XVIII.] THE THREE TEXTS. 333 ceeding so repugnant to Jewish traditions; and Peter did not justify himself by pleading his possession of sovereign authority to decide the Church's action in such a matter, but by relating a special revelation sanctioning what he had done. As for the Epistles, they certainly give no support to the theory of Peter's supremacy; and in the story of Paul's resistance to Peter at Antioch they throw in its way one formidable stumbling-block. Still less is any hint given that Peter was to transmit his office to any successor. I need not say that we are not so much as told that Peter was ever at Rome. The New Testament contains two letters from Peter himself; one purporting to be written immediately before his death, and with the express object that those whom he was leaving behind should be able to keep in memory the things that it was most important for them to know (2 Pet. i. 15). We may be sure that if Peter had any privileges to bequeath he would have done so in this his last will, and that if there was to be any visible head of the Church to whom all Christians were to look for their spiritual guidance, Peter would in these letters have commended him to the reverence of his converts, and directed them implicitly to obey him. Let us turn now to the texts appealed to. That in St. Matthew is so familiar to you all that I need not read it: but I will give you, in the words of Dr. Murray, one of the ablest of the