Death of James (Brother of John), Peter imprisoned and delivered. He leaves Palestine; Acts 12:1 – 19. Part 3

Church History: When he had arrested and, it is likely, examined him, he put him in prison, into the inner prison; some say, into the same prison into which he and the other apostles were cast some years before, and were rescued out of it by an angel. He was in the custody of four quaternions of soldiers, that is, to sixteen, who were to guard him, four at a time, that he should not make his escape, nor be rescued by his friends. Thus they thought they had him under control.
Herod's intention was, after Easter, to bring him to the people. He would make a spectacle of him. Probably he had put James to death privately, which the people had complained about, not because it was an unjust thing to put a man to death without giving him a public hearing, but because it deprived them of the satisfaction of seeing him executed; and therefore Herod, knowing their minds, planned to gratify them with the sight of Peter in bonds, of Peter upon the block, that they may feed their eyes with such a pleasing spectacle. He was very ambitious to please the people. He would do this after Easter, after the Passover. Herod would not condemn him till the Passover was over. He would entertain them with Peter's public trial and execution. The plot was laid, and both Herod and the people long to have the feast over, that they may gratify themselves with this barbarous entertainment.7 Peter therefore was kept in prison, till a fit time to offer him up as a sacrifice unto the people: so basely do wicked men stoop for their ends. The Christians prayed for Peter, without ceasing; continued, long prayers, without intermission; but also fervent and earnest prayers, with all the might of their souls; remembering the apostle now in bonds, as bound with him, (Hebrews 13:3).3
Time passed by in painful suspense until the Passover was gone by. He was securely kept, according to the most ingenious method of the Roman army. Besides the prison-doors, and the guards outside, his arms were pinioned by two chains, each to the arm of a soldier on the right and left, so that he could not move without disturbing one or both. If Herod was intent, in carrying out these precautions, by a desire to prevent a rescue, he ought to have known that Peter's brethren never fought with carnal weapons, even to save the life of a brother. Or if he feared a miraculous escape of his prisoner, and intended that the guards should kill him upon the first movement of that kind, he ought to have remembered that all the twelve had once walked out of a prison in that city without hindrance either from the iron doors or the armed soldiers (Acts 5:19). But wicked men are prone to forget the warnings of the past, and continue to repeat, in endless succession, the blunders of their
predecessors.