Acts 28:19

Acts 28:19. But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Cæsar; not that I had ought to accuse my own nation of. He presses this point upon them, being most anxious to show them he was there not as an accuser of, or an enemy to, ‘the people' the people whom he loved better than life. It was to do them no harm that he had appealed to the Cæsar at Rome: it was his last resort to save himself from judicial murder or assassination. We must bear in mind that here, as in the other reports of Paul's sermons and speeches, we only possess the barest outline of the original. No doubt he sketched out to his listeners that day at Rome a full picture of all the dark plottings on the part of his countrymen which had preceded his ‘appeal unto Cæsar.'