St. James is thus mentioned by Hegesippus (apud. Euseb. ii.23); "
He was holy from his mother's womb; wine and strong drink he did not drink;
neither did he eat of flesh; the scissors never touched his head; he anointed
not himself with oil ; he frequented not the baths; he wore not woollen, but
linen garments." From this passage it has been thought by some writers
that Hegesippus was an Ebionite; this cannot have been, for he states that the
result of his journeys, undertaken for this express purpose, had been, that he
had found an uniformity of faith in all the Churches which he visited, in the
east and west. An Ebionite could not have written thus. If, in a fragment
preserved by Stephen Gabarus (apud Routh, i. 203), he seems to reject the
expression, " that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, and that it hath not
come into the heart of man to conceive, the good things prepared by God for
those who love him," by a reference to Matt. xiii. 16, he certainly does
not wish to differ from St. Paul, but only to refute a misinterpretation of the
Gnostics. This description of the Nazarean life of the apostle, he probably
drew from an apocryphal book, cited by St. Epiphanius, entitled, Αναβαθμοι
Ίακωβου. (Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, A History of the Church, 4
vols. (trans. Edward Cox; London: C. Dolman, 1840], 1:117)
