the city walls, upon the road to Ostia. "Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths of the catacombs, where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted Church found refuge for the living, and sepulchres for the dead."

Thus far Messrs. C. and H. And the devout Catholic mind cannot but feel chilled at the cold and suspicious way in which they record the living traditions of the Church as to the Apostle's martyrdom. It would seem as if they had really been seeking how little they were bound to believe upon the subject. We give in full their note, or rather postscript, "on certain legends connected with St. Paul's death, in order to contrast it with the warmer narrative of an ancient Catholic Christian.

If we

"We have not thought it right to interrupt the narrative of St. Paul's last imprisonment, by notating the legends of the Roman Martyrology upon the subject, or by discussing the tradition which makes St. Peter his fellow-worker at Rome, and the companion of his imprisonment and martyrdom. The latter tradition seems to have grown up gradually in the Church, till at length, in the fourth century, it was accredited by Eusebius and Jerome. trace it to its origin, however, it appears to rest on but slender foundations. In the first place, we have an undoubted testimony to the fact that St. Peter died by martyrdom, in St. John's Gospel. (xxi. 18, 19.) The same fact is attested by Clemens Romanus, a contemporary authority......but in neither place is it said that Rome was the scene of the Apostle's labours or death. The earliest authority for this is Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, (about A.D. 170) who calls Peter and Paul the founders of the Corinthian and Roman Churches,' and says that they both taught in Rome together, and suffered martyrdom about the same time. The Roman presbyter, Caius, (about A.D. 200)......mentions the tradition that Peter suffered martyrdom in the Vatican, which if he had

Messrs. C. and H. state, in a note, that "the Great Basilica of St. Paul now stands outside the walls of Rome, on the road to Ostia, in commemoration of his martyrdom; and the Porta Ostiensis, in the present Aurelianie wall, is called the Gate of St. Paul. The traditional spot of the martyrdom is the tre fontane, not far from the Basilica. The Basilica itself (S. Paolo fuor de' mura) was first built by Constantine....... Till the Reformation,' it was under the protection of the kings of England, and the emblem of the Order of the Garter is still to be seen among its decorations. The Church is described by Prudentius (Peristeph. Hymn. 12), • Titulum Pauli via servat Ostiensis.""

suffered under Nero, he very probably would have done. (See Tacit. Ann. xv. 44.) The same tradition is confirmed by Irenæus, frequently alluded to by Tertullian, accredited by Eusebius and Jerome, and followed by Lactantius, Orosius, and all subsequent writers till the Reformation. This apparent weight of testimony, however, is much weakened by our knowledge of the facility with which unhistoric legends originate, especially when they fall in with the wishes of those among whom they circulate and it was the natural wish of the Roman Church to represent the Chief of the Apostles' as having the seat of his government and the site of his martyrdom in the chief city of the world. It cannot be denied, indeed, that St. Peter may possibly have suffered martyrdom at Rome but the form which the tradition receives in the hands of Jerome, viz., that he was Bishop of Rome for twenty-five years, from A.D. 42 to A.D. 68, may be regarded as entirely fabulous ; for in the first place it contradicts the agreement made at the council of Jerusalem, that St. Peter should work among the Jews. (Gal. ii. 9. Compare Romans i. 13. where the Roman Christians are classed among Gentile Churches.) Secondly, it is inconsistent with the First Epistle of St. Peter, which from internal evidence cannot have been written so early as A. D. 42, when we find St. Peter labouring in Mesopotamia: and thirdly, it is negatived by the silence of all St. Paul's Epistles written at Rome.

