tianity, he endeavored by all arts both of favor and cruelty to reduce the people to their old idolatries. To him the apostle resolutely makes his address, calmly puts him in mind, that he, being but a judge of men, should own and revere him who was the supreme and impartial judge of all, that he should give him that divine honor which was due to him, and leave off the impieties of his false heathen worship. The proconsul derided him as an innovator in religion, a propagator of that superstition, whose author the Jews had infamously put to death upon a cross. Hereat the apostle took occasion to discourse to him of the infinite love and kindness of our Lord, who came into the world to purchase the salvation of mankind, and for that end did not disdain to die upon the cross. To whom the proconsul answered, that he might persuade them so that would believe him; for his part, if he did not comply with him in doing sacrifice to the gods, he would cause him to suffer upon that cross which he had so much extolled and magnified. St. Andrew replied, that he did sacrifice every day to God, the only true and Omnipotent Being, not with fumes and bloody offerings, but in the sacrifice of the immaculate Lamb of God. The issue was, the apostle was committed to prison; whereat the people were so enraged, that it had broken out into a mutiny had not the apostle restrained them, persuading them to imitate the mildness and patience of our meek humble Saviour, and not to hinder him from that crown of martyrdom that now waited for him. 6. The next day he was again brought before the proconsul, who persuaded him that he would not foolishly destroy himself, but live and enjoy with him the pleasures of this life. The apostle told him, that he should have with him eternal joys, if, renouncing his execrable idolatries, he would heartily entertain Christianity, which he had hitherto so successfully preached amongst them. That, answered the proconsul, is the very reason why I am so earnest with you to sacrifice to the gods, that those whom you have every where seduced, may by your example be brought to return back to that ancient religion which they have forsaken: otherwise I will cause you with exquisite tortures to be crucified. The apostle replied, that now he saw it was in vain any longer to deal with him, a person incapable of sober counsels, and hardened in his own blindness and folly; that as for himself, he might do his worst, and if he had one torment greater than another, he might heap that upon him: the greater constancy he showed in his sufferings for Christ, the more acceptable he should be to his Lord and master. Egeas could now hold no longer, but passed the sentence of death upon him; and Nicephorus gives us some more particular account of the proconsul's displeasure and rage against him, which was, that amongst others he had converted his wife, Maximilla, and his brother, Stratocles, to the Christian faith, having cured them of desperate distempers that had seized upon them. 7. The proconsul first commanded him to be Scourged, seven lictors sufficiently whipping his naked body; and seeing his invincible patience and constancy, commanded him to be crucified, but not to be fastened to the cross with nails, but cords, that so his death might be more lingering and tedious. As he was led to execution, to which he went with a cheerful and composed mind, the people cried out, that he was an innocent and good man, and unjustly condemned to die. Being come within sight of the cross, he saluted it with this kind of address, that he had long desired and expected this happy hour, that the cross had been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it, and adorned with his members as with so many inestimable jewels, that he came joyful and triumphing to it, that it might receive him as a disciple and follower of him who once hung upon it, and be the means to carry him safe unto his master, having been the instrument upon which his master had redeemed him. Having prayed, and exhorted the people to constancy and perseverance in that religion which he had delivered to them, he was fastened to the cross, whereon he hung two days, teaching and instructing the people all the time; and when great importunities, in the mean while, were used to the proconsul to spare his life, he earnestly begged of our Lord, that he might at this time depart and seal the truth of his religion with his blood. God heard his prayer, and he immediately expired, on the last of November, though in what year no certain account can be recovered. 8. There seems to have been something peculiar in that cross that was the instrument of his martyrdom, commonly affirmed to have been a cross decussate, two pieces of timber crossing each other in the middle, in the form of the letter X, hence usually known by the name of St. Andrew's cross; though there want not those who affirm him to have been crucified upon an olivetree. His body being taken down and embalmed, was decently and honorably interred by Maximilla, a lady of great quality and estate, and whom Nicephorus, I know not upon what ground, makes wife to the proconsul. As for that report of Gregory, bishop of Tours, that on the anniversary day of his martydom, there was wont to flow from St. Andrew's tomb a most fragrant and precious oil, which according to its quantity denoted the scarceness or plenty of the following year; and that the sick being anointed with this oil were restored to their former health, I leave to the reader's discretion, to believe what he please of it. For my part, if there be any ground of truth in the story, I believe it to be no more than that it was an exhalation and sweating forth at some times of those rich costly perfumes and ointments wherewith his body was embalmed after his crucifixion. Though I must confess this conjecture to be impossible, if that be true which my author adds, that some years the oil burst out in such plenty, that the stream arose to the middle of the church. His body was afterwards, by Constantine the Great, solemnly removed to Constantinople, and buried in the great church, which he had built to the honor of the apostles; which being taken down 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. 