us,) was Parthia; after which Sophronius and others inform us, that he preached the gospel to the Medes, Persians, Carmans, Hyrcani, Bactrians, and the neighbor nations. In Persia, one of the ancients (upon what ground I know not) acquaints us, that he met with the magi, or wise men, who came that long journey, from the east, to bring presents to our new-born Saviour, whom he baptized and took along with him as his companions and assistants in the propagation of the gospel. Hence he preached in and passed through Ethiopia; that is, (that we may a little clear this by the way,) the Asian Ethiopia, conterminous to, if not the same with Chaldæa; whence Tacitus does not only make the Jews descendants from the Ethiopians, as whose ancestors came from Ur of the Chaldeans; but Hesychius makes the inhabitants of Zagrus, a mountain beyond Tigris, " a people of the Ethiopians;" this is mentioned by Benjamin the Jew, in his Itinerary, the land of Cush, or Æthiopia; the inhabitants whereof are styled by Herodotus, "the oriental Ethiopians," by way of distinction from those who lived south of Egypt, and were under the same military prefecture with the Arabians, under the command of Arsames, as the other were joined with the Indians; and in the same place are called οι εκ της Ασίας Αιθιοπες, the Asian Ethiopians. Having travelled through these countries, he at last came into India. We are told by Nicephorus, that he was at first unwilling to venture himself into those countries, fearing he should find their manners as rude and intractable as their faces were black and deformed, till encouraged by a vision, that assured him of the divine presence to assist him; he travelled a great way into those eastern nations, as far as the island Taprobane, since called Sumatra, and the country of the Brachmans, preaching every where with all the arts of gentleness and mild persuasives; not flying out into tart invectives, and furious heats against their idolatrous practices, but calmly instructing them in the principles of Christianity; by degrees persuading them to renounce their follies, knowing that confirmed habits must be cured by patience and long forbearing, by slow and gentle methods: and by these means he wrought upon the people, and brought them over from the grossest errors and superstition to the hearty belief and entertainment of religion. 4. In want of better evidence from antiquity, it may not be amiss to inquire, what account the Portugals, in their first discoveries of these countries, received of these matters, partly from ancient monuments and writings, partly from constant and uncontrolled traditions, which the Christians, whom they found in those parts, preserved amongst them. They tell us, that St. Thomas came first to Socotora, an island in the Arabian sea; thence to Cranganor, where having converted many, he travelled further into the east; and having successfully preached the gospel, returned back into the kingdom of Cormandel; where, at Malipur, the metropolis of the kingdom, not far from the influx of the Ganges into the gulf of Bengala, he began to erect a place for divine worship, till prohibited by the priests and Sagamo, prince of that country. But, upon the conviction of several miracles, the work went on, and the Sagamo himself embraced the Christian faith, whose example was soon followed by great numbers of his friends and subjects. The Brachmans, who plainly perceived that this would certainly spoil their trade, and in time extirpate the religion of their country, thought it high time to put a stop to this growing novelism; and resolved in council, that some way or other the apostle must be put to death. There was a tomb not far from the city, whither the apostle was wont to retire to his solitudes and private devotions; hither the Brachmans and their armed followers pursue the apostle; and while he was intent at prayer, they first load him with darts and stones, till one of them coming nearer, ran him through with a lance. His body was taken up by his disciples, and buried in the church which he had lately built, and which was afterwards improved into a fabric of great stateliness and magnificence. Gregory of Tours relates many miracles done upon the annual solemnities of his martyrdom; and one standing miracle, an account whereof, he tells us, he received from one Theodorus, who had himself been in that place, viz. that in the temple where the apostle was buried, there hung a lamp before his tomb, which burnt perpetually, without oil or fuel to feed and nourish it; the light whereof was never diminished, nor by wind or any other accident could be extinguished. But whether travellers might not herein be imposed upon by the crafty artifices of the priests, or those who did attend the church; or if true, whether it might not be performed by art, I leave to others to inquire. Some will have his body to have been afterwards translated to Edessa, a city in Mesopotamia; but the Christians in the east constantly affirm it to have remained in the place of his martyrdom, where (if we may believe relations) it was after dug up, with great cost and care, at the command of Don Emanuel Frea, governor of the coast of Cormandel; and together with it was found the bones of the Sagamo, whom he had converted to the faith. 