"If St. Jerome's statement of St. Peter's Roman Episcopate is unhistorical, his assertion that the two Apostles suffered martyrdom on the same day may be safely disregarded. We have seen that upon this tradition was grafted a legend that St. Peter and St. Paul were fellow prisoners in the Mamertine. It is likewise commemorated by a little chapel on the Ostian Road, outside the gate of San Paolo, which marks the place were the Apostles separated on their way to death. St. Peter's martyrdom is commemorated at Rome, not only by the great Basilica which bears his name, but also by the little church of Domine quo vadis, on the Appian way, which is connected with one of the most beautiful legends of the Martyrology. The legend is that St. Peter, through fear of martyrdom, was leaving Rome by the Appian Road in the early dawn, when he met our Lord, and casting himself at His feet, asked Him, Domine quo vadis? To which the Lord replied, Venio iterum crucifigi.' The disciple returned, penitent and ashamed, and was martyred. This legend may be mentioned in advantageous contrast with that connected with the supposed site of St. Paul's death, marked by the Church of S. Paolo alle tre fontane. According to the latter, these three fountains sprang up miraculously, 'abscisso Pauli capite triplici saltu sese sustollentes.' The legend goes on to say, that a noble matron buried the body of St. Paul on her own land, beside the Ostian Road."—Vol. ii. pp. 505-7,

Let our readers contrast with this criticism the following narrative of St. Paul's last years and death, which we extract out of the Bollandists, (June, vol. iv.,) entitled "Commentarii de SS. Petro et Paulo ex MS. Medicæo Græco Regis Christianissimi, et Jacobi Sirleti interpretatione MS. in Bibl. Vaticana."

"Ch. vi. Thus far indeed have we the narrative of St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles,......but as to all that followed after St. Paul left Rome, and went to Thebes in Boeotia, of this he is by no means the author. But Eusebius, who has accurately examined these points in the second Book of his Ecclesiastical History, says that Paul was acquitted after pleading his cause before Nero, and as soon as he was set free, began to preach the word of God at Rome, where he lived ten years, (Romæ agentem. diaтpißovτa) during which he is said to have travelled abroad into Spain, Gaul, and Italy, as a herald, and to have scattered the word abroad there, and to have led many away from the gods of their forefathers, and to have united them to the flock of God. But when he was in Spain, they say that something happened to him after the following

"A certain lady of noble family, and of wealth, as well as learning, having long listened to the preaching of the Apostles, was desirous to behold with her own eyes the herald of truth, and orally to be instructed by him in the doctrines of the true religion. Accordingly, by some Divine inspiration, she chose to take a walk into the forum at a time when Paul, beloved as he was by her from his fame only, was passing through it. She is said to have beheld him, walking staidly along, as one who had not only his general character, but even his very walk, full of divine grace; and by a Divine impulse to have told the matter to her husband, Protus, one of those who were of the highest rank in the state, and to have persuaded him to invite him, though a stranger, beneath his roof. After that he had been admitted to their house, it is said that a miracle of the following kind happened to the wife. With the unsealed eyes of her mind she seemed to behold upon the brow of her guest golden characters, which ran as follows: Paul, the herald of Christ.' On account of the unexpected nature of the vision, a mixed feeling of pleasure and fear came over her; and full of tears, she fell at the feet of the Apostle, and being catechised by him, first of all received baptism at his hands, and took the name of Xanthippe. Afterwards, however, her husband Protus, who was well known to Nero, then also Philotheus the prefect, and at last who dwelt in those parts, followed her example.

"But Paul openly declares in his Epistle to the Romans that he preached in Spain; for he writes, (xv. 28,) When, therefore, I shall have accomplished this, and consigned to them this fruit, I will come to you into Spain.' Since, therefore, he had it in mind

to preach in Spain, even before he had been at Rome, and as it happily turned out to him that he did reach the very first of cities, (πρὸς τὴν πρώτην καταντῆσαι των πόλεων,) he scarcely can have omitted (our queλnoe, non neglexit,) that which he had previously determined, his journey into Spain, even though he returned back again to Rome, and there rested from his long labours. But how he did so, and on what account, I am now about to declare.

