THE EPISTLE OF JAMES,

SECTION FIRST.

ITS IMPORTANCE.

325. THIS epistle, to judge only by its author, is the first of the Catholic Epistles, and James begins it with these words — “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad.” .

In the primitive churches, but especially among Christians of the Israelitish race, it must have acquired a particular importance from the eminent place which its author occupied among all the apostles, among all the bishops, among all the eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and among all the martyrs.

We say, among all the apostles. Not only was James a brother of the Lord¹ according to the flesh, that is, either his half brother or his first cousin, being, according to some, the son of his mother by Alpheus, or, according to others, his first cousin, the son of Mary, the sister of his mother, who kept her station so faithfully near the cross, and again at the sepulchre, (Matt. xxvii. 6, xxviii. 1;) but, further, he was held in such respect among all the apostles (Gal. ii. 16) that Peter, when he dissembled at Antioch, feared “certain that came from James,” (Gal. ii. 12;) and, on leaving the prison at Jerusalem, he says at once, distinguishing him from all the rest, “Go, shew these things unto James and to all the brethren,” (Acts xii. 17.) Paul himself names him as the first of the three pillars of the primitive Church, (Gal. ii. 9.)

Distinguished, as we have said, among all the bishops, he presided for twenty-seven years over that church at Jerusalem which was the centre and focus, the model and mother, of all the others; by his superior influence he concluded the first council; he was the special object of regard to Paul, Peter, and the apostles, who, twenty years after their Lord’s ascension, still assembled with all the elders in his house, (Acts xv. 13, xxi. 18.) During more than a quarter of a century he conciliated, as we learn from the historian Josephus, the respect of the Jews, who surnamed him the Just, and who reproached themselves for his cruel death,² regarding it as one of the causes of their national catastrophe.

Eminent, again, among the eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus, James was honoured (1 Cor. xv. 7) with a special appearance of the Lord, as Mary his mother had been on her way to the sepulchre, and Cleopas,³ his father, on the way to Emmaus. Eminent, lastly, among all the martyrs, James was the first of the writers of the New Testament, and the second of the apostles, to give up his life for Jesus Christ. His colleague, James the Greater, the brother of John, had been beheaded by order of Herod Agrippa only ten years after the Saviour’s ascension; but our James, the brother of the Lord, was stoned by order of the high priest Ananias and the council of the Jews sixteen or seventeen years later, while they were expecting at Jerusalem the arrival of Albinus, the successor of Festus.⁴

Thus Jude, at the head of his epistle, thought he could not better recommend himself to the respect of the churches than by entitling himself simply “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,” so great among all the people of God was the notoriety of this holy apostle, and probably also of his epistle. And it is on this account, Theodoret⁵ supposed that Paul himself alludes to James, the bishop of the Hebrews, and to his generous martyrdom, when he wrote to the Hebrews, “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God; whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation, (xiii. 7.)

326. The Epistle of James, having for its author a man of such — eminence — one of the three pillars — a brother of Jude — a brother of Jesus Christ — a bishop advanced in life — possessed among Christians of immense influence, and even honoured by all the Jewish people — an apostle, — in fine, who was, it is said, the only one who had never quitted Jerusalem, and who had governed⁶ the mother-church for a quarter of a century in that city, where it was reckoned there were at least fifty or sixty thousand Jewish Christians;⁷ — the Epistle of James, addressed by such a man to these twelve tribes of dispersed Jews who came from year to year to Jerusalem, — this epistle, we say, would find ready access to all the Hebrew Christians of Palestine and the East, and the latter in their turn would continue to circulate it in the most distant countries of their dispersion.

SECTION SECOND.

ITS IMMEDIATE RECEPTION BY THAT PORTION OF THE CHURCH TO WHICH IT WAS FIRST ADDRESSED.

327. We see that the Eastern Church has, from the first, received this scripture as authentic, and that the most ancient fathers made use of it. There is abundant proof that it was immediately admitted and constantly revered as a book of God among the churches descended from Israel.

