After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
Read Chapter 19
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
I must also see Rome. It is what St. Paul earnestly desired, and what the Spirit now revealed to him. See Romans i. (Witham)
He no longer speaks here after the manner of a man, or, He purposed to pass through those regions, without tarrying longer. Wherefore does he send away Timothy and Erastus? Of this I suppose he says, Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone. He sent away, it says, two of those who ministered to him 1 Thessalonians 3:1, both to announce his coming, and to make them more eager. But he himself tarried awhile in Asia.
He sends Timothy and Erastus into Macedonia, but himself remains at Ephesus. Having made a long enough stay in that city, he wishes to remove elsewhere again. But how is it, that having from the first chosen to depart into Syria, he turns back to Macedonia? "He purposed," it says, "in the Spirit," showing that all (that he did) was done not of his own power. Now he prophesies, saying, "I must also see Rome:" perhaps to comfort them with the consideration of his not remaining at a distance, but coming nearer to them again, and to arouse the minds of the disciples by the prophecy. At this point, I suppose, it was that he wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians from Ephesus, saying, "I would not have you ignorant of the trouble which came to us in Asia." (2 Corinthians 1:8.) For since he had promised to go to Corinth, he excuses himself on the score of having loitered, and mentions the trial relating the affair of Demetrius. "There arose no small stir about the Way." Do you see the renown ...
