A seventh appearing: To Iames.
After the appearing to above five hundred Brethren at once, which we suppose and not without ground to have been that last mentioned, the Apostle relateth that he was seen of James, 1 Cor. 15. 7. and then of all the Apostles: which doth plainly rank this appearance to James between that to the five hundred Brethren on the mountain in Galilee, and his coming to all the Apostles when they were come again to Jerusalem. Which James this was, Paul is silent of, as all the Evangelists are, of any such particular appearance. It is most like he means James the less, of whom he speaks oft elsewhere, and so doth the story of the Acts of the Apostles as one of the specialer note in the time of Pauls preaching a∣mong the Gentiles. We read oft in the Gospels, of Peter and James and John three Dis∣ciples of singular eminency in regard of the privacy that Christ vouchsafed to them at some special times, more then to the other Apostles, and in that he badged them with a peculiar mark of changing their names, and did not so by any of the other. But that James was the Son of Zebedee, Now when he was Martyred, Act. 12. you find that James the Son of Alpheus called James the less, came to be ranked in the like dignity with Peter and John, and was Minister of the Circumcision, in special manner with them, Gal. 2. 9. they to the Jews scattered abroad, and he residentiary in Judea. See Act. 15. 13. & 21. 18. Gal. 2. 13. If we question how he of all the rest of the Apostles came in, to make up that triumvirate when the other James was gone, we cannot tell where so pregnantly to give an answer as from hence; in that Christ vouchafed thus particularly to appear to him, which was not only an argument, but might carry the virtue of a command, to bring him into that rank, Office and Imployment, when the other James had run his course.