some hundred years after by Justinian the emperor, in order to its reparation, the body was found in a wooden coffin, and again reposed in its proper place.

6

6

IX. I shall conclude the history of this apostle with that encomiastic character which one of the ancients gives of him. "St. Andrew was the first-born of the apostolic choir, the main and prime pillar of the church, a rock before the rock, (ó πρò IIéтρov IIéτpos,) the foundation of that foundation,' the first-fruits of the beginning, a caller of others before he was called himself; he preached that gospel that was not yet believed or entertained; revealed and made known that life to his brother, which he had not yet perfectly learned himself. So great treasures did that one question bring him, Master, where dwellest thou?' which he soon perceived by the answer given him, and which he deeply pondered in his mind, Come and see.' How art thou become a prophet? whence thus divinely skilful? what is it that thou thus soundest in Peter's ears? [We have found him,' &c.] why dost thou attempt to compass him, whom thou canst not comprehend? how can he be found, who is omnipresent? But he knew well what he said: We have found him, whom Adam lost, whom Eve injured, whom the clouds of sin have hidden from us, and whom our transgressions had hitherto made a stranger to us," &c. So that of all our Lord's apostles, St. Andrew had thus far the honour to be the first preacher of the gospel.

S

Procop. de ædif. Justin. 1. i.

Hesych. Presb. Hierosolym. apud Phot. cod. CCLXIX. col. 1488.

THE LIFE OF SAINT JAMES THE GREAT.

St. James, why surnamed the Great. His country and kindred. His alliance to Christ. His trade and way of life. Our Lord brought up to a manual trade. The quick repartee of a Christian schoolmaster to Libanius. His being called to be a disciple, and great readiness to follow Christ. His election to the apostolic office, and peculiar favours from Christ. Why our Lord chose some few of the apostles to be witnesses of the more private passages of his life. The imposition of a new name at his election to the apostleship. He and his brother styled Boanerges, and why. The zeal and activity of their temper. Their ambition to sit on Christ's right and left hand in his kingdom, and confident promise of suffering. This ill resented by the rest. Our Lord's discourse concerning the nature of the evangelical state. Where he preached after Christ's ascension. The story of his going into Spain exploded. in favour with the Roman emperors. The character of his temper. law of Moses. His condemning St. James to death. The sudden conversion of his accuser, as he was led to martyrdom. Their being beheaded. The divine justice that pursued Herod. His grandeur and arrogance at Cæsarea. His miserable death. The story of the translation of St. James's corpse to Compostella in Spain, and the miracles said to be done there.

Herod Agrippa

His zeal for the

ST. JAMES, surnamed the Great, either because of his age, being much older than the other, or for some peculiar honours and favours which our Lord conferred upon him, was by country a Galilean; born, probably, either at Capernaum or Bethsaida, being one of Simon Peter's partners in the trade of fishing. He was the son of Zebdai, or Zebedee,a (and probably the same whom the Jews mention in their Talmud, 77, "rabbi James, or Jacob, the son of Zebedee,") a fisherman, and the many servants which he kept for that employment (a circumstance not taken notice of in any other) speak him a man of some more considerable note in that trade and way of life; ἐπίσημος τῶν ἐν ΓαλιXaía μeтoikoÚvтwv ȧvdpŵv, as Nicephorus notes. His mother's name was Mary, surnamed Salome, called first Taviphilia, says an ancient Arabic writer, the daughter, as is most probable, not

с

a Mark i. 20.

с

Apud Kirsten. de vit. quat. Evangel. p. 47.

b

b Hist. Eccl. 1. ii. c. 3.

wife, of Cleopas, sister to Mary the mother of our Lord; not her own sister properly so called, (the blessed Virgin being in all likelihood an only daughter,) but cousin-german, styled her sister, according to the mode and custom of the Jews, who were wont to call all such near relations by the names of brothers and sisters; and in this respect he had the honour of a near relation to our Lord himself. His education was in the trade of fishing: no employment is base, that is honest and industrious, nor can it be thought mean and dishonourable to him, when it is remembered that our Lord himself, the Son of God, stooped so low, as not only to become the [reputed] son of a carpenter, but, during the retirements of his private life, to work himself at his father's trade; not devoting himself merely to contemplations, nor withdrawing from all useful society with the world, and hiding himself in the solitudes of an anchoret, but busying himself in an active course of life, working at the trade of a carpenter, and particularly (as one of the ancients tells us') making ploughs and yokes. And this the sacred history does not only plainly intimate, but it is generally asserted by the ancient writers of the church; a thing so notorious, that the heathens used to object it as a reproach to Christianity: thence that smart and acute repartee which a Christian schoolmaster made to Libanius, the famous orator, at Antioch," when upon Julian's expedition into Persia, (where he was killed,) he asked in scorn, what the carpenter's son was now a doing? the Christian replied, with salt enough, that the great artificer of the world, whom he scoffingly called the carpenter's son, was making a coffin for his master Julian; the news of whose death was brought soon after. But this only by the way.

