396 The NEW and COMPLETE LIFE sr our BLESSED LORD upon the apoftles, to qualify them for that great and arduous employment upon which they were fent, the etlablifhing the holy re- ligion of the Son of God amongft the child- ren of men in various parts ofthe world. The frrfl years of the m'iniltry of St. Matthias, was fpent in Judea, where he reaped a very confiderable harveft of fouls, and then travelled into different parts of the world, to publifh the glad-tidings of falvation to people who had never yet heard of a Saviour : but the particular parts he vifited, are not certainly known. The Greeks fuppofe, that he travelled eaflward; St. Jerom rays, his principal refidence was near the influx of the river Apfus into the .haven of Hyfcus in Cappadocia : but the people were remarkably rough and unci- vilized, fo that it is no wonder that heat laft fell a viflim to their ferocity ; though this did not happen till after he had long indefatigably laboured in the vineyard of his great Malter, and brought over vafl numbers to an acknowledgment and recep- tion of the truth. We are not told by what kind of death this apoftle left the regions of mortality, and fealed the truth of the gofpel he had fo affiduoufly preached with his blood. Dorotheus fays, he finifhed his courfe at Sebaftople, and was buried there near the temple of the fun. An ancient martyrolo- gift reports him to have been feized by the Jews, and, as a blafphemer, to have been (toned, and then beheaded : but the Greek offices, fupported herein by feveral ancient breviaries, tell us, that he was cru- cified. His body is by fome pretended to be now at Rome, where fome relics of it are fhesen with great veneration ; while others contend, that it is at Triers in Ger- many. Bollandus is of opinion, that the body of Matthias, now at Rome, is that of Matthias, who was bifhop ofJerufalem in the year sao, and whole hiflory they have confounded with that of the apoftle St. Matthias ; but Popifh legends and traditions are in no inftance to he relied on. The VIRGIN MARY; WE are taught by the prediétions of the prophets, that a virgin was to be the mother ofthe promifed Meffiah, and we are allo affured by the unanimous con- currenceof the evangelifts, that this virgin's name was Mary, the daughter ofJoachim and Anna, of the tribe ofJudah, and mar- ried to Jofeph of the fame tribe. The Scripture indeed tells us no more of the bleffed virgin's parents, than that fhe was of the family of David, and of the town of Bethlehem ; not fo much as their names being mentioned, unlefs by Heli, in St. Luke's genealogy, we underffand Joachim the virgin's father. All that is Paid con- cerning the birth of Mary and her parents, is to be found only in force apocryphal writings ; but which however are very an- cient. St. John rays, that Mary the wife MOTHER of JESUS. of Cleophas, who was the mother of thofe which the gofpel Ryles our Lord's brethren, was the virgin's filler. Mary then was of the royal race of David : fhe was allied likewife to the family of Aaron, fince Eli- zabeth the wife of Zacharias, and mother of John the Baptifl, was the couffin of Mary. In conformity to the Greek church, the Latins have for fome centuries pit ho- noured St. Joachim as the father of St. Anne, the mother of the bleffed virgin: and though God bath not been pleafed to acquaint us with the particulars of her birth; yet the Roman church, from a grateful fenfe of the infinite bleffìngs con- veyed to us by the bleffed Jesus, hátlt long celebrated her conceptionon theeighth of December in the Weft, and on the ninth in
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