We find the most decisive proof of this fact in this, that the epistle was translated in the first century by the Syriac Christians into their famous Peshito version, which belongs, as we have said, to the apostolic age, (Prop. 32,) and was even made so early that the two last epistles of John, the second of Peter, and that of Jude, could not be inserted, any more than the Apocalypse,⁸ because they appeared at a later period.

But this immediate admission of the Epistle of James by such churches, presents us in its favour an argument of the greatest force; since better judges of its Divine authority cannot be imagined than those Christians among whom James had laboured twenty-seven years, and to whom he had directly addressed it.

This scripture was, then, received as inspired in the age of its author, in the very places where he had so long preached, and by the persons who were best qualified to appreciate his character, his divine mission, and the authenticity of his epistle.

328. Yet Eusebius places it among the books which some controvert. “The doubt,” Kirchhofer remarks,⁹ “probably proceeded from the uncertainty to which James it was to be ascribed; for no other historical testimony can be brought against it.”

SECTION THIRD.

ITS DATE.

329. We cannot doubt that the epistle was written towards the end of James’s career; for as soon as we examine it with a view to its date, we recognise in it numerous signs of an epoch comparatively late. The extensive dispersion of the Jewish churches, their organisation already completed, and their degeneracy far advanced, their forgetfulness of the marks of justifying faith, the influence of their wealth, the care required on the part of the apostle to remind them of the place of works in the evangelical economy, the high authority he had then acquired in the Jewish churches, the long experience indicated by his language — all these traits combined lead us to fix a date for this scripture much later a than the first formation of Christian churches.

SECTION FOURTH.

CAUSES OF THE HESITATION OF SOME CHURCHES.

330. If, on the one hand, the epistle was immediately and universally received by “these twelve tribes of the dispersion,” (James i. 1,) — that is to say, by all the Jewish Christians of Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Asia Minor, to whom James had addressed it, as, also, by the churches of the Gentiles in more direct connexion with these Christian synagogues, and by the most ancient fathers; we may easily understand, on the other hand, why a small number of persons were slow to receive it, and why the testimonies in its favour, during the two first centuries, were comparatively few.

In fact, not only were they at a greater distance from this man of God, who never quitted, even to the day of his martyrdom, his important residence at Jerusalem, and who seems to have received for his special mission the constant government, for five-and-twenty years, of this mother-church; but, above all, many of them lost; by the misfortunes of the Jews, the facilities they would otherwise have had of acquiring an immediate and sufficient knowledge of the claims of this book to their acceptance. James had scarcely written it, when the Jewish churches were involved in the troubles of war, of flight, and of persecution. Very soon all the Judaising churches were broken up; and we know the strong dislike everywhere felt towards them, and the increasing prejudices entertained by the Gentile Christians against the Jewish converts,

According to all appearance, this epistle was written about the year 61, the epoch of the martyrdom of James, and the arrival of Albinus in Judea¹⁰ The oppression of the Jews under this bad man, and, soon after, under his successor, Florus, began almost immediately; for Josephus dates the ruin of the Jewish nation from the year 62.¹¹ Albinus, having learned, le ‘tells us, that Florus was appointed to take his place, emptied the prisons of Jerusalem, and filled the whole country with disturbance. Florus, in the spring of 64, came like an executioner, rather than a governor; and his acts of injustice soon surpassed all belief. The year which followed was that of all those threatening prodigies which Tacitus and Josephus have reported as the precursors of frightful disasters. On the 15th of the following May, Florus, seated on his tribunal at Jerusalem, sent his soldiers to massacre three thousand six hundred and thirteen persons in the marketplace; and, on the 4th of October, Cestius Gallus encamped with a Roman army before this guilty city, and planted “the abomination of desolation in the holy place, where it ought not to be.” And it was at this sign, foretold by Jesus Christ, and by Daniel, that all the Christians, amounting to many myriads, “fled to the mountains.”¹²

We can understand that, in consequence of these extraordinary commotions, which followed so closely the appearance of this epistle, and put an end to the existence of the Jewish churches, that the Gentiles, among whom those churches were soon held in very great disrepute, were more slow to receive it, notwithstanding it had so many claims to their respect. And we may also understand that the direct testimonies of authors of this period among the Latins, and even among the Greeks, would be comparatively few.

