of the circumcision; and
as many of these zealots were to be found in the Churches of Asia Minor,
[159:2] such a recognition of the claims of the Apostle of the Gentiles
was calculated to exert a most salutary influence. "The strangers
scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,"
[159:3] were thus given to understand that all the true heralds of the
gospel had but "one faith;" and that any attempt to create divisions in
the Church, by representing the doctrine of one inspired teacher as
opposed to the doctrine of another, was most unwarrantable. The
reference to Paul, to be found in the Second Epistle of Peter, is
favourable to the supposition that the Apostle of the Gentiles was now
dead; as, had he been still living to correct such misinterpretations,
it would scarcely have been said that in all his epistles were things
"hard to be understood" which "the unlearned and unstable" wrested
"unto their own destruction." [159:4] It would seem, too, that Peter
here alludes particularly to the Epistle to the Hebrews--a letter, as we
have seen, addressed to Jewish Christians, and written after Paul's
liberation from his first Roman imprisonment. It must be admitted that
this letter contains passages [159:5] which have often proved perplexing
to interpreters; but, notwithstanding, it bears the impress of a divine
original; and Peter, who maintains that all the writings of Paul were
dictated by unerring wisdom, places them upon a level with "the _other
Scriptures_" [160:1] either of the evangelists or of the Old Testament.

According to a current tradition, Peter suffered death at Rome by
crucifixion. [160:2] He was not a Roman citizen; and was, therefore,
like our Lord himself, consigned to a mode of punishment inflicted on
slaves and the lowest class of malefactors. The story that, at his own
request, he was crucified with his head downwards as more painful and
ignominious than the doom of his Master, [160:3] is apparently the
invention of an age when the pure light of evangelical religion was
greatly obscured; for the apostle was too well acquainted with the truth
to believe that he was at liberty to inflict upon himself any
unnecessary suffering. The tradition that he died on the same day of the
same month as Paul, but exactly a year afterwards, [160:4] is not
destitute of probability. According to this statement he suffered A.D.
67; and he may have been about a year in Rome before his martyrdom.