9. 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 quire, the main and prime pillar of the church, a rock before the rock, 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 skillful? 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 honor to be the first preacher of the gospel. cients 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. 2. 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, which they no sooner heard but cheerfully complied ST. JAMES THE GREAT. with it, immediately leaving all to follow him. They did not stay to dispute his commands, to ST. JAMES, sirnamed the Great, either because argue the probability of his promise, solicitously of his age, being much elder than the other, or to inquire into the minute consequences of the for some peculiar honors and favors which our undertaking, what troubles and hazards might Lord conferred upon him, was by country a Gali- attend this new employment, but readily delean, born, probably, either at Capernaum or Beth-livered up themselves to whatever services he saida, being one of Simon Peter's partners in the trade of fishing. He was the son of Zebdai or Zebedee, (and probably the same whom the Jews mention in their Talmud, "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. His mother's name was Mary, sirnamed Salome, called first Taviphilia, says an ancient Arabic writer, the daughter, as is most probable, not 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 honor 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 dishonorable 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 an Mark i. 20. + John xix. 25. * Mark vi. 3; Matt, xiii. 55. 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, 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 the 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 de Luke ix, 59-61. sease, who probably lived not long after, dying be- | the consciences of men with the earnestness and fore the time of our Saviour's passion. vehemency of their preaching; as thunder, which 3. It was not long after this, that he was called is called "God's voice," powerfully shakes the from the station of an ordinary disciple, to the natural world, and breaks in pieces the cedars of apostolical office; and not only so, but honored Lebanon: or if it relate to the doctrines they dewith some peculiar acts of favor beyond most of livered, it might signify their teaching the great the apostles, being one of the three whom our mysteries and speculations of the gospel in a proLord usually made choice of to admit to the more founder strain than the rest; which how true it intimate transactions of his life, from which the might be of our St. James, the Scripture is wholly others were excluded. Thus, with Peter and his silent; but was certainly verified of his brother brother John, he was taken to the miraculous John, whose gospel is so full of the more sublime raising of Jairus's daughter; admitted to Christ's notions and mysteries of the gospel concerning glorious transfiguration upon the mount, and the Christ's Deity, eternal pre-existence, &c., that he discourses that there passed between him and the is generally affirmed by the ancients, not so much two great ministers of heaven; taking along with to "speak," as thunder. Probably the expression him into the garden, to be a spectator of those may denote no more, than that in general they bitter agonies, which the holy Jesus was to un- were to be prime and eminent ministers, in this dergo as the preparatory sufferings to his passion. new scene and state of things; the introducing What were the reasons of our Lord's admitting of the gospel or evangelical dispensation, being these three apostles to these more special acts of called "a voice shaking the heavens and the earth," favor than the rest is not easy to determine; and so is exactly correspondent to the native imthough surely our Lord, who governed all his ac-portance of the word, signifying "an earthquake," tions by principles of the highest prudence and or a vehement commotion that makes a noise like reason, did it for wise and proper ends; whether to thunder. 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. 