jerusalem, of which written warnings were left by the two great Apostles, was prophetically described by them, as destined to be the work (under God) of a king sent by God, who would reduce the Jews to so a grievous a famine, that they should even eat one another; and after all the worst horrors of a siege, they were to remain ever exiled from their own land. The heresies they predicted were to be marked

by immoral tendencies; and the ordained safeguard against them was to be the Scriptures interpreted by the Universal Church, which should receive grace for that purpose: St. Paul's word being, 'That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us:' St. Peter's, 'Be mindful of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour.'

"Thus they provided for the whole Church after their departure: and of the Church of Rome in particular they now at last completed the foundations by consecrating a regular Bishop, Linus, mentioned by St. Paul in this his last letter. He was to govern Rome after the Apostles were gone, as Timothy was governing Ephesus, and Titus Crete.

"Yet one thing was needful, the foundations were laid, but they had to be cemented and made sure by the Apostles' blood. And so it pleased God to conclude their work by calling them to martyrdom both on the same day: that as they had gone on evenly in their lives, so in their deaths they might not be divided. We are not quite sure whether the two martyrdoms happened exactly on the same day, or on the same day in two following years (June 29, A.D. 66, 67): St. Paul surviving St. Peter by a whole twelvemonth. This latter is, perhaps, the conclusion to which their two latest Epistles, considered by themselves, would lead us; for St. Peter mentions St. Paul, in a way which would make one think he was yet alive. St. Paul speaks of his own entire loneliness, in a tone hardly consistent with the notion of St. Peter being near him, though in prison.

"Nero, in less than a twelvemonth after, fell horribly by his own hand; and in less than four years, the unbelieving Jerusalem was destroyed.

"On the whole, this passage of sacred history may well scem to have been so ordered, as to bring in a manner before us, gathered up into a single instance, the whole great work of God in His Church on earth. The Apostles-not Peter only, but the two chiefest Apostles, representing all, set up the kingdom of God with power in Rome, that is in Babylon, the very centre and core of the wicked world; and by their preaching, miracles, and death, discomfit and overthrow successively all the enemies of that kingdom; Apollonius, that is, heathen philosophy, quietly making room for them: Simon, that is, heresy, cast headlong by their prayers: Nero, the type of Anti-Christ, seeking to slay them, but himself perishing miser

ably while the Apostles reign with Christ; and the Church of the Apostles, not that of Peter only, takes the place of the condemned synagogue of Jerusalem, to inherit and convey the Lord's grace, and fight His battles, not in Rome only, but in every place which can anyhow be called Babylon in the whole of this wicked world-to fight, to suffer, and to prevail by suffering."

THE LOCUST.