Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/427

 *lem, is quite clear; and that by him, under these circumstances, were performed the great proportion of the pastoral duties among the believers in that city, may be most justly supposed; and his influence over Christian converts would by no means be limited by the walls of the Holy city. In his apostolic functions, he, of course, became known to all resorting to that place; and his faithful and eminent ministry in the capital of the Jewish religion would extend not only his fame, but the circle of his personal acquaintances, throughout all parts of the world, from which pilgrims came to the great annual festivals in Jerusalem. His immense apostolic diocese, therefore, could not be very easily bounded, nor was it defined with any exactness, to prevent it from running into the limits of those divisions of the fields of duty, in which Peter, Paul, John and others, had been more especially laboring. His influence among the Jews in general, (whether believers in Christ or not,) would, from various accounts, appear to have been greater than that of any other apostle; and this, combined with the circumstances of his location, would seem to entitle him very fairly to the rank and character of the apostle of the "." This was a term transferred from the abstract to the concrete sense, and was applied in a collective meaning to the great body of Jews in all parts of the world, through which they were scattered by chance, choice, or necessity.

Bishop of Jerusalem. The first application of this title to James, that appears on record, is in Eusebius, who quotes the still older authority of Clemens Alexandrinus. (Hist. Ecc., II. 1.) The words of Eusebius are, "Then James, who was called the brother of our Lord, because he was the son of Joseph, and whom, on account of his eminent virtue, those of ancient times surnamed the Just, is said to have first held the chair of the bishopric of Jerusalem. Clemens, in the sixth book of his Institutes, distinctly confirms this. For he says that 'after the Saviour's ascension, although the Lord had given to Peter, James, and John, a rank before all the rest, yet they did not therefore contend among themselves for the first distinction, but chose James the Just, to be bishop of Jerusalem.' And the same writer, in the seventh book of the same work, says these things of him, besides: 'To James the Just, and John, and Peter, did the Lord, after the resurrection, grant the knowledge, [the gnosis, or knowledge of mysteries,] and these imparted it to the other disciples.'"

In judging of the combined testimony of these two ancient writers, it should be observed that it is not by any means so ancient and direct as that of Polycrates, on the identity of Philip the apostle, and Philip the deacon, which these very Fathers quote with assent. Nor can their opinion be worth any more in this case than in the other. On no point, where a knowledge of the New Testament, and a sound judgment are the only guides, can the testimony of the Fathers be considered of any value whatever; for the most learned of them betray a disgraceful ignorance of the Bible in their writings; nor can the most acute of them compare, for sense and judgment, with the most ordinary of modern commentators. The whole course of Patristic theology affords abundant instances of the very low powers of these writers, for the discrimination of truth and falsehood. The science of historical criticism had no existence among them—nor indeed is there any reason why they should be considered persons of any historical authority, except so far as they can refer directly to the original sources, and to the persons immediately concerned in the events which they