5. One Joséph, the son of Cezebias, was in the beginning of those days high priest; put into that office by Agrippa, who not long be- fore had put him out. On the death of Festus he thrust him out again, and placed Ananus, his son, in his stead. This man, a young rash fellow, by sect and opinion a Sadducee (who of all others were the most violent in their hatred of the Christians, being especially engaged therein by the peculiar opinion of their sect and party, which was the denial of the resurrection), first began a direct per- secution of the church. Before his advancement to the priesthood, their afflictions and calamities were, for the most part, common unto them with other peaceable men. Only the rude and impious mul- titude, with other seditious persons, seem to have offered especial violences unto their assemblies and meetings; which some of. the more unsteadfast and weak began to omzt on that account, chap. x. 25. Judicial proceeding against them as to their lives, when this Epistle was written, there doth not appear to have been any; for the apostle tells them, as we before observed, that as yet they had “not resisted unto blood,” chap. xu. 4. But this Ananus, the Sadducee, presently after being placed in power by Agrippa, taking advantage of the death of Festus, and the time that passed before Albinus, his successor, was settled in the province, convenes James before himself and his associates. There, to make short work, he is condemned, and immediately stoned. And it is not unlikely but that other private persons suffered together with him,
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6. The story, by the way, of the martyrdom of this James is at large reported by Eusebius out of Hegesippus, Hist. Eccles. lib. ii. cap. xxiil.; in the relation whereof he is followed by Jerome and sundry others. I shall say no more of the whole story, but that the consideration of it is very sufficient to persuade any man to use the liberty of his own reason and judgment in the perusal of the writings of the ancients. For of the curcwmstances therein reported about this James and his death, many of them,—as his being of the line of the priests, his entering at his pleasure into the sanctum sanctorum, his being carried up and set by a great multitude of people on a pinnacle of the temple,—are so palpably false that no colour of probability can be given unto them, and most of the rest seem altogether incredible. That, in general, this holy apostle of Jesus Christ, his kinsman according to the flesh, was stoned by Ananus, during the anarchy between the govern- ments of Festus and Albinus, Josephus, who then lived, testifies, and all ecclesiastical historians agree.
7. The churches at this time in Jerusalem and Judea were very numerous. The oppressors, robbers, and seditious of all sorts, being wholly intent upon the pursuit of their own ends, filling the go- vernment of the nation with tumults and disorders; the disciples of Christ, who knew that the time of their preaching the gospel unto their countrymen was but short, and even now expiring, fol- lowed their work with diligence and success,—being not greatly re- garded in the dust of that confusion which was raised by the nation’s rushing into its fatal ruin.
8. All these churches, and the multitudes that belonged unto them, were altogether, with the profession of the gospel, addicted zealously unto the observation of the law of Moses. The synod, indeed, at Jerusalem had determined that the yoke of the law should not be put upon the necks of the Gentile converts, Acts xv. But eight or nine years after that, when Paul came up unto Jerusalem again, chap. xxi. 20-22, James informs him that the many thou- sands of the Jews who believed did all zealously observe the law of Moses; and, moreover, judged that all those who were Jews by birth ought to do so also; and on that account were like enough to as- semble in a disorderly multitude, to inquire into the practice of Paul himself, who had been ill reported of amongst them. On this account they kept their assemblies distinct from those of the Gentiles all the world over; as, amongst others, Jerome informs us, in his notes on the first chapter of the Galatians. All those He- brews, then, to whom Paul wrote this Epistle, continued in the use and practice of Mosaical worship, as celebrated in the temple and their synagogues, with all other legal institutions whatever. Whether they did this out of an unacquaintedness with their liberty in Christ,
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or out of a pertinacious adherence unto their own prejudicate opi- nions, I shall not determine.
9. From this time forward the body of the people of the Jews saw not a day of peace or quietness: tumults, seditions, outrages, robberies, murders, increased all the nation over. And these things, by various degrees, made way for that fatal war, which, beginning about six or seven years after the death of James, ended in the utter desolation of the people, city, temple, and worship, foretold so long before by ‘Daniel the prophet, and intimated by our Saviour to lie at the door. This was that “day of the Lord” whose sudden approach the apostle declares unto them, chap. x. 36, 37, “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might re- ceive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” Muixpiv goo éoov,—‘ “ A very little while,” less than you think of, or imagine;’ the manner whereof he declares, chap. xi. 26, 27. And by this means he effectually di- verted them from a pertinacious adherence unto those things whose dissolution from God himself was so nigh at hand; which argument was also afterwards pressed by Peter, 2 Epist. chap. iu.