The History of Joseph & his Brethern
JOSEPH’S FIRST DREAM.
HIS SECOND DREAM.
HE IS PUT INTO A PIT.
HE IS SOLD INTO EGYPT.
TEMPTED BY POTIPHAR’S WIFE.
CAST INTO THE DUNGEON.
HE IS MADE LORD OF THE LAND.
His Brethren going to buy Corn.
THE CUP IN BENJAMIN’S SACK.
JOSEPH DECLARETH HIMSELF.
JACOB’S JOURNEY INTO EGYPT.
JOSEPH VISITS HIS FATHER.
JACOB BLESSETH HIS SONS.
JOSEPH’S LOVE TO HIS FATHER.
JACOB’S FUNERAL.
THE
LIFE OF ST. PAUL.
Saint Paul, though not one of the twelve, yet for his great eminence in the ministry of the gospel, had the honour to be styled an apostle, particularly above all the rest that were not of the number, and hath justly the next place to St. Peter allotted to him, both in regard they were so conversant in their lives, and inseparable in their deaths. He was born at Tarsus, not only of Jewish parents, but originally descended from an ancient Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin in Judea, where he had his education, which was a flourishing Academy, whose scholars (as Strabo testifies) excelled those of Alexandria, and even Athens itself. In the schools of this city, he was brought up from his childhood, and became an excellent proficient in all the polite learning of the ancients, yet at the same time he was brought up to a manual trade, as even the most learned of their Rabbins were, for enabling them to get a livelihood if occasion required it; it being a maxim (especially amongst the Jews,) that he who teacheth not his son a trade, teacheth him to be a thief; for learning of old was not made an instrument to get a maintenance by, but for the better polishing the mind; so that the learned among the Jews were frequently denominated (as Drusius observes,) from some one or other handy-craft trade, as Rabbie Judah, the baker; Rabbie Jochanan, the Shoemaker, &c.
Having at Tarsus attained to a great perfection in the liberal arts and sciences. He was sent to Jerusalem to be instructed in the knowledge of the laws; and for the better accomplishing him in that study, was put under the tuition of Raban Gamaliel the son of Simon, (the same probably that took up our Saviour in his arms.) He was an eminent doctor of the law, one of the families of the schools at Jerusalem, and a person of principal note and authority in the Jewish Sanhedrim, in which that grave and prudent speech, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which he made on behalf of the apostles and their doctrine, took great effect. At the feet of this great doctor St. Paul was brought up, as he himself testifies; and by his instructions he soon advanced to that degree, that he gained himself a reputation above all his fellow scholars. Moreover he was a strict professor of the sect of the Pharisees, which of all others amongst the Jews, was the severest and most magisterial; and the professors thereof, generally great applauders of themselves for their sanctity, despising and censuring all others as reprobates, and unworthy of their society, and presuming (as Josephus writes) to govern even princes themselves. With the fiery genius of this sect, our apostle was too deeply infected, which made him a most zealous persecutor of the Saints; so that when the blood of the martyr Stephen was shed, I (saith he with sorrow after his conversion) was standing by, consented to his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. Nay, of all the apparators, and inquisitors, employed by the Sanhedrim, to execute their warrants; upon those upstart heretics, as they called them, who preached against the law of Moses, and the tradition of the fathers; he was the man that strove to be the forwardest. In this zeal to execute his office, as he was on his way to Damascus, with some other, of his fellow officers, breathing out vengeance and destruction against the poor Christians, their was on a sudden a most glorious light shot full upon him, and the rest that were with him, so that they fell to the ground in great amazement, and at the same time a voice from heaven was directed to him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” to which, amazed as he was, he answered, Lord who art thou? the voice replying, that it was Jesus whom he persecuted, and that it was hard for him to kick against the pricks. He again desired further instructions; Lord, said he, what wilt thou have me to do; upon which he was bid to rise, and go to Damascus, and there expect what should be further revealed to him; rising from the ground he found his sight gone. In this plight being led to Damascus, he was there three days fasting, and probably then he saw that celestial vision mentioned by him, wherein he heard and saw things past utterance, and those divine revelations, which gave him occasion to say, that the gospel he preached, he was not taught by man, but had it revealed to him by Jesus Christ. The three days being expired, Ananias, a devout man, and one of the seventy disciples came to him, according to the command he had received from our Lord, who appeared to him, to go and enquire for one Saul of Tarsus, and having laid his hands on him, told him his message, upon which his sight was restored to him, and the gift of the Holy Ghost conferred on him; presently after he was baptized, and made a member of the church, to the great joy of the rest of the disciples, that he should become not only a professor, but a preacher of that faith, which he so lately was a bitter persecutor of. His stay at this time at Damascus was not long, for being warned away by a vision from heaven, he took a journey into Arabia, where he preached the gospel for three years, and then returned to Damascus, where the unconverted Jews eagerly sought his ruin, endeavouring to seize him, but he escaped through the help of the disciples, and the rest of his friends who were zealous for his safety.
Thus far we have made an entrance into the life and acts of this great apostle, with which there is scarcely any thing equally memorable in history, nor could the further prosecution thereof have been omitted, but that all the travels of this apostle in the pursuance of his ministry, from the time of his conversion to the last of his being at Rome, with the most principal transactions, and the severest accidents that happened to him therein, are already related in the exposition of the map of the voyages of the apostles, and more particularly those of St. Paul, in which, for avoiding needless repetitions, the sequel of his life may not unfitly be referred. We shall therefore make some enquiry into the time and occasion of the several epistles wrote to the several churches; as also unto the time and manner of his death.