SECTION FIFTH.

WITNESSES.

331, Yet we must guard against believing that the testimonies of Gentile Christians are wanting. We can cite some of great value.

And, first of all, we find at Rome, in the first century, this epistle cited by frequent allusions in Clement’s epistle, especially in chapters ii, x, xvii., xxiii, xxx. xxxi, xxxiii, xxxviii., xlvi., xlix.¹³ We find it also cited in The Shepherd of Hermas, by — seven allusions, which Lardner regards as a sufficient proof of the knowledge the author had of it, whoever he might be.¹⁴ In the same manner, four times in Irenæus,¹⁵ and likewise in Tertullian.¹⁶ — The citations adduced from Clement of Alexandria are less certain; but those of Athanasius¹⁷ frequently name the apostle James in full, and quote his very words.

332. The epistle was held to be authentic and Divine by all those who attributed it to the apostle James, the son of Alpheus. But as to those of the ancients who believed it to be not by the apostle James, but by James the Just, the brother of Jesus Christ — and would make two different persons of these two Jameses — it left them in some doubt, not of its authenticity, but its canonicity; because they supposed that the author, notwithstanding his eminence, was not an apostle.

Yet, at the beginning of the fourth century, these doubts came to an end; and the majority of the churches were unanimous in favour of inserting it in the canon. We have seen that all the eleven catalogues of the same century equally admit it, (Prop. 56.)

333. Origen held it to be Divine, as we learn directly from many of his quotations. For example, in his commentary on John,¹⁸ on the Epistle to the Romans, and on the 30th Psalm; and in his eighth homily on Joshua, (which has come down to us only in a Latin translation.)¹⁹ And if Eusebius, in the citations he has made of the opinions of Origen respecting the Scriptures, appears to us as representing him to be silent on the Epistle of James, we must not draw any unfavourable conclusion from this circumstance; for the same author, (Hist. Eccl., vi., 25,) speaking of the opinions of Origen on the canon, has abstained from saying anything on the Epistle of Jude, though Origen has quoted it more than fifteen times, and with eulogy.

Eusebius, as we have seen, puts the Epistle of James in the rank of writings that are still controverted, though acknowledged, he says, by a great number, (Hist. Eccl.., iii., 25.)

Even Amphilochius, in speaking of the doubts which some have had in reference to the five small later epistles, excepts the Epistle of James, which, he says, is “received by those who doubt the four others.” It is useless to point out the testimonies of the following centuries, for the canon was henceforward definitively fixed.

334. Many authors have noticed that the First Epistle of Peter, which was written later than that of James, contains more than ten sentences²⁰ relating to morals or doctrine, which, by their striking resemblance to passages in the latter, bear a silent testimony to it; the Holy Spirit not being able better to attest its divinity than by adopting and incorporating these sentences in an epistle so readily and constantly received by the whole Christian world.

335. Some persons have too often taken pleasure in recalling a most painful expression of Martin Luther in 1522, respecting the Epistle of James, which, without sufficient reasons, at first appeared to contradict the doctrine of the Scriptures on the justification of the sinner by faith. But, besides that this great servant of God afterwards retracted that imprudent saying,²¹ it must not be forgotten that at the time when he uttered it, innumerable frauds had been practised everywhere in almost all the monuments of Christian antiquity — false titles, false scriptures, false books of the fathers, false legends of the Breviary, false decretals of the popes. In his time men’s minds were beginning to emerge from this chaos; and even in the Roman Church the eyes of some were opened at last to many of these falsehoods. Still it was not yet easy to distinguish in every instance the real from the supposed monuments, to recognise the true principles of sacred criticism, nor to consult the materials for it, many of which were yet to be discovered²² Critical learning was confined to the assertions of Eusebius, and it was not yet known how to sift them. It was not yet certain that the Roman Church, already so strongly impelled to throw apocryphal books into the depository of the Old Testament, (which had been intrusted only to the Jews,) would not in the same way make free with the New, to foist also into it uninspired books; for it was not sufficiently understood that the providence of God is pledged, as we shall presently shew, never to allow this unfaithfulness to any church, good or bad.