5. While Don Alfonso Sousa, one of the viceroys in India under John the Third, king of Portugal, resided in these parts, certain brass tables were brought to him, whose ancient inscriptions could scarce be read, till at last, by the help of a Jew, an excellent antiquary, they were found to contain nothing but a donation made to St. Thomas, whereby the king, who then reigned, granted to him a piece of ground for the building of a church. They tell us also of a famous cross, found in St. Thomas's chapel at Malipur, wherein was an unintelligible inscription, which, by a learned Bramin, (whom they compelled to read and expound it,) gave an account to this effect; that Thomas, a divine person, was sent into those countries by the Son of God in the time of king Sagamo, to instruct them in the knowledge of the true God; that he built a church, and performed admirable miracles; but at last, while upon his knees at prayer, was by a Brachman thrust through with a spear; and that that cross, stained with his blood, had been left as a memorial of these matters: an interpretation that was afterwards confirmed by anothor grave and learned Bramin, who expounded the inscription to the very same effect. The judicious reader will measure his be lief of these things by the credit of the reporters, and the rational probability of the things them selves, which, for my part, as I cannot certainly! affirm to be true, so I will not utterly conclude them to be false. ST. JAMES THE LESS. BEFORE we can enter upon the life of this apostle, 6. From these first plantations of Christianity some difficulty must be cleared relating to his in the Eastern Indies by our apostle, there is said person. Doubted it has been by some, whether to have been a continued series and succession of this was the same with that St. James that was Christians (hence called St. Thomas-Christians) bishop of Jerusalem, three of this name being prein those parts unto this day. The Portugals, at sented to us; St. James the Great, this St. James their first arrival here, found them in great num- the Less, (both apostles,) and a third, surnamed bers in several places, no less, as some tells us, the Just, distinct (say they) from the former, and than fifteen or sixten thousand families. They bishop of Jerusalem. But this (however pretendare very poor, and their churches generally mean ing to some little countenance from antiquity) is and sordid, wherein they had no images of saints, a very great mistake, and built upon a sandy botnor any representations but that of the cross: tom: for besides that the Scripture mentions no they are governed in spirituals by a high-priest, more than two of this name, and both apostles, (whom some make an Armenian patriarch, of the nothing can be plainer, than that that St James sect of Nestorius, but in truth is no other than the apostle, whom St. Paul calls our Lord's the patriarch of Muzal; the remainder, as is pro- brother, and reckons with Peter and John, one of bable, of the ancient Seleucia, and by some, the pillars of the church, was the same that prethough erroneously, styled Babylon,) residing sided among the apostles, (no doubt by virtue of northward in the mountains; who, together with his place,) it being his episcopal chair, and detertwelve cardinals, two patriarchs, and several mined in the Synod at Jerusalem. Nor does bishops, disposes all affairs referring to religion; either Clemens Alexandrinus, or Eusebius out of and to him all the Christians of the east yield him, mention any more than two: St. James, put subjection. They promiscuously admit all to the to death by Herod, and St. James the Just, bishop holy communion, which they receive under both of Jerusalem, whom they expressly affirm to be kinds, of bread and wine; though instead of wine, the same with him whom St. Paul calls the brother which their country affords not, making use of the of our Lord. Once, indeed, Eusebius makes our juice of raisins, steeped one night in water, and St. James one of the seventy, though elsewhere then pressed forth. Children, unless in case of quoting a place of Clemens of Alexandria, he sickness, are not baptized till the fortieth day. At numbers him with the chief of the apostles, and the death of friends, their kindred and relations expressly distinguished him from the seventy diskeep an eight-days' feast in memory of the de- ciples. Nay, St. Jerome, though when representparted. Every Lord's day they have their public ing the opinion of others, he styles him the assemblies for prayer and preaching, their devo- thirteenth apostle, yet elsewhere, when speaking tions being managed with great reverence and his own sense, sufficiently proves that there were solemnity. Their Bible, at least the New Testa- but two, James the son of Zebedee, and the other ment, is in the Syriac language, to the study the son of Alphæus; the one sirnamed the greatwhereof the preachers earnestly exhort the peo- er, the other the less. Besides that the main supple. They observe the times of Advent and Lent, port of the other opinion is built upon the authorthe festivals of our Lord, and many of the saints; ity of Clemen's Recognitions, a book in doubtful those especially that relate to St. Thomas, the cases of no esteem and value. Dominica in Albis, or Sunday after Easter, in memory of the famous confession which St. Thomas on that day made of Christ, after he had been sensibly cured of his unbelief; another, on the first of July, celebrated not only by Christians, but by Moors and Pagans, the people who come to his sepulchre on pilgrimage, carrying away a little of the red earth of the place where he was interred, which they keep as an inestimable treasure, and conceit it sovereign against diseases. They have a kind of monasteries of the religious, who live in great abstinence and chastity. Their priests are shaven in fashion of a cross, have leave to marry once, but denied a second time: no marriages to be dissolved, but by death. These rites and customs they solemnly pretend to have derived from the very time of St. Thomas, and with the greatest care and diligence do observe them at this day.