When he went from Athens to Corinth, it is said he wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians, which he sent Silas and Timothy, who returned during his stay, and before his departure he wrote his second epistle to them, to excuse his not coming to them as he promised in his first. Not long after at Ephesus, he is said to have written his epistle to the Galatians; and before he left Ephesus, he wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians. Moreover, he sent from thence by Apollos and Silas to Titus, whom he left in that island to propagate the faith, and had him made bishop thereof, in which he gives him advice for the better execution of his episcopal office. At Macedonia, whither he went from Ephesus, having by Titus received an account of the church of Corinth’s present state of affairs, he sent by him at his return, when he was accompanied by St. Luke, his second epistle to the Corinthians; and about the same time he wrote his first epistle to Timothy, whom he had left at Ephesus. From Corinth he went to Macedon, whither he sent his epistle to the Romans, by Phebe, a deaconess of the Church of Cenchrea, not far from Corinth. Going thence to Rome, he sent his epistle to the Phillipians by Epaphroditus, who had been sent from them with relief, not knowing to what straits he might be reduced by his imprisonment at Rome. In the next place, he sends by Tychicus his epistle to the Ephesians. Not long after, (if not about the same time) he wrote his epistle to the Colossians, and sent it by Epaphras, his fellow-prisoner for some time at Rome. As for his second epistle to Timothy, there is some dispute about the time of his writing it; only it seems probable by authentic authors, that it was written after the Philippians and Ephesians. As for the epistle to the Hebrews, it is not known when, or from whence written, and rather conjectured than certainly known to have been St. Paul’s. Tertulliah judgeth it to be written by Barnabas; but the most received opinion is, that it was St. Paul’s, but written by him in Hebrew, and so sent to the Jews; but for the better publishing it to the Gentiles, translated into Greek, some say by St. Luke, and others by St. Clement, for the style of whose epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians is observed by St. Jerome to come very near the style of this epistle, and to contain a purer vein of Greek than is found in the rest of St. Paul’s epistles.
Our apostle having been now two years a prisoner at Rome, is at length set free, and soon after departs to visit other parts of the world, for the further divulging the gospel, but into what particular parts is variously conjectured; some think into Greece, and some parts of Asia, where he had not yet been; others will have it that he went preaching, as well into the Eastern as Western parts of the world; for in his epistle to the Corinthians it is said, that Paul being a preacher both Eastward and Westward, taught righteousness to the whole world, and went to the utmost bounds of the West. That he went into Spain, may be gathered both from his own words, as intimating so to do, and also from the testimony of other authors, as Theodoret, who writes, that he not only went into Spain to preach, but brought the gospel into the isles of the sea, and particularly into our island of Britain; and more particularly in another place, he reckons up the Gauls and the Britons amongst those people to whom the apostles, and especially the tent-maker, as he calls him, had divulged the Christian faith.
Farther mention of St. Paul we find none till his next and last coming to Rome, which is said to be about the 8th and 9th years of Nero’s reign; and he came in the fittest time to suffer martyrdom he could have chosen; for whereas at other times, his privilege of being a Roman citizen gained him those civilities which common morality could not deny him, he had to do with a person with whom the crime of being a Christian weighed down all apologies that could be alledged; a person whom lewdness and debauchery had made seven times more a Pagan than any custom or education could have done. What his accusation was, cannot be certainly determined, whether it was his being an associate with St. Peter in the fall of Simon Magus, or his conversion of Poppæa Sabina, one of the Emperor’s concubines, by which he was curbed in the career of his insatiate appetite. Neither can it be resolved how long he remained in prison, what the certain time of his suffering was, and whether (according to the custom) he was first scourged; only Barentons speaks of two pillars in the church of St. Mary, beyond the bridge in Rome, to which both he and St. Peter were bound, when they were scourged.
It is affirmed that St. Paul and St. Peter suffered upon the same day, though different kinds of death. Others will have it that they suffered on the same day of the year, but at a year’s distance; and others affirm that St. Paul suffered several years after St. Peter; but all agree that Paul, as a Roman, had the favour to be beheaded, and not crucified. His execution was at the Aquæ Salviæ, 3 miles from Rome; and he is said to have converted the three soldiers that guarded him thither, who also suffered for the faith. Some of the fathers add, that upon his death there flowed from his veins a liquor more like milk than blood, the sight whereof (saith St. Crysostom) converted the executioner.
He was buried about two miles from Rome, in the way called Via Ostiensis, where Lucina, a noble Roman matron, not long after settled a farm for the maintenance of the church. Here he lay but indifferently entombed for several ages, till the reign of Constantine the Great, who in the year of our Lord, 318, at the request of Sylvester, bishop of Rome, built a very sumptuous church, supported with a hundred stately pillars, and beautified with a most rare and exquisite workmanship, and after all richly gifted and endowed by the emperor himself. Yet was all this thought too mean an honour for so great an apostle by the emperor Valentinian, who sent an order to his Præfect Salustinus, to take that church down, and to erect in its room one more large and stately, which, at the instance of the Pope Leo, was richly adorned, and endowed by the Empress Placidia, and doubtless, hath received great additions ever since, from age to age.
Thus was brought up, became converted, and a preacher of the gospel, and thus was put to death and buried, this great apostle of the Gentiles, superior in learning and natural parts, and not inferior in zeal to any of the rest of the apostles.