5. However it was, our Lord, I doubt not, herein had respect to the furious and resolute disposition of those two brothers, who seem to have been of a more fierce and fiery temper than the rest of the apostles; whereof we have this memorable instance. Our Lord being resolved upon his journey to Jerusalem, sent some of his disciples as harbingers to prepare his way, who coming to a village of Samaria, were uncivilly rejected, and 4. Nor was it the least instance of that parti- refused entertainment; probably because of that cular honor which our Lord conferred upon these old and inveterate quarrel that was between the three apostles, that at his calling them to the apos- Samaritans and the Jews, and more especially at tolate, he gave them the addition of a new name this time, because that our Saviour seemed to and title. A thing not unusual of old, for God to slight Mount Gerizim, (where was their staple impose a new name upon persons, when designing and solemn place of worship,) by passing it by, to them for some great and peculiar services and em- go and worship at Jerusalem; the reason in all ployments. Thus he did to Abraham and Jacob. likelihood why they denied him those common Nay, the thing was customary among the Gentiles, courtesies and conveniences due to all travellers. as, had we no other instances, might appear from This piece of rudeness and inhumanity was prethose which the Scripture gives us : Pharaoh's sently so deeply resented by St. James and his giving a new name to Joseph, when advancing brother, that they came to their master to know, him to be viceroy of Egypt; Nebuchadnezzar to whether as Elias did of old,† they might not pray Daniel, &c. Thus did our Lord in the election of down fire from heaven, to consume these barbathese three apostles; "Simon he surnamed Peter, rous and inhospitable people. So apt are men, for James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother every trifle, to call upon heaven to minister to the he surnamed Boanerges,"* which is, "the sons of extravagancies of their own impotent and unreathunder." What our Lord particularly intended sonable passions. But our Lord rebukes their in this title, is easier to conjecture than certainly zeal, tells them they quite mistook the case, that to determine; some think it was given them upon this was not the frame and temper of his disciples the account of their being present in the mount, and followers, the nature and design of that evanwhen a voice came out of the cloud, and said, gelical dispensation that he was come to set on "This is my beloved Son," &c. The like whereto foot in the world, which was a more pure and perwhen the people heard at another time, they cried fect, a more mild and gentle institution, than what out, "that it thundered." But besides that this was under the Old Testament, in the times of account is in itself very slender and inconsidera-"Moses and Elias; the Son of man being come ble; if so, then the title must equally have be- not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." longed to Peter, who was then present with them. Others think it was upon the account of their loud, bold, and resolute preaching Christianity to the world, fearing no threatenings, daunted with no oppositions, but going on to "thunder" in the ears of the secure sleepy world, rousing and awakening 6. The holy Jesus, not long after, set forwards in his journey to Jerusalem, in order to his crucifixion; and the better to prepare the minds of his apostles for his death and departure from them, he told them what he was to suffer, and yet that after all he should rise again. They, whose minds were yet big with expectations of a temporal power and monarchy, understood not well the meaning of his discourses to them. However, St. James and his brother, supposing the resurrection that he spoke of would be the time when his power and greatness would commence, prompted their mother, Salome, to put up a petition for them.* She, presuming probably on her relation to Christ, and knowing that our Saviour had promised his apostles, "that when he was come into his kingdom, they should sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel;" and that he already honored her two sons with an intimate familiarity, after leave modestly asked for her address, begged of him, that when he took possession of his kingdom, her two sons, James and John, might have the principal places of honor and dignity next his own person; the one sitting on his "right hand," and the "other" on his "left," as the heads of Judah and Joseph had the first places among the rulers of the tribes in the Jewish nation. Our Lord directing his discourse to the two apostles, at whose suggestion he knew their mother had made this address, told them, they quite mistook the nature of his kingdom, which consisted not in external grandeur and sovereignty, but in an inward life and power, wherein the highest place would be to take the greatest pains, and to undergo the heaviest troubles and sufferings; that they should do well to consider, whether they were able to endure what he was to undergo, to drink of that bitter cup which he was to drink of, and to go through that baptism, wherein he was shortly to be baptized in his own blood. Our apostles were not yet cured of their ambitious humor; but either not understanding the force of our Saviour's reasonings, or too confidently presuming upon their own strength, answered, that they could do all this. But he, the goodness of whose nature ever made him put the best and most candid interpretation upon men's words and actions; yea, even those of his great enemies; did not take the advantage of their hasty and inconsiderate reply, to treat them with sharp and quick reproofs; but mildly owning their forwardness to suffer, told them, that as for sufferings, they should indeed suffer as well as he, (and so we accordingly