"When Nero had gone to the furthest lengths of madness, first of all he destroyed his own mother Agrippina; and besides her his own father's sister, and his wife Octavia, and innumerable other persons who were in any way related to him. After this, however, he excited a general persecution against the Christians, and so he came to put the Apostles to death. For it happened at the same time that Paul, in the 36th year after the salutary Passion of our Lord, and in the 13th year of Nero's reign, became a martyr, being beheaded with the sword. But a certain ecclesiastic, named Gaius, and Zephyrinus, a Roman Bishop, and Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, write, that Peter and Paul underwent martyrdom together, and at the same time, in the 30th year of the empire of Nero. They say that at that time Nero was excited against the Christians, not on account of Simon Magus, but on account of some women, who had professed the faith of Christ, and who had determined to live in virtue and chastity, and who therefore would no longer continue their intercourse with him. And the truth of their story is sup. ported by the testimony of St. John Chrysostom, illustrious in things divine, and with a mind filled with the spirit, who thus writes in his speech against those who forbade men to enter the religious state:- Doubtless ye have heard of Nero; for he was a man notorious for his lusts, and the first who ever in such an empire as that found out new ways of debauchery. This Nero, then, attacking the blessed Paul (for they both lived at the same time) with the same kind of accusation with which you now assail these holy men;-for Paul persuaded the Emperor's beloved mistress to receive the word of faith, and to free herself from that unholy life-in this way, I say, he accused him, calling Paul a corrupter and seducer, and all those names which ye now use, and first bound him and shut him up in prison; and when he could not persuade him to cease exhorting the woman, he cut off his head with the sword. And thus indeed speaks that holy and Apostolic man in life and discourse, concerning the blessed end of St. Paul.'

"These chief and divine apostles, then, as we have said, were consummated in the thirteenth year of Nero; but the execrable Simon Magus is said to have met with his most horrible death about the middle of the reign of Claudius. Some, indeed, say that Peter preceded Paul by the space of a year, and underwent that blessed suffering, so like that of his Lord, and laid down his life for the sheep; but that he was soon followed by that great apostle, Paul,

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(as is asserted by Justin and Irenæus,) when for five years before their departure to Christ, they had held their sacred meetings and religious conferences among themselves; and I, for my part, am more inclined to believe them. But Eusebius Pamphilus says, that Peter having lived twelve years in the East, passed twentythree years more at Rome, in Britain, and in the Western regions; so that the preaching of Peter must have lasted thirty-five years, but that Paul himself for twenty-one years preached faith in Christ, and spent two other years in prison at Cæsarea. To these he also adds the two former years, which he spent at Rome, and the last ten; so that the years of his ministry and preaching are in all thirty and five."

Such is the brief but touching narrative of a Catholic Christian not of the nineteenth century. In parting with the two works which we have had under our notice, we cannot but observe how coldly and with how little feeling of devotion or enthusiasm their respective authors look back upon the very saint whom Protestants are in the habit of regarding as peculiarly their own, and the study of whose character, according to the Edinburgh reviewer, will tend to make all people better Protestants and better Christians. For our own part, as we have already said, we can by no means subscribe to such a sentiment. We can rejoice in giving honour to St. Paul, and in invoking the aid of his powerful intercession, without feeling the least jealousy of other saints, or the least fear of giving birth to an unholy rivalry. It is not without a deep significance that the Church of God has interwoven the name of St. Paul with that of the Prince of the Apostles in all her solemn offices, so that we commemorate not the one without the other; thus raising the great apostle of the Gentiles to a higher place, not lowering the lofty elevation on which St. Peter sits without a rival as supreme. And the name of St. Paul comes to our ears, not as a mere subject of past interest, or of mere pleasing historical associations, nor as a mere object of distant admiration. In the communion of saints Paul lives still to us, converses with us, exhorts and warns us, directs us and intercedes for us. The chain with which he was bound was long preserved at Rome, and if St. Chrysostom, fifteen centuries ago could desire earnestly to travel from Antioch to Rome, to see and salute that chain, we too may desire to approach not merely the chain which bound him, but the saint himself; with the Church, we may recognize in St. Paul the fulfil