The harmony, chronicle and order of the New Testament the text of the four evangelists methodized, story of the acts of the apostles analyzed, order of the epistles manifested, times of the revelation observed : all illustrated, with variety of observations upon the chiefest difficulties textuall & talmudicall, for clearing of their sense and language : with an additional discourse concerning the fall of Jerusalem and the condition of the Jews in that land afterward / John Lightfoot ...

[CHRIST. LV] [NERO. I] ACTS CHAP. XIX. Ver. 21, 22.

After these things were ended, Paul purposed in spirit when he had passed thorow Macedonia and Achaia to go to Ierusalem, saying, When I have been there, I must also see Rome.

22. So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministred to him, Timotheus and Erastus, but he himself staid in Asia for a season.

PAuls thoughts of going to Rome, do argue the death of Claudius, who had banished all the Jews from thence, Acts 18.2. and that by the coming in of Nero, a new Emperour, that Decree was extinct, and freedom of access to Rome opened to them again: For it can be little conceived that Paul should think of going thither, when he could neither finde any of his nation there, nor he himself come thither without certain hazzard of his life: as the case would have been if Claudius and his Decree were yet alive. It is therefore a∣greeable to all reason, that the death of Claudius, and the succession of Nero was now divulged, and Paul thereupon knowing that it was now lawfull again for a Jew to go to Rome, intendeth to take a farewell journey and visit to Macedonia, Achaiah and Ierusa∣lem, and then to go and preach there.

Claudius died the 13^th day of October, as was said before, and Nero instantly succeeded him. A Prince of so much clemency and mansuetude in the beginning of his reign, that Titus the Emperour afterward used to say, that the best Princes exceeded not the first five years of Nero in goodnesse. And Seneca, if he flatter not the Prince, or his own tu∣torage of him, gives him this among many other Encomiums of him, Lib. de Clementia, which he dedicates to him: Potes hoc Caesar praedicare audacter, omnium quae in fidem tute∣lám{que} tuam venerunt, nihil per te, neque vi, neque clam, reipublicae ereptum. Rarissimam laudem, & nulli adhuc principum concessam concupisti, innocentiam: Nemo unus homo uni homini tam charus unquam fuit quam tu populo Romano, magnum longum{que} ejus bonum.

It must be some space of time before Claudius death could come to be reported at Ephe∣sus: it is like, the new year after the Romane account, might be stept in. Whensoever it was that Paul heard the news, and that a door of access to Rome was opened for the Jews again, he sets down his determination to stay at Ephesus till Pentecost, and then to set for Macedon, and back to Ierusalem, and then to Rome. Upon this resolution he sendeth Timothy and Erastus into Macedon before him: appointeth them to call at Corinth in the way, and intends himself to stay at Ephesus till they should come thither again to him, 1 Cor. 16.10, 11.

Between Ver. 22. and Ver. 23. of this XIX CHAP. of the ACTS, falleth in the time of Pauls writing