find they did; St. James, after all, dying a violent death; St. John enduring great miseries and torments; and might we believe Chrysostom and Theophylact, martyrdom itself, though others nearer to those times assure us he died a natural death,) but for any peculiar honor or dignity, he would not by an absolute and peremptory favor of his own, dispose of it any otherwise than according to those rules and instructions which he had received of his Father. The rest of the apostles were offended with this ambitious request of "the sons of Zebedee;" but our Lord, to calm their passions, discoursed to them of the nature of the evangelical state, that it was not here, as in the kingdoms and "seigniories" of this world, where the great ones receive homage and fealtv from those that are under them, but that in his service humility was the way to honor; that whoever took most pains, and did most good, would be the greatest person, pre-eminence being here to be measured by industry and diligence, and a ready * Matt. xx. 20. condescension to the meanest offices that might be subservient to the souls of men; and that this was no more than what he sufficiently taught them by his own example, being come into the world, not to be served himself with any pompous circumstances of state and splendor, but to serve others, and to lay down his life for the redemption of mankind. With which discourse the storm blew over, and their exorbitant passions began on all hands to be allayed and pacified. 7. What became of St. James after our Saviour's ascension we have no certain account, either from sacred or ecclesiastical stories. Sophronius tells us, that he preached to the dispersed Jews, which surely he means of that dispersion that was made of the Jewish converts after the death of Stephen. The Spanish writers generally contend, that having preached the gospel up and down Judæa and Samaria, after the death of Stephen he came to these western parts, and particularly into Spain, (some add Britain and Ireland) where he planted Christianity, and appointed some select disciples to perfect what he had begun, and then returned back to Jerusalem. Of this there are no footsteps in any ancient writers, earlier than the middle ages of the church, when it is mentioned by Isidore, the Breviary of Toledo, and Arabic book of Anastasius, patriarch of Antioch, concerning the Passions of the Martyrs, and some others after them. Nay, Baronius himself, though endeavoring to render the account as smooth and plausible as he could, and to remove what objec tions lay against it; yet after all confesses, he did it only to show, that the thing was not impossible, nor to be accounted such a monstrous and extravagant fable as some men made it to be, as indeed elsewhere he plainly and peremptorily both denies and disproves it. He could not but see, that the shortness of this apostle's life, the apostles continuing all in one entire body at Jerusalem, even after the dispersing of the other Christians, probably not going out of the bounds of Judæa for many years after our Lord's ascension, could not comport with so tedious and difficult a voyage, and the time which he must necessarily spend in those parts; and therefore it is safest to confine his ministry to Judæa, and the parts thereabouts, and to seek for him at Jerusalem, where we are sure to find him. 8. Herod Agrippa, son of Aristobulus, and grand-child of Herod the Great, (under whom Christ was born) had been in great favor with the late emperor Caligula, but much more with his successor Claudius, who confirmed his predecessor's grant, with the addition of Judæa, Samaria, and Abilene, the remaining portions of his grandfather's dominions. Claudius being settled in the empire, Herod comes over from Rome to take possession, and to manage the affairs of his newly acquired kingdom. A prince noble and generous, prudent and politic, throughly versed in all the arts of courtship, able to oblige enemies, and to mollify or decline the displeasure of the emperor, (witness his subtile and cunning insinuations to Caligula, when he commanded the Jews to account him a god) he was one that knew, let the wind blow which way it would, how to gain the point he aimed at; of a courteous and affable demeanor; but withal a mighty zealot for the Jewish something above the ordinary standard of humanity. This impious applause Herod received without any token of dislike, or sense of that injury that was hereby done to the Supreme Being of 66 scene, and turned the comic part into a black fatal tragedy. Looking up, he espied an owl sitting upon a rope over his head, (as probably also he did an angel, for so St. Luke mentions it,) which he presently beheld as the fatal messenger of his death, as heretofore it had been of his prosperity and success. An incurable melancholy immediately seized upon his mind, as exquisite torments did upon his bowels, caused, without question, by those worms St. Luke speaks of, which immediately fed and preyed upon him. 