Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/384



book, there does seem to me to be some reason for hesitation on this point, where the Fathers ought to have been as well informed as any body. They must have known surely, whether, according to the notions of those primitive ages of Christianity, there was any incompatibility between the apostleship and the deaconship! If their testimony is worth anything on such points, it ought to weigh so much on this, as to cause a doubt whether they are not right, and the moderns wrong. However, barely suggesting this query, without attempting a decision, as Luther says, "I will afford to other and higher spirits, occasion to reflect."

This is all the satisfaction that the brief records of the inspired or uninspired historians of Christianity can give the inquirer, on the life of this apostle;—so unequal were the labors of the first ministers of Christ, and their claims for notice. Philip, no doubt, served the purpose for which he was called, faithfully; but in these brief sketches, there are no traces of any genius of a high character, that could distinguish him above the thousands that are forgotten, but whose labors, like those of the minutest animals in a mole-hill, contribute an indispensable portion to the completion of the mass, in whose mighty structure all their individual efforts are swallowed up forever.

And though the ancient Polycrates may have blundered grievously, in respect to the apostle's personal identity, his hope of the glorious resurrection of those whom he supposed to have died in Asia will doubtless be equally well rewarded, if, to the amazement of the Fathers, the apostle Philip should rise at last from the dust of Babylon, or the ashes of Jerusalem, while his namesake, the evangelist, shall burst from his tomb in Hierapolis. "For," as Polycrates truly says, "in Asia, some great lights have gone down, which shall rise again on that day of the Lord's approach, when he shall come from the heavens in glory, and shall raise up all his saints;—Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who sleeps at Hierapolis, with his venerable virgin daughters,—John, who lay in the bosom of the Lord, and who is laid at Ephesus,—Polycarp, at Smyrna,—Thraseas, at Eumenia,—Sagaris, at Laodicea,—Papirius and Melito, at Sardis—all await the visitation of the Lord from the heavens, in which he shall raise them from the dead."