Our apostle having been now two years a prisoner at Rome, is at length set free, and soon after departs to visit other parts of the world, for the further divulging the gospel, but into what particular parts is variously conjectured; some think into Greece, and some parts of Asia, where he had not yet been; others will have it that he went preaching, as well into the Eastern as Western parts of the world; for in his epistle to the Corinthians it is said, that Paul being a preacher both Eastward and Westward, taught righteousness to the whole world, and went to the utmost bounds of the West. That he went into Spain, may be gathered both from his own words, as intimating so to do, and also from the testimony of other authors, as Theodoret, who writes, that he not only went into Spain to preach, but brought the gospel into the isles of the sea, and particularly into our island of Britain; and more particularly in another place, he reckons up the Gauls and the Britons amongst those people to whom the apostles, and especially the tent-maker, as he calls him, had divulged the Christian faith. Farther mention of St. Paul we find none till his next and last coming to Rome, which is said to be about the 8th and 9th years of Nero’s reign; and he came in the fittest time to suffer martyrdom he could have chosen; for whereas at other times, his privilege of being a Roman citizen gained him those civilities which common morality could not deny him, he had to do with a person with whom the crime of being a Christian weighed down all apologies that could be alledged; a person whom lewdness and debauchery had made seven times more a Pagan than any custom or education could have done. What his accusation was, cannot be certainly determined, whether it was his being an associate with St. Peter in the fall of Simon Magus, or his conversion of Poppæa Sabina, one of the Emperor’s concubines, by which he was curbed in the career of his insatiate appetite. Neither can it be resolved how long he remained in prison, what the certain time of his suffering was, and whether (according to the custom) he was first scourged; only Barentons speaks of two pillars in the church of St. Mary, beyond the bridge in Rome, to which both he and St. Peter were bound, when they were scourged. It is affirmed that St. Paul and St. Peter suffered upon the same day, though different kinds of death. Others will have it that they suffered on the same day of the year, but at a year’s distance; and others affirm that St. Paul suffered several years after St. Peter; but all agree that Paul, as a Roman, had the favour to be beheaded, and not crucified. His execution was at the Aquæ Salviæ, 3 miles from Rome; and he is said to have converted the three soldiers that guarded him thither, who also suffered for the faith. Some of the fathers add, that upon his death there flowed from his veins a liquor more like milk than blood, the sight whereof (saith St. Crysostom) converted the executioner.