Acts 25:11

Acts 25:11. I appeal unto Cæsar. This power of appealing to Rome was a valuable privilege of all Roman citizens, and a great safeguard against tyranny and oppression on the part of provincial magistrates. The ‘appeal to Cæsar' (provocatio) existed under the form of an appeal to the people in Rome in early times; the Decemvirs suspended the right, but it was restored again after their deposition.

The Julian law forbade any unnecessary impediment being put in the way of a Roman citizen who had thus appealed. Some years later we read in the letters of the Proconsul Pliny how he sent to Rome, when Trajan was emperor, those Bithynian Christians who had appealed as Roman citizens to Cæsar. These appeals were heard in Rome by men of consular dignity specially appointed for this purpose. Thus Suetonius (Augustus) tells us that the Emperor Augustus assigned every year causes which came from the provinces to men of consular rank, to one of whom the business of each province was referred.

We may well suppose, too, that Paul's determination to appeal to Cæsar was strengthened, if not suggested, by this special promise he had received (sec chap, Acts 23:11), that he should bear witness to the Lord Jesus in Rome before he died. It is likely that he felt that all these things the bitter and ever-increasing hostility of the Jews, the disinclination of the Roman procurators in succession to cross the Sanhedrim and leading men of Jerusalem in their intense wish to get Paul into their own hands were subservient to a plan determined in the counsels of the Most High, that he (Paul) should surely preach the gospel in Rome also. He would carry out, he thought, his Master's will, and at all risks, even though in chains, would bear his witness to the Crucified in the imperial city; so he cried, ‘I appeal unto Cæsar.'