16. "The Cloke That I Left At Troas."
1894 59 Some years ago a notable opponent, who wrote a book in which he described the progress of his apostacy from Christianity, made mention of some conversation which he had had with one (well known to many who read this) whom he called the "Irish Clergyman." The opponent was saying that he considered that parts of the New Testament were certainly merely of local and temporary meaning, and wished to know what we should have lost, for instance, if we had not got the verse where Paul says, "The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, especially the parchments." He states that the "Irish Clergyman" instantly replied that he himself would have lost much, for it was only that verse which kept him from destroying his little library. To those who knew something of the Irish Clergyman's "little library" in later years — how many languages and subjects it embraced — the incident was not without interest.
The verse has always had a fascination for me, but (as I have never felt tempted to destroy books) it is the first part of it which has been of especial attraction. I speak soberly when I say that I have thought many thousands of times of that old cloke* at Troas, and always my mind returns to it with a renewed sympathy as it hangs there, an object infinitely pathetic. No doubt it was dingy and shabby enough, but the warp and the woof of it are interwoven with truth and love; and it is embroidered with a fringe of celestial light.
{* phailones certainly means "a cloak with a hood;" not a "case," as translated by Mr. Conybeare.}
For it brings before us in a vivid way the personality of the old infirm man, wasting in the foul Roman dungeon, and now nearing the time of his death by execution. He is a man of the most refined and sensitive nature, yet he has been hounded and battered from one end of the civilized world to the other. Habitually uncomplaining, he had some years ago, on one occasion, boasted with a sublime satire of his own sufferings, when he had seen amongst the Corinthians the sybarite and dilettante nature of the poor pleasure-loving creatures that were usurping authority amongst them, and disparaging his influence. Against these choppers of logic, who demanded the credentials of his apostleship, he gives only the kind of answer that Amynias gave to the lawyers at Athens. He draws aside for a moment his old cloke, and shows a body all scarred and mutilated with wounds received in the van of the battle, whilst the Sybarites were fretting over the crumpled rose-leaves which occasionally disturbed their repose. The signs of his being approved as a minister of God! Ah, yes, he will give them: — "labours … stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in cold and nakedness.* Besides … "But there! no doubt these Greek school-theologians, logomachists and dilettantists, found such arguments irritating and irrelevant, They would have preferred to dispute with the negative dialectic of Zeno or the interrogative system of Socrates, or anything — anything whatever, except the flesh and blood, the sufferings and sacrifices, of the old man who passionately swept their sophistries aside and appealed to their hearts.
{* There were at least two more imprisonments and one shipwreck (going to Rome) subsequent to his writing this; and finally martyrdom.}
But the old man was a scholar himself too; he had long ago been trained by the learned, accomplished, broad-minded Gamaliel, who was as much in advance of his contemporaries in enlightenment and toleration as Milton and Locke were of theirs. For a man trained thus books are almost a necessity of life — food he can do without, but books, ah! — "some little luxury there." Some of us can, perhaps, feel a keen sympathy with the old scholar's love of his books, and interest in the fact that he sends for them all the way from Rome to Troas, when he knew he had only a few weeks to live.
Then again the mind turns to the cloak, which he had left with them in the keeping of Carpus. All the winter he has to be without it, shut up in the Tullianum — a damp underground cellar, into which he has been lowered through a hole in the ceiling like a sack of coals.* Occasionally he is let out in custodia militaris chained to a Roman soldier, for he must do something to earn money to fee his jailors and pay for his board and lodging. They couldn't be expected to keep him for nothing! That was the system general in former times in prisons: it continued in this country until John Howard's time.
* [What scripture tells of his first imprisonment is much milder. — Ed.]
It was under such circumstances as these, when he is in such infirmity and poverty, that he has to send a thousand miles for his old cloak, that one of the most beautiful and touching events occurs.* A young slave named Onesimus had robbed his master, a Christian named Philemon of Colosse, and had run away to Rome where he had met the aged apostle. Paul, with the keen instinct of a veteran evangelist, had marked him for a servant for his own Master. As a result of their intercourse, the young man is converted and, becoming devotedly attached to his instructor, wishes to remain with him and work for him. But the apostle's sense of honour is too high to admit of this. The young slave, he says, must return to his original owner. To smooth the way, however, he will give him a letter to the master who is well known to himself, and is, in fact, one of his own converts. And as to the defalcations, why the letter would contain these words, "If he hath wronged thee, or oweth aught, put that on mine account. I, Paul, have written it with mine own hand. I will repay it." This is what he writes, and engages himself to do for a young man-servant, who was, till lately, quite a stranger to him; this, at a time when he is too poor to buy a new cloak to protect his aged and infirm body from the penetrating vapours that arise from the marshy ground of the malarial Campagna.
{*The precise date is a little uncertain.}
Above all, consider the uncomplaining tone of these last letters. (As to the verse concerning Alexander the coppersmith, it should apparently read as a prophecy, not as a curse — "The Lord will judge … ", not "The Lord judge!" It is in the future, not the optative). With the calm and serene strength of a Christian and a philosopher, he speaks of his approaching death without a trace of any resentment against the unjust judges who had condemned him. He would like to see his beloved books if possible for a time before he dies, and the cloak would be a protection from the bitter cold; for there is not a trace in him of that ascetic feeling of the Flagellants and hermits who voluntarily put themselves to suffering for suffering's sake. The old man's mind is too sound for any such ideas. For the rest, however, if suffering comes, he has learned "how divine a thing it is to suffer and be strong." "A Gallityeri, Signora, never complains," said the Italian to his tormentors. "Learn" said the noblest and most afflicted of the German princes to his son, "learn to suffer without complaining."