* * In the learned work of La Croze, "Historie du Chistianisme des Judes," much curious information is given on the subject of the first planting of Christianity in those countries which are said to have been converted by the apostles. La Croze himself, however, inclines to the opinion that the Thomas whose memory is received as the first teacher of 2. This doubt being removed, we proceed to the history of his life. He was the son (as we may probably conjecture) of Joseph, (afterwards husband of the blessed virgin, and his first wife, whom St. Jerome, from tradition, styles Escha; Hippoletus, bishop of Porto, Salome; and further adds, that she was the daughter of Aggi, brother to Zacharias, father to John the Baptist: hence reputed our Lord's brother, in the same sense that he was reputed the son of Joseph. Indeed we find several spoken of in the history of the gospel, who were Christ's brethren; but in what sense, was controverted of old. St. Jerome, Christianity in the region of Malabar, was not the disciple of Christ, but a certain Manichæan, who obeying the zealous spirit which appears in many instances to have inspired the followers of that great heresiarch, conveyed the doctrines of his Master, as so much of Christianity as was conformable to those doctrines to this distant region. But, after all, there is no improbability in the tradition respecting the journeys of the apostle; and it is on the whole far more reasonable to ascribe the first planting of the gospel in so remote a part of the world to an inspired and divinely appointed, and divinely protected minister of Christ, than to an obscure and bewildered heretic.—ED. Chrysostom, and some others, will have them so called, because the sons of Mary, cousin-german, or according to the custom of the Hebrew language, sister to the virgin Mary. But Eusebius, Epiphanius, and the far greater part of the ancients (from whom, especially in matters of fact, we are not rashly to depart) make them the children of Joseph, by a former wife. And this seems most genuine and natural, the evangelists seem ing very express and accurate in the account which they give of them: "Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Jude? and his sisters (whose names, says the foresaid Hippolytus, were Esther and Tamar) are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man these things?" By which it is plain, that the Jews understood these persons not to be Christ's kinsmen only, but his brothers, the same carpenter's sons, having the same relation to him that Christ himself had: though indeed they had more, Christ being but his reputed, they his natural sons. Upon this account the blessed virgin is sometimes called "the mother of James and Joses;" for so, amongst the women that attended at our Lord's crucifixion, we find three eminently taken notice of, " Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.* Where, by "Mary, the mother of James and Joses," no other can be meant than the virgin Mary: it not being reasonable to suppose that the evangelists should omit the blessed virgin, who was certainly there; and therefore St. John, reckoning up the same persons, expressly styles her "the mother of Jesus." And though it is true she was but St. James's motherin-law, yet the evangelists might choose so to style her, because commonly so called after Joseph's death; and probably (as Gregory of Nyssa thinks) known by that name all along, choosing that title that the Son of God, whom as a virgin she had brought forth, might be better concealed, and less exposed to the malice of the envious Jews; nor is it any more wonder, that she should be esteemed and called the "mother of James," than that Joseph should be styled and accounted the "father of Jesus." To which add, that Josephus, eminently skilful in matters of genealogy and descent, espressly says, that our St. James was the "brother of Jesus Christ." One thing there is that may seem to lie against it, that he is called "the son of Alphæus." But this may probably mean no more, than either that Joseph was so called by another name, (it being frequent, yea, almost constant among the Jews for the same person to have two names; Quis unquam prohibuerit duobus vel tribus nominibus hominem unum vocari? as St. Augustin speaks in a parallel case,) or (as a learned man conjectures) it may relate to his being a disciple of some particular sect or synagogue among the Jews, called Alphæans; denoting a family or society of devout and learned men of somewhat more eminency than the rest, there being, as he tells us, many such at this time among the Jews; and in this probably St. James had entered himself, the great reputation of his piety and strictness, his wisdom, parts, and learning rendering the conjecture above the censure of being trifling and contemptible. 