[249] Any reader who wishes to see how this question was discussed about the year 200 A. D. should turn to Tertullian's treatise _De Fuga in Persecutione_, c. 6., in his works translated in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library, vol. i., p. 364, where Tertullian admits that the apostles fled in time of persecution, but argues that the permission to do so was merely temporary and personal to the apostles. The study of Church history is specially useful in showing us how exactly the same tendencies emerge in ancient and modern schisms and sects. Tertullian would have been a Quietist had he lived in the seventeenth century; see note 2, p. 446.
[250] St. Ignatius of Antioch was very desirous of martyrdom. St. Polycarp fifty years avoided it till he was arrested. St. Clement of Alexandria, in his _Stromata_, iv. 16, 17, condemns the suicidal passion for martyrdom. St. Cyprian, enthusiastic as he was, retired like Polycarp till escape was impossible. These holy men all acted like St. Paul. They waited till God had intimated His will by shutting up all way of escape. The story of Polycarp has an interesting warning against presumptuous rushing upon trials. Quintus, one of St. Polycarp's flock, gave himself up to death. His courage failed him at the last, and he became an apostate: see on this subject Lightfoot's _Ignatius and Polycarp_, vol. i., pp. 38, 393, 603.
[251] Quietism, Jansenism, and Quakerism were all manifestations of the same spirit, and arose about the same time. Molinos was the founder of Quietism in Spain. A concise account of the movement will be found in Schaffs _Theological Encyclopædia_ in connexion with the names of Molinos and Guyon.
III. We notice lastly in the narrative of St. Paul's imprisonment his interviews with and his testimony before the members of the house of Herod. St. Peter had experience of the father of Herod Agrippa, and now St. Paul comes into contact with the children, Agrippa, Drusilla and Bernice. And thus it came about. Felix the procurator, as we have already explained, was a very bad man, and had enticed Drusilla from her husband. He doubtless told her of the Jewish prisoner who lay a captive in the city where she was living. The Herods were a clever race, and they knew all about Jewish hopes and Messianic expectations, and they ever seem to have been haunted by a certain curiosity concerning the new sect of the Nazarenes. One Herod desired for a long time to see Jesus Christ, and was delighted when Pilate gratified his longing. Drusilla, doubtless, was equally curious, and easily persuaded her husband to gratify her desire. We therefore read in ch. xxiv. 24, "But after certain days, Felix came with Drusilla, his wife, which was a Jewess, and sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ Jesus."
Neither of them calculated on the kind of man they had to do with. St. Paul knew all the circumstances of the case. He adapted his speech thereto. He made a powerful appeal to the conscience of the guilty pair. He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, and beneath his weighty words Felix trembled. His convictions were roused. He experienced a transient season of penitence, such as touched another guilty member of the Herodian house who feared John and did many things gladly to win his approval. But habits of sin had grasped Felix too firmly. He temporised with his conscience. He put off the day of salvation when it was dawning on him, and his words, "Go thy way for this time, and when I have a convenient season I will call thee unto me," became the typical language of all those souls for whom procrastination, want of decision, trifling with spiritual feelings, have been the omens and the causes of eternal ruin.
But Felix and Drusilla were not the only members of the Herodian house with whom Paul came in contact. Felix and Drusilla left Palestine when two years of St. Paul's imprisonment had elapsed. Festus, another procurator, followed, and began his course, as all the Roman rulers of Palestine began theirs. The Jews, when Felix visited Jerusalem, besought him to deliver the prisoner lying bound at Cæsarea to the judgment of their Sanhedrin. Festus, all powerful as a Roman governor usually was, dared not treat a Roman citizen thus without his own consent, and when that consent was asked Paul at once refused, knowing right well the intentions of the Jews, and appealed unto Cæsar. A Roman governor, however, would not send a prisoner to the judgment of the Emperor without stating the crime imputed to him. Just at that moment Herod Agrippa, king of Chalcis and of the district of Ituræa, together with his sister Bernice, appeared on the scene. He was a Jew, and was well acquainted therefore with the accusations brought against the Apostle, and could inform the procurator what report he should send to the Emperor. Festus therefore brought Paul before them, and gave him another opportunity of expounding the faith of Jesus Christ and the law of love and purity which that faith involved to a family who ever treated that law with profound contempt. St. Paul availed himself of that opportunity. He addressed his whole discourse to the king, and that discourse was typical of those he addressed to Jewish audiences. It was like the sermon delivered to the Jews in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia in one important aspect. Both discourses gathered round the resurrection of Jesus Christ as their central idea. St. Paul began his address before Agrippa with that doctrine, and he ended with the same. The hope of Israel, towards which their continuous worship tended, was the resurrection of the dead. That was St. Paul's opening idea. The same note lay beneath the narrative of his own conversion, and then he returned back to his original statement that the Risen Christ was the hope of Israel and of the world taught by Moses and proclaimed by prophets. But it was all in vain as regards Agrippa and Bernice. The Herods were magnificent, clever, beautiful. But they were of the earth, earthy. Agrippa said indeed to Paul, "With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian." But it was not souls like his for whom the gospel message was intended. The Herods knew nothing of the burden of sin or the keen longing of souls desirous of holiness and of God. They were satisfied with the present transient scene, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Agrippa's father when he lay a-dying at Cæsarea consoled himself with the reflection that though his career was prematurely cut short, yet at any rate he had lived a splendid life. And such as the parent had been, such were the children. King Agrippa and his sister Bernice were true types of the stony-ground hearers, with whom "the care of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word." And they choked the word so effectually in his case, even when taught by St. Paul, that the only result upon Agrippa, as St. Luke reports it, was this: "Agrippa said unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Cæsar."