SECTION SIXTH.

ITS EXCELLENCE.

336. If it entered into our plan to take account of the spiritual beauty and sublimity of the books of which we here establish the canonicity by historic proofs, we should be led to remark the original, profound, and pathetic character of this sacred epistle, its perfect adaptation to the wants of the primitive Church as it existed among the converts of the Israelitish population, the elevation of thought, the majesty of its style, and its noble simplicity. Above all, we should display its incomparable superiority, when compared with the uninspired writings of those first ages. While the latter present so many trivialities, oddities, and extravagances, here there is nothing of the sort; all is sober, wise, grave, and elevated. And there is great force in this negative proof. It manifests the operation of the Holy Spirit with the same clearness with which we have been struck on attempting to compare the apocryphal Gospels with the canonical.

SECTION SEVENTH.

WHICH JAMES IS ITS AUTHOR?

337. If many writers among the ancients, and many especially among the moderns, have appeared to attach great importance to the resolution of this question, “Was this James an apostle, or was he not?” yet all acknowledge that he was a brother of Jesus Christ; that he governed the church at Jerusalem for seven-and-twenty years; that he held the highest place among the apostles, of whom he was one of the three pillars, and the first of the three; that, in one word, he was that James so often mentioned by Luke in the Acts,²³ and by Paul in his epistles.²⁴ But this is not the question. The author of this epistle, was he, or was he not, one of the twelve? This is the point that has been so violently disputed. Was he the same as the apostle James the Less, the son, according to some, of Alpheus and Mary, the wife of Cleopas, the aunt of Jesus Christ; or, according to others, of Alpheus and of that Mary, the mother of James and Joses, who stood beside the cross?²⁵ Or rather, was he a third James, not known to the readers of the New Testament before the 12th chapter of Acts? In other words, was he styled brother of the Lord in virtue of being only a first cousin, or as a half-brother? Was he really one of the twelve?

338. If many persons, whether in impugning or defending the canonicity of this epistle, have attached so much importance to this question of the apostolicity of its author, we believe this view to be erroneous. And when, in the present day, the rationalists, to weaken the inspiration of the Scriptures, have done their utmost to prove that neither James, now under our consideration, nor Jude his brother, author of the epistle which bears his name, nor the John of the short epistles, nor the John of the Apocalypse, nor the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, nor even the Matthew of the first Gospel, were in the number of the twelve apostles, we think that their assertions, otherwise ill-founded as to the matter of fact, have very slight bearing on the argument.

In fact, inspiration was by no means confined to the apostolate. Many others besides the twelve received miraculous gifts, and among those gifts, that of inspiration. A writing was canonical, not because it was apostolic, but because it was inspired. The Gospel of Luke, that of Mark, and the Book of Acts, had, in virtue of being inspired scriptures, the same authority as the Gospels of Matthew or John, — God having chosen, according to His good pleasure, among the twelve and out of their circle, men whom He made the prophets of His New Testament, just as He selected from different stations in life a Solomon, an Amos, a Joel, or a Nehemiah, to make them the writers of His earlier oracles. For a book to have Divine authority, it was sufficient that it was inspired; and it was sufficient to prove a book to be inspired, that it was recognised as canonical, that it was recommended as such to the primitive churches by the apostles of the Lord, and that it was received by them. This was accomplished under the direction of that providence of the Lord which has caused all our sacred books to be inserted in succession in the collection of His New Testament, as it has done for the Old, and which has made the whole of Christendom, both in the East and West, unanimous on this one point for fifteen centuries. This is the fact established by the history of the canon, and which we shall examine in the sequel.