3. Of the place of his birth the sacred story makes no mention. The Jews, in their Talmud, (for doubtless they intend the same person,) style him more than once "a man of the town of Sechania;" though where that was, I am not able to conjecture. What was his particular way and course of life before his being called to the discipleship and apostolate, we find no intimations of in the history of the gospel, nor is there any distinct account concerning him during our Saviour's life. After the resurrection he was honored with a particular appearance of our Lord to him, which though silently passed over by the evangelists, is recorded by St. Paul, next to the manifesting himself to the five hundred brethren at once, "he was seen of James," which is by all understood of our apostle. St. Jerome, out of the Hebrew gospel of the Nazarenes, (wherein many passages are set down, omitted by the evangelical historians,) gives us a fuller relation of it: viz. that St. James had solemnly sworn, that from the time that he had drunk of the cup at the institution of the supper, he would eat bread no more till he saw the Lord risen from the dead. Our Lord therefore being returned from the grave, came and appeared to him, commanded bread to be set before him, which he took, blessed, and brake, and gave to St. James, saying, "Eat thy bread, my brother, for the Son of man is truly risen from among them that sleep." After Christ's ascension, (though I will not venture to determine the precise time,) he was chosen bishop of Jerusalem, preferred before all the rest, for his near relation unto Christ; for this we find to have been the reason why they chose Symeon to be his immediate successor in that see, because he was after him our Lord's next kinsman. A consideration that made Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, though they had been peculiarly honored by our Saviour, not to contend for this high and honorable place, but freely chose James the Just to be bishop of it. This dignity is, by some of the ancients, said to have been conferred on him by Christ himself, constituting him bishop at the time of his appearing to him. But it is safest, with others, to understand it of its being done by the apostles, or possibly by some particular intimation concerning it, which our Lord might leave behind him. 4. To him we find St. Paul making his address after his conversion, by whom he was honored with the right-hand of fellowship.* To him Peter sent the news of his miraculous deliverance out of prison: "Go show these things unto James, and to the brethren;" that is, to the whole church, and especially St. James, the bishop and pastor of it. But he was principally active in the synod at Jerusalem, in the great controversy about the Mosaic rites: for the case being opened by Peter, and further debated by Paul and Barnabas, at last stood up St. James to pass the final and decretory sentence, that the Gentile converts were not to be troubled with the bondage of the Jewish yoke, only that for a present accommodation some few indifferent rites should be observed; ushering in the expedient with this positive conclusion: do ɛy xvw, I thus judge or decide the matter; "this is my sentence" and determination.* A circumstance the more considerable, because spoken at the same time when Peter was in council, who produced no such intimation of his authority. Had the champions of the church of Rome but such a passage for Peter's judiciary authority and power, it would no doubt have made a louder noise in the world, than "Thou art Peter," or "Feed my sheep." 5. He administered his province with all possible care and industry, omitting no part of a diligent and faithful guide of souls; strengthening the weak, informing the ignorant, reducing the erroneous, reproving the obstinate, and by the constancy of his preaching, conquering the stubbornness of that perverse and refractory generation that he had to deal with; many of the nobler and better sort being brought over to a compliance with the Christian faith. So careful, so successful in his charge, that he awakened the spite and malice of his enemies to conspire his ruin; a sort of men of whom the apostle has given too true a character, “that they please not God, and are contrary to all men." Vexed they were to see that St. Paul, by appealing to Cæsar, had escaped their hands; (malice is as greedy and insatiable as hell itself;) and they therefore now turn their revenge upon St. James, which not being able to effect under Festus's government, they more effectually attempted under the procuratorship of Albinus's successor, Ananus the younger, then high-priest, and of the sect of the Sadducees, (of all others, says Josephus,† the most merciless and implacable justicers,) resolving to despatch him before the new governor could arrive. To this end a council is hastily summoned, and the apostle with some others arraigned and condemned as violators of the law. But that the thing might be carried in a more plausible and popular way, they set the Scribes and Pharisees (craft's-masters in the arts of dissimulation) at work to ensnare him, who coming to him, began by flattering insinuations to set upon him. They tell him, that they all had a mighty confidence in him, and that the whole nation as well as they gave him the testimony of a