[360] 5. LAST TRIAL AND DEATH OF PAUL. His later career is concealed from us, for the hints contained in the Pastoral Epistles hardly furnish even an outline of his travels, which must have lasted three or four years, 62 - 65 A.D. At his second trial the veil that hides his fate is raised for the moment. On that occasion the circumstances were very different from his first trial. His confinement was more rigorous, for Onesiphorus had to take much trouble before obtaining an interview with the prisoner (II Tim. I 17): "he fared ill as far as bonds, like a criminal"(II 9). He had no hope of acquittal: he recognised that he was "already being poured forth as an offering, and the time of his departure was come". The gloom and hopelessness of the situation damped and dismayed all his friends: at his first hearing "all forsook"him; yet for the time he "was delivered out of the mouth of the lion". In every respect the situation thus indicated is the opposite of the circumstances described on the first trial. Phil. occupies [361] the same place in the first as II Tim. in the second trial; but Phil. looks forward to a fresh career among the Churches, while II Tim. is the testament of a dying man. In one respect, however, the second trial was like the first. Paul again defended himself in the same bold and outspoken way as before, expounding the principles of his life to a great audience, "that all the Gentiles might hear".

Yet the circumstances of this second trial are totally different from that "short way with the dissenters"which was customary under Domitian and Trajan and later Emperors. After his first examination Paul could still write to Asia bidding Timothy and Mark come to him, which shows that he looked forward to a considerable interval before the next stage of his trial. He was charged as a malefactor, crimes had to be proved against him, and evidence brought; and the simple acknowledgment that he was a Christian was still far from sufficient to condemn him, as it was under Domitian. It is a plausible conjecture of Conybeare and Howson that the first hearing, on which he was acquitted and "delivered out of the lion's mouth,"was on the charge of complicity and sympathy with the incendiaries, who had burned Rome in 64; and that charge was triumphantly disproved. The trial in that case did not occur until the first frenzy of terror and rage against the supposed incendiaries was over; and some other species of crime had to be laid to the account of the Christians charged before the courts. The second and fatal charge, heard later, was doubtless that of treason, shown by hostility to the established customs of society, and by weakening the Imperial authority.

If our conception of the trial is correct, the precedent of [362] the first great trial still guided the courts of the empire (as we have elsewhere sought to prove). It had then been decided that the preaching of the new religion was not in itself a crime; and that legal offences must be proved against Christians as against any other subjects of the empire. That was the charter of freedom (p. 282) which was abrogated shortly after; and part of Luke's design was, as we have seen (p. 307), to record the circumstances in which the charter had been obtained, as a protest against the Flavian policy, which had overturned a well-weighed decision of the supreme court.