339. Yet, without wishing to enter too far into this question of the apostolic character of James, to which we attach only a secondary importance, we believe that we can render it probable and almost certain, that the author of our epistle was no other than James the son of Alpheus, as he has been thought to be among the fathers, by Chrysostom, Athanasius, Jerome, Amphilochius, Augustin, Theodoret, Theophylact, and the Chronicle of Alexandria.²⁶ For —

(1.) It is without sufficient reason that, in order to deny the apostleship of James, it is alleged that the title of apostle is not placed at the head of his epistle; for neither has John put it at the head of his, nor Jude, nor even Paul in a third of his,²⁷ and yet all three were apostles.

(2.) After the death of James the Greater, (whom Herod. killed in the year 44,) the Scriptures have always expressed themselves as knowing only one other James, the brother of the Lord, a man eminent in the Church of God. It follows that there could be no other person in the least distinguished of this name. What becomes of James the Less, if this eminent James was not he?

(3.) The Lord had four brothers, among whom are reckoned a Jude and a James, besides Joses and Simon, (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3.) But Jude calls himself the brother of James, (Jude 1,) and James is called, the brother of the Lord, (Gal. i. 19.) It will be very naturally asked whether these are not the same persons.

(4.) But, further, among the twelve we may reckon several of the brethren of the Lord, (1 Cor. ix. 5,) — among His brethren, a James, a Joses, and a Jude; among the twelve, a James, the son of Alpheus, and a Jude, brother of James,²⁸ who both were either His brothers properly so called, or His first cousins,²⁹ or His half-brothers. Must we not conclude that James, author of the epistle and brother of the Lord, (Gal. i. 19,) as well as Jude his brother, author of another epistle, have both been named, on the same grounds, brethren of the Lord, and both reckoned in the number of the apostles?

(5.) It would be very difficult to believe that the James of the Acts, of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and of the Epistle to the Galatians, if he had not been himself an apostle, would have enjoyed so high an authority in the presence of the apostles, either in the Council of Jerusalem³⁰ or in his own house, where the elders and apostles were convened, (Acts xx. 18,) or in Peter's estimation, (Acts xii. 17, Gal. ii, 12,) or in that of Paul, (1 Cor. ix. 5, Gal. i, 19, ii, 9, 12,) — “James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars,” said Paul; “other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.”

(6.) It would be also very difficult, if he was not the apostle the son of Alpheus, to believe that the Book of Acts, in the 12th chapter, would abruptly introduce him on the apostolic scene as henceforward the most notable and influential personage of the Church, without having said anything of his person or of his conversion, and without having made any mention of him elsewhere in the New Testament.

(7.) Above all, it will be very difficult to believe that Luke, at the moment just after he had been narrating the death of James the Great, when his readers would be supposed to know no other James besides him, excepting James the Less, would immediately proceed to speak in the same chapter of a third James, of whom Scripture had hitherto said nothing, without giving notice that he was not referring to the only James whom his readers would be supposed to know.

(8.) But it would, again, be very difficult to believe that Paul would clearly and positively call him an apostle, (Gal. i. 19,) if he had not been one, — “I went up to see Peter, .. . but other of the apostles saw I none, save (or unless) James the Lord’s brother.”

In vain would any one attempt to do violence to this verse by translating it, “I saw none other of the apostles, but I saw James;” for not an example can be found of ἕτερον οὐκ being followed by εἰ μή in the restricted sense of but. And, besides, in this passage, was it not Paul’s aim to establish that he had remained a long time after his conversion without having seen an apostle? — then James the brother of the Lord was an apostle.

(9.) When Paul says to the Corinthians, (ix. 5,) “Have we not power ... as well as other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” it is sufficiently clear that he was far from meaning to except the brethren of the Lord from the number of the apostles. It puts them, on the contrary, in their rank with Cephas, as if he had said, “as the other apostles, even the brethren of the Lord, and even Cephas.”