most just man, and one that was no respecter of persons; that therefore, they desired he would correct the error and false opinion which the people had of Jesus, whom they looked upon as the Messiah, and would take this opportunity of the universal confluence to the paschal solemnity, to set them right in their notions about these things; and would, to that end, go up with them to the top of the temple, where he might be seen and heard by all. Being advantageously placed upon a pinnacle or wing of the temple, they made this address to him. "Tell us, O Justus, whom we have all the reason in the world to believe, that seeing the people are thus generally led away with the doctrine of Jesus that was crucified, tell us, what is this institution of 'the crucified Jesus?" To which the apostle answered with an audible voice: "Why do ye inquire of Jesus the Son of man? he sits in heaven *Acts xv. 13., † Josephus Antiquit. Jud. lib. xx, c. 8, p. 698. on the right hand of the majesty on high, and will come again in the clouds of heaven." The people below hearing it, glorified the blessed Jesus, and openly proclaimed "Hosanna to the Son of David." The Scribes and Pharisees perceived now that they had overshot themselves, and that instead of reclaiming they had confirmed the people in their error; that there was no way left, but presently to despatch him, that by his sad fate others might be warned not to believe him. Whereupon suddenly crying out, that Justus himself was seduced and become an impostor, they threw him down from the place where he stood; though bruised, he was not killed by the fall, but recovered so much strength, as to get upon his knees, and pray to heaven for them. Malice is of too bad a nature either to be pacified with kindness, or satisfied with cruelty; jealousy is not more the rage of a man than malice is the rage of the devil, the very soul and spirit of the apostate nature. Little portions of revenge do but inflame it, and serve to flesh it up into a fiercer violence. Vexed that they had not done his work, they fell fresh upon the poor remainders of his life; and while he was yet at prayer, and that a Rechabite, who stood by, (which, says Epiphanius, was Symeon, his kinsman and successor,) stepped in, and entreated them to spare him, a just and a righteous man, and who was then praying for them, they began to load him with a shower of stones, till one more mercifully cruel than the rest, with a fuller's club beat out his brains. Thus died this good man in the ninetysixth year of his age, and about twenty-four years after Christ's ascension into heaven, (as Epiphanius tells us ;) being taken away, to the great grief and regret of all good men; yea, of all sober and just persons even amongst the Jews themselves. He was buried (says Gregory, bishop of Tours) upon Mount Olivet, in a tomb which he had built for himself, and wherein he had buried Zacharias and old Symeon; which I am rather inclinable to believe than what Hegesippus reports, that he was buried near the temple in the place of his martyrdom, and that a monument was there erected for him, which remained a long time after; for the Jews were not ordinarily wont to bury within the city, much less so near the temple; and least of all would they suffer him, whom as a blasphemer and impostor they had so lately put to death. 6. He was a man of exemplary and extraordinary piety and devotion, educated under the strictest rules and institutions of religion, a priest (as we may probably guess) of the ancient order of the Rechabites; or rather, as Epiphanius conjectures, "according to the most ancient order and form of priesthood," when the sacerdotal office was the prerogative of the first-born; and such was St. James, the eldest son of Joseph, and thereby sanctified and set apart for it. Though, whether this way of priesthood at any time held under the Mosaic dispensation, we have no intimations in the holy story. But, however he came by it, upon some such account it must be that he had a privilege (which the ancients say was peculiar to him, probably because more frequently made use of by him than by any others) to enter as ra aya; not into the "sancta sancto rum," or "most holy of all," but the "sanctuary," if the judgments of God like a flood come rolling or "holy place," whither the priests of the Aaron- in upon a nation, when the sluices are plucked up, ical order might come. Prayer was his constant and the Moses taken away that before stood in the business and delight; he seemed to live upon it, gap to keep them out? "Elisha died, and a band and to trade in nothing but the frequent returns of of the Moabites invaded the land.”