Acts 9:31

31. Rest From both the persecution by Saul, and the persecution of Saul. But concurrently with this, it is supposed that the trouble of the Jews arising from the project of the Emperor Caligula of placing his statue for worship engrossed all their thought and arrested the persecution of Christians. The trouble of her foes was the peace of the Church.

HISTORICAL NOTE II. To the extravagant and freakish fool CALIGULA, (see Hist. Note I, Acts 1:1,) the successor was the solemn and stupid fool CLAUDIUS. He was himself a well-meaning man, but rendered a tyrant by being the tool of wicked advisers. His wife Messalina was guilty of the grossest debaucheries, but after deceiving him for awhile she was, upon detection, put to death. He then married Agrippina, his niece, the mother of Domitius AEnobarbus. Agrippina secured a marriage between her son and Octavia, the emperor’s daughter, and thereby secured to her son the succession to the imperial throne. She then poisoned Claudius, after a reign of fourteen years, and installed her son in his place with a new name which he has made forever infamous in history, NERO. The reign of Claudius covers the period extending from this repose to the commencement of the labours of Paul at Ephesus, in his second mission. It is contemporaneous with the apostolic life of Paul, from his retirement to Tarsus to the zenith of his active ministry; from January, A.D. 41, to October, 54. (See Hist. Note, Acts 19:10.)