'Behold," said he, turning to those about him, "the deity you admired, and yourselves evidently convinced of flattery and falsehood; see me here, by the laws of fate condemned to die, whom just now ye styled immortal." Being removed into the palace, his pains still increased upon him; and though the people mourned and wept, fasted and prayed for his life and health, yet his acute torments got the upper hand, and after five days put a period to his life. But to return to St. James. religion, and a most accurate observer of the Mosaic law, keeping himself free from all legal impurities, and suffering no day to pass over his head, in which he himself was not present at sacrifice. Being desirous in the entrance upon his sove-the world. But a sudden accident changed the reignty to insinuate himself into the favor of the populacy, and led no less by his own zealous inclination, he saw no better way, than to fall heavy upon the Christians, a sort of men whom he knew the Jews infinitely hated, as a novel and an upstart sect, whose religion proclaimed open defiance to the Mosaic institutions. Hereupon he began to raise a persecution; but, alas, the commonalty were too mean a sacrifice to fall as the only victim to his zeal and popular designs-he must have a fatter and more honorable sacrifice. It was not long before St. James's stirring and active temper, his bold reproving of the Jews, and vigorous contending for the truth and excellency of the Christian religion, rendered him a fit object for his turn. Him he commands to be apprehended, cast into prison, and sentence of death to be passed upon him. As he was led forth to the place of martyrdom, the soldier or officer that had guarded him to the tribunal, or rather his accuser, (and so Suides expressly tells us it was,) having been convinced by that mighty courage and constancy which St. James showed at the time of his trial, repented of what he had done, came and fell down at the apostle's feet, and heartily begged pardon for what he said against him. The holy man, after a little surprise at the thing, raised him up, embraced and kissed him. "Peace," (said he,) "my son, peace be to thee, and the pardon of thy faults." Whereupon, before them all he publicly professed himself to be a Christian, and so both were beheaded at the same time. Thus fell St. James, the apostolic proto-martyr, the first of that number that gained the crown, cheerfully taking that cup of which he had long since told his Lard he was most ready to drink. 10. Being put to death, his body is said to have taken a second voyage into Spain, where we are with confidence enough told it rests at this day. Indeed I met with a very formal account of its translation thither, written (says the publisher) above six hundred years since, by a monk of the abbey of La Fleury, in France: the sum whereof is this: the apostles at Jerusalem designing Ctesiphon for Spain, ordained him bishop, and others being joined to his assistance, they took the body of St. James, and went on board a ship, without oars, without a pilot, or any to steer and conduct their voyage, trusting only to the merits of that apostle, whose remains they carried along with them. In seven days they arrived at a port in 9. But the divine vengeance, that never sleeps, Spain, where landing, the corpse was suddenly suffered not the death of this innocent and righte- taken from them, and, with great appearances of ous man to pass long unrevenged; of which, an extraordinary light from heaven, conveyed they though St. Luke gives us but a short account, yet knew not whither, to the place of its interment. Josephus, who might himself remember it, being The men, you may imagine, were exceedingly a youth at that time of seven or eight years of age, troubled, that so great a treasure should be rasets down the story with its particular circum- vished from them; but upon their prayers and tears, stances, agreeing almost exactly with the sacred they were conducted by an angel to the place historian. Shortly after St. James's martyrdom, where the apostle was buried, twelve miles from Herod removed to Cæsarea, being resolved to the sea. Here they addressed themselves to a make war upon the neighboring Tyrians and Si-rich noble matron, called Luparia, who had a great donians: while he was here, he proclaimed solemn sights and festival entertainments to be held in honor of Cæsar, to which there flocked a great confluence of all the nobility thereabouts. Early in the morning, on the second day, he came with great state into the theatre, to make an oration to the people, being clothed in a robe all over, curiously wrought with silver, which encountering with the beams of the rising sun, reflected such a lustre upon the eyes of the people (who make sensible appearances the only true measures of greatness) as begot an equal wonder and veneration in them, crying out (prompted no doubt by flatterers, who began the cry) that it was some deity which they beheld, and that he who spake to them must be * Antiquit. Jud. lib. xix. c. 7, p. 679. estate in those parts, but was a severe idolatress, begging of her that they might have leave to entomb the bones of the holy apostle within her jurisdiction. She entertained them with contempt and scorn, with curses and execrations, bidding them go and ask leave of the king of the country. They did so, but were by him treated with all the instances of rage and fury, and pursued by him, till himself perished in the attempt. They returned back to their Gallæcian matron, whom, by many miracles, and especially by destroying a dragon that miserably infested those parts, they at last made convert to the faith. She thereupon commanded her images to be broken, the altars to be demolished, and her own idol-temple, being cleansed and purged, to be dedicated to the honor of St. James, by which means Christianity mightily pre |