own souls. By placing this
at the head of our requests, we shall most strongly engage God to crown
all our just and holy desires. As one of his greatest mercies to his
church, we must earnestly beseech him to raise up in it zealous pastors,
eminently replenished with his Spirit, with which he animated his
apostles.

Footnotes:
1. Apud Eus. l. 2, c. 24, alias 25.
2. Ibid.
3. L. 3, c. 3.
4. L. 2, c. 13 & 15, &c.
5. Ib. l. 3, c. 1.
6. L. de. Excid. Hier. {}.
7. L. 3.
8. Ser. de Basilicis.
9. L. de Haeres. c. 1, &c.
10. L. 17, ad Marcell.
11. Adv. Parm.
12. L. 7, c. 1.
13. The general opinion with Eusebius, St. Jerom, and the Roman
calendar, fixes the first arrival of St. Peter at Rome in the second
year of Claudius. If this date be true, the apostle returned into
the East soon after; for he was imprisoned in Judaea, by Agrippa, in
the year of Christ 43. Lactantius does not mention this first coming
of St. Peter to Rome, but only the second, saying, that he came to
Rome in the reign of Nero, who put him and St. Paul to death. L. de
Mort. Persec. n. 2.
14. Ep. 55, ad. Cornel. pap.
15. L. 2, c. 17.
16. Notae in Martyr.
17. Tr. des Fetes, l. 2, c. 10.

SS. PAUL, AND THIRTY-SIX COMPANIONS, MM. IN EGYPT.

From their authentic acts in Ruinart, p. 624.

IN Egypt, thirty-seven Christian noblemen, all persons of high birth and
plentiful fortunes, but richer in the gifts of grace, entered into a
zealous confederacy to propagate the gospel throughout the country.
Their leader and head was one Paul, a true imitator of the great apostle
whose name he bore. They divided themselves into four several bands:
Paul and nine others went eastward: Recombus, with eight more, towards
the north: Thoonas, with the like number, to the south: and Papias, with
the remaining eight, to the west. They labored zealously in extending
the kingdom of Christ on every side, planting the faith, instructing the
docile, and purifying the souls of penitents who confessed their sins.
But the greatest part of the inhabitants of that great kingdom loved
darkness rather than light. The servants of God were treated with all
manner of injuries, apprehended, and laid in irons. The governor,
alarmed at the news of their enterprise, sent orders for their being
brought before him from different parts of the kingdom. He employed both
promises and threats to compel them to sacrifice. Paul answered, in the
name of them all,