The Second Epistle of Peter was written soon after the first, and was addressed to the same Churches. [158:3] The author now contemplated the near approach of death, so that the advices he here gives may be regarded as his dying instructions.  “I think it meet,” says he, “as long as I am in this tabernacle, [158:4] to stir you up by putting you in remembrance—­knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.” [159:1] If then Peter was martyred at Rome, we may infer that this letter must have been written somewhere in the same neighbourhood, and probably in the same city.  We have thus a corroborative proof that the Babylon of the first letter is no other than the great metropolis.

It deserves notice that in this second epistle, Peter bears emphatic testimony to the character and inspiration of Paul.  The Judaizing party, as there is reason to think, were in the habit of pleading that they were supported by the authority of the apostle 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