II. St. James applied himself to his father's trade, not discouraged with the meanness, not sinking under the difficulties of it; and, as usually the blessings of heaven meet men in the way of an honest and industrious diligence, it was in the exercise of this calling, when our Saviour, passing by the sea of Galilee, saw him and his brother in the ship, and called them to be his disciples. A divine power went along with the word,

d John xix. 25.

f Just. Mart. dial. cum Tryph. s. 88.

e Mark vi. 3. Matt. xiii. 55.

8 Bas. Constit. Monast. c. 4. Vid. Hilar. in Matt. Can. 4.

h Theodor. Hist. Eccl. I. iii. c. 18.

which they no sooner heard, but cheerfully complied with it, immediately leaving all to follow him. They did not stay to dispute his commands, to argue the probability of his promise, solicitously to inquire into the minute consequences of the undertaking, what troubles and hazards might attend this new employment, but readily delivered up themselves to whatever services he should appoint them. And the cheerfulness of their obedience is yet farther considerable, that they left their aged father in the ship behind them. For elsewhere we find others excusing themselves from an immediate attendance upon Christ,i upon pretence that they must go bury their father, or take their leave of their kindred at home. No such slight and trivial pretences could stop the resolution of our apostles, who broke through these considerations, and quitted their present interests and relations. Say not it was unnaturally done of them to desert their father, an aged person, and in some measure unable to help himself. For, besides that they left servants with him to attend him, it is not cruelty to our earthly, but obedience to our heavenly Father, to leave the one, that we may comply with the call and summons of the other. It was the triumph of Abraham's faith, when God called him to leave his kindred and his father's house, to go out and sojourn in a foreign country, not knowing whither he went. Nor can we doubt but that Zebedee himself would have gone along with them, had not his age given him a supersedeas from such an active and ambulatory course of life. But though they left him at this time, it is very reasonable to suppose, that they took care to instruct him in the doctrine of the Messiah, and to acquaint him with the glad tidings of salvation; especially since we find their mother Salome so hearty a friend to, so constant a follower of our Saviour: but this (if we may believe the account which one gives of it) was after her husband's decease, who probably lived not long after, dying before the time of our Saviour's passion.

III. It was not long after this, that he was called from the station of an ordinary disciple to the apostolical office; and not only so, but honoured with some peculiar acts of favour beyond most of the apostles, being one of the three whom our Lord usually made choice of to admit to the more intimate transactions of his life, from which the others were excluded. i Luke ix. 59-61.

k Zachar. Chrysopol. Comm. in Concord. Evang. p. 111.

Thus, with Peter and his brother John, he was taken to the miraculous raising of Jairus's daughter; admitted to Christ's glorious transfiguration upon the mount, and the discourses that there passed between him and the two great ministers of heaven; taken along with him into the garden, to be a spectator of those bitter agonies which the holy Jesus was to undergo, as the preparatory sufferings to his passion. What were the reasons of our Lord's admitting these three apostles to these more special acts of favour than the rest, is not easy to determine though surely our Lord, who governed all his actions by principles of the highest prudence and reason, did it for wise and proper ends; whether it was that he designed these three to be more solemn and peculiar witnesses of some particular passages of his life than the other apostles, or that they would be more eminently useful and serviceable in some parts of the apostolic office, or that hereby he would the better prepare and encourage them against suffering, as intending them for some more eminent kinds of martyrdom or suffering than the rest were to undergo.

IV. Nor was it the least instance of that particular honour which our Lord conferred upon these three apostles, that at his calling them to the apostolate, he gave them the addition of a new name and title. A thing not unusual of old, for God to impose a new name upon persons, when designing them for some great and peculiar services and employments; thus he did to Abraham and Jacob: nay, the thing was customary among the Gentiles, as, had we no other instances, might appear from those which the scripture gives us, of Pharaoh's giving a new name to Joseph when advancing him to be viceroy of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar to Daniel, &c. Thus did our Lord in the election of these three apostles: Simon he surnamed Peter; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, he surnamed Boanerges; which is, the sons of thunder.' What our Lord particularly intended in this title, is easier to conjecture than certainly to determine; some think it was given them upon the account of their being present in the mount, when a voice came out of the cloud, and said, "This is my beloved Son," m &c. The like whereto when the people heard at another time, they cried out, that it thun

1 Mark iii. 16, 17. Hieron. Comm. in Marc. c. 3. Gaudent. Brix. Tract. i. de Lect. Evang. seu, in ordine, viii.

m Matt. xvii. 5.