Section 85
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ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 53 mons, and on the other, confessed that there was only one true God, the Creator of all things. This same God they now also honoured with the rites of a true piety, under the influence of that inspired and reasonable worship which had been planted among men by our Saviour. But the gratuitous benevolence of God, being now poured out also upon the rest of the nations, Cornelius was the first of Cesarea in Palestine, who, with his whole house, received the faith in Christ, through a divine vision and the agency of Peter ; as did also a great number of Greeks at Antioch, to whom the gospel had been preached by those who were scattered by the persecution of Sl^fmen. The church at Antioch, also, now flourishing and abounding in members, and the greatest number of teachers coming hither from Jerusalem, with whom were Barnabas and Paul, and many other brethren with them, the epithet of Christians first sprung up at that place, as from a grateful and productive soil. Agabus, also, one of the assembled prophets, uttered a prediction respect ing the impending famine, and Paul and Barnabas were delegated to proceed to the relief of the necessities of the brethren. CHAPTER IV. Caius (Caligula) after the death of Tiberius, appoints Agrippa I king of the Jews, after punishing Herod with perpetual exile. Ti£EKiusL..died, ajlter haying reigned about twenty-two years, and Caius, receiving the empire next, immediately conferred this Jewish government on Agrippa, appointing him king over the tetrarchy both of Philip and Lysanias. To these, not long after, he adds also the tetrarchy of Herod, after having inflicted the punishment of perpetual exile upon Herod, together with his wife Herodias, for their numerous crimes. This was the Herod who was concerned in the passion of our Saviour. Josephus bears testimony to these facts. During the reign of this emperor, Philo became noted, a man most distinguished for his learning, not only among very manv of our own, but of those that came