one who learns any thing from another: thus, the followers of any teacher, philosopher, &c. are called disciples. In the Christian sense, they were followers of Jesus Christ, in general; but in a more refined sense, the disciples denote those alone who were the immediate followers and attendants on his person, of which there were seventy or seventy-two. The names disciple and apostle are often synonymously used in the gospel-history; but sometimes the apostles are distinguished from disciples, as persons selected out of the number of disciples, to be the principal ministers of his religion; of these there were only twelve. The Latin kept the festival of the seventy or seventy-two disciples on July 15th, and the Greeks on January 4th.