* In short, converse with heaven; and was therefore wont he was the delight of all good men, in so much to retire alone into the temple to pray, which he favor and estimation with the people, that they always performed kneeling, and with the greatest used to flock after him, and strive who should reverence, till by his daily devotions his knees touch, though it were but the hem of his garment; were become as hard and brawny as a camel's. his very episcopal chair, wherein he used to sit, And he who has told us, that "the effectual fer- being (as Eusebius informs us) carefully preservvent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," ed, and having a kind of veneration paid to it, himself found it true by his own experience, hea- even unto his time: loved and honored, not by his ven lending a more immediate ear to his petitions; friends only, but by his enemies; the Jews in their so that when in a time of great drought he pray- Talmud, mentioning James as a worker of miraed for rain, the heavens presently melted into cles in the name of "Jesus his master;" yea, the fruitful showers. Nor was his charity towards wisest of them looked upon his martyrdom as the men less than his piety towards God; he did good inlet to all those miseries and calamities that soon to all, watched over men's souls, and studied to after flowed in upon them. Sure I am, that Joseadvance their eternal interests; his daily errand phus particularly reckons the death of this St. into the temple was to pray for the happiness of James as that which more immediately alarmed the people, and that God would not severely the divine vengeance, and hastened the universal reckon with them: he could forgive his fiercest ruin and destruction of that nation. enemies, and "overcome evil with good:" when 8. He wrote only one epistle, probably not long thrown from the top of the temple, he made use before his martyrdom, as appears by some pasof all the breath he had left in him, only to send sages in it relating to the near approaching ruin up this petition to heaven for the pardon of his of the Jewish nation. He directed it to the Jewish murderers: "I beseech thee, O Lord God, hea-converts, dispersed up and down those eastern venly Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." countries, to comfort them under sufferings, and confirm them against error. He saw a great de7. He was of a most meek humble temper, ho- generacy and declension of manners coming on, noring what was excellent in others, concealing and that the purity of the Christian faith began what was valuable in himself; the eminency of his to be undermined by the loose doctrines and pracrelation, and the dignity of his place, did not exalt tices of the Gnostics, who under a pretence of zeal him in lofty thoughts above the measures of his for the legal rites, generally mixed themselves brethren, industriously hiding whatever might set with the Jews; he beheld libertinism marching hiin up above the rest. Though he was our Lord's on apace, and the way to heaven made soft and brother, yet in the inscription of the epistle he easy, men declaiming against good works, as usestyles himself but the "servant of the Lord Jesus, less and unnecessary; and asserting a naked benot so much as giving himself the title of an apos- lief of the Christian doctrine to be sufficient to tle. His temperance was admirable; he wholly salvation. Against these the apostle opposes abstained from flesh, and drank neither wine nor himself, presses purity, patience, and charity, and strong drink, nor ever used the bath. His holy all the virtues of a good life; and by undeniable and mortified mind was content with the meanest arguments envinces that that faith only that caraccommodations; he went bare-foot, and never ries along with it obedience and a holy life, can wore other than linen garments. Indeed, he lived justify us before God, and entitle us to eternal life. after the strictest rules of the Nazarite order; Besides this epistle, there is a kind of preparatory and as the mitre, or sacerdotal plate, which he gospel ascribed to him, published under the name wore upon his head, evinced his priesthood, which of ПIPOTEYATTE'AION, (still extant at this day,) was rather after Melchisedeck's, or the priesthood containing the descent, birth, and first originals of of the first-born, than the Aaronical order; so his Christ, and the virgin Mary; at the end whereof never shaving his head, nor using unguents, his the author pretends to have written it at a time habit and diet, and the great severity of his life, when Herod having raised a great tumult in Jerushowed him to appertain to the Nazarite institu- salem, he was forced to retire into the wilderness. tion, to which he was holy, (says Hegesippus,) or But, though in many things consistent enough consecrated from his mother's womb. A man of with the history of the gospel, yet has it ever that divine temper that he was the love and won-been rejected as spurious and apocryphal, forged in der of his age, and for the reputation of his holy and religious life was universally styled James the Just. Indeed, the safety and happiness of the nation was reckoned to depend upon his prayers and interest in heaven, which gained him the honorable title of Oblias or Ozliam, the "defence" and "fortress of the people;" as if, when he was gone, their garrisons would be dismantled, and their strength laid level with the ground. And so we find it was, when some few years after his death the Roman army broke in upon them, and turned all into blood and ruin. And what wonder that licentious age, when men took the boldness to stamp any writing with the name of an apostle.t * 2 Kings xiii. 20. + The character given of St. James by Josephus and others, affords a very valuable, because undesigned testimony to the truth of the gospel. He was not only devout, but singularly pure and upright in his conversation; and if the perception and love of truth have any thing to do with the moral character, he was thus especially qualified for determining what degree of credit ought to be given to the claims of Christ. |