(10.) On the contrary hypothesis, there would be in the gospel history two persons named Joses, three named Jude, and four named James, which it is difficult to admit. Two called Joses, one the brother of Jesus, (Matt. xiii. 35,) the other His cousin or half-brother. Three called Jude — one Iscariot, the other a brother of Jesus Christ, (Matt. xiii. 55,) and another an apostle and son of an unknown James, — for we must then necessarily understand the expressions, Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου, (Luke xvi. 16, Acts i 13, John xiv. 22,) in the sense of Jude son of James, And, lastly, four persons called James — first, the son of Zebedee; secondly, the son of Alpheus, and cousin or half-brother of the Lord; thirdly, His own brother; and, lastly, an unknown James, father of the apostle Jude.

340. We must come to the conclusion, that if it is by no means necessary to establish the apostolicity of this epistle in order to prove its canonicity, yet we have the strongest reasons for admitting that the author was an apostle; while persons of a contrary opinion are at least unable to prove that he was not.

1) Gal. i.19, Jesus had at least four brothers — James, Joses, Jude, and Simon, (Mark vi. 3.)

2) Antiq., xx., 8; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., ii, 1.

3) Yet this name is not the same as Alpheus; and, as we have said elsewhere, it remains very doubtful whether James was the cousin, and not the brother, (strictly speaking,) of Jesus.

4) Albinus had arrived in October 61, at the feast of tabernacles. — Josephus, De Bello Jud., vi., 31.

5) Comment. on Heb. xiii. 7.

6) We say governed, without presuming to decide on the form of the administration which the churches of God practised in a great city such as salem.

7) Acts xxi, 20, (πόσαι μυριάδες.)

8) Hug, we have already said, (Prop. 35,) thinks that the Apocalypse was later, and for a time inserted in the Peshito.,

9) Geschichte des N. T. Canons, &c., p. 258. Zurich, 1842.

10) Others place it in 64, but, according to Josephus, it was in 62 that this governor scourged the famous Jesus, the son of Ananus. — De Bell. Jud., Vi. 5, § 3.

11) Ἐξ ἐκείνου Βμάλιστα τοῦ καιροῦ . . . . προσκοπτόντων ἐπί τὸ χεῖρον. — Antig. Jud., xx., 8.

12) Josephus, De Bello Jud., ii, 19, §§ 4-9; Matt. xxiv. 16; Mark xiii, 4; Luke xxi, 21; Dan. ix. 21, xi. 31.

13) Read again our extract from this epistle, Propp. 254-260,

14) Particularly Mandat., ii., ix., xi., xii., 5, 6, where the author cites James iv. 7,12; Simil., v., 4, viii, 6.

15) Especially Haeres,, iv., 16, § 2.

16) De Orat., viii.; Adv. Jud., 2.

17) Ad Serap., Ep.i.; Contra Arian, ov. 3.

18) Tom. xix. Opp., tom. iv., p. 306. ’.Ως ἐν τῇ φερομένῃ Ἰακώβου ἐπιστολῇ ἀνέγνωμεν. Neudecker translates φερομένῃ, in this passage, “universally acknowledged.” Others translate it, “which is put in circulation.” See likewise in Ep. ad Rom., lib. iv. Opp., tom. iv., pp. 535, 536.

19) Opp., xii, p. 412. “Petrus,” he says, “duabus epistolarum personat tubis, Jacobus quoque et Judas.”

20) For example, James iv. 2, and 1 Pet. v. 5, quoted by Clement of Rome, (ch. xx.) So James i. 5, and 2 Pet. iii. 3, 4, quoted by the same father, (ch. xxxiii.)

21) In all the editions of his Bible posterior to 1526, See Gerhard, Theologia Locus de Script. Sacra, § 279, (Frankfort, 1657;) Seckendorf, Commentar. de Lutheranismo, (Frankfort, 1692;) Calovius, Biblia Illustrata, (Frankfort, 1676, fol.,) tom. xi, p. 1393.

22) For example, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, which renders an important testimony to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and to the Epistle of James, was not discovered till 1628.

23) See Acts ix. 26-30, xii. 17, xv. 13-20, xxi. 18-25.

24) See Gal. i. 17-19, ii. 2, 6, 9, 12; 1 Cor. ix. 5, xv. 7.

25) For example, according to Kirchhofer, (p. 258,) who appears to believe that he was the son of Alpheus and of Mary, the mother of Jesus, by a second marriage, and identifies the latter with the Mary of whom we speak, (the mother of James and of Joses.);

We read in the Gospel of John, (xix. 25,) that the blessed mother of Jesus had a sister, named Mary (the wife) of Cleopas; and we learn that these two Maries, on the awful day of the crucifixion, met together at the cross with a third Mary, called of Magdala, (or Mary Magdalene.) Here is the question: — Where are these three Maries in the parallel accounts of the crucifixion in the evangelists? Where is the blessed mother of the Saviour? Have the three other evangelists forgotten her? This does not seem admissible. “Many women were there,” they tell us, (Matt. xxvii. 55,) “beholding afar off, . . . among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less, (son of Alpheus, Matt. x. 3,) and of Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children, and Salome,” (Mark xv. 40.) Can we believe that the three first evangelists neglected to name in this scene of Calvary the mother of the Saviour? and must we not rather think that this Mary, the mother of James the Less, of Joses, and of Jude, (brother of James, Acts i. 13, Jude, 1,) was this same mother of Jesus whom we find so often in the Gospels accompanied by the brethren of Jesus, (James and Joses, Jude and Simon, Mark vii. 3; Matt. xii, 46, xxvii. 55; Luke viii. 19;) and whom we see again on the day of the ascension, (when she was at least sixty years old,) accompanied still by the brethren of Jesus, in the upper chamber at Jerusalem? (Acts i. 13.)

We believe that the Bible has always honoured the condition of a mother in Israel, quite as much, at least, as that of a virgin. “Mary,” it is written, (Matt. i. 18,) “was espoused to Joseph; before they came together, (πρίν ’ἡ συνελθεῖν αὐτούς,) she was found with child of the Holy Ghost, . . and Joseph knew her not till (ἕως οὗ) she had brought forth her first-born son,” (ver. 25.)

All ages will call her “blessed;” but it must also be remarked, that the Holy Spirit has been so far from wishing to exalt the Son of man by the exaltation of His mother, that, on the contrary, He has been pleased to reveal to us all the humiliation of His birth, and that, in giving us His genealogy, He has taken care to name but four of His female ancestors in His whole parentage for forty-two generations. And these four females, who are they? First, the incestuous Tamar; then the unchaste Rahab; then Ruth the Moabitess; and, lastly, the unfortunate Bathsheba, who had been the wife of Uriah. The Holy Spirit does not teach us to speak of Mary but with honour; but, from the birth of her first-born, and through the whole course of the New Testament, He has never styled her the Virgin, as human traditions have done with so much zeal.

26) Thus have thought, in our day, Hug, De Wette, Guericke, and Reuss. Winer and Neander are not decided. On the other side, we find Origen, Eusebius, Hilary, Ambrose, Epiphanius, and Gregory of Nyssa. On such a question of criticism, the fathers are doctors, and not witnesses or judges; their authority is only that of the moderns.

27) The first and second to the Thessalonians, that to the Philippians, to Philemon, and to the Hebrews.

28) Otherwise called Lebbeus or Thaddeus, (Acts i. 18; John xiv. 22; Luke vi. 16.

29) Many object, not without reason, that it would be contrary to the usage of the Greeks to apply the term brother (ἀδελφός) to cousins. They add, that Paul, and Luke himself, when they wish to speak of cousins, make use of the terms ἀνεψιὸς οι· συγγενής, (Luke i. 86, 58; Col. iv. 10; Rom. ix. 5, xvi. 7, 11, 21.)

30) Acts xv. 19 — Διὸ ἐγὼ κρίνω What would the doctors of the Church of Rome say, if Peter had used such language?