Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/44

 *nence for genius, zeal, knowledge, prudence, or some other quality which fitted him for taking the lead of the chief ministers of the Messiah. The word "first," which accompanies his name in Matthew's list, certainly appears, in the view of some, to have some force above the mere tautological expression of a fact so very self-evident from the collocation, as that he was first on the list. The Bible shows not an instance of a list begun in that way, with this emphatic word so vainly and unmeaningly applied. The analogies of expression in all languages, ancient and modern, would be very apt to lead a common reader to think that the numeral adjective thus prefixed, was meant to give the idea that Simon Peter was put first for some better reason than mere accident. Any person, in giving a list of twelve eminent men, all devoted to a common pursuit, and laboring in one great cause, whose progress he was attempting to record, would, in arranging them, if he disregarded the circumstances of seniority, &c., very naturally give them place according to their importance in reference to the great subject before him. If, as in the present case, three different persons should, in the course of such a work, make out such a list, an individual difference of opinion about a matter of mere personal preference, like this, might produce variations in the minor particulars; but where all three united in giving to one and the same person, the first and most honorable place, the ordinary presumption would unavoidably be, that the prior rank of the person thus distinguished, was considered, by them at least, at the time when they wrote, as decidedly and indisputably established. The determination of a point so trifling being without any influence on matters of faith and doctrine, each evangelist might, without detriment to the sanctity and authority of the record which he bears, be left to follow his own private opinion of the most proper principle of arrangement to be followed in enumerating the apostles. Thus, while it is noticeable that the whole twelve were disposed in six pairs by each of the evangelists, yet the order and succession of these is somewhat changed, by different circumstances directing the choice of each writer. Matthew modestly puts himself after Thomas, with whom he seems by all the gospel lists, to have some close connection; but Mark and Luke combine to give Matthew the precedence, and invert the order in which, through unobtrusiveness, he had, as it would seem, robbed true merit of its due superiority. And yet these points of precedence were so little looked to, that in the first chapter