Caesarea, to the governor, under the protection of soldiers.
Not a sound was heard in his favor among the Jewish Christians. Not an
angel appeared. Not a solitary miracle was wrought; none dreamed a
dream; nobody had a vision; the Holy Ghost was as silent as the grave;
none of all the Christians in Palestine showed his face, when Paul,
loaded with chains, was transported from Jerusalem to Caesarea. This
silence speaks volumes. They did not care much about the innovator.
Therefore Paul's epistles from his prison in Caesarea are thunder-bolts
against the law, circumcision, and his colleagues in Jerusalem. It is
the offended man, the wounded lion, who retaliates in his anger.

In Caesarea another mock trial is described by the author of the Acts.
There can be little doubt that Ananias, the Sadducean high-priest who
had slain James, thirsted also after the blood of Paul. But it is
certainly not true that Felix was governor of Judea when Ananias was
high-priest. Felix and Festus had been removed from their offices before
Ananias was made high-priest, as the authentic sources of history show.
If tried at Caesarea at all--which is doubtful, because Paul had appealed
to Caesar--he was tried before Albinus. His speeches recorded in the Acts
contain sentences of Paul, but many more additions from the author of
the Acts.

It matters little, however, whether Paul was tried before Albinus or
Felix, or whether there was a trial at all. He had appealed to Caesar, in
order to estrange himself from his colleagues in Jerusalem and to come
before his converts as an expatriated man, although Agrippa himself had
said, "This man might have been set at liberty had he not appealed unto
Caesar."

Fortunately he was detained in Caesarea, when Nero in Rome put to death
the Christians in his own gardens with exquisite cruelty, and added
mockery and derision to their sufferings. Had he been brought to Rome
_then_, no angels could have saved his life, and no power could have
protected him for two years. He came to Rome in the year 65, when the
cruelty of Nero's proceedings against the Christians filled every breast
with compassion, and humanity relented in favor of the Christians. Then
it was possible for Paul to have a hearing in Rome, where he lived in a
hired house for two years.

Neither Paul nor Peter was ever bishop of Rome, nor was either of them
beheaded in Rome or anywhere else. All the legends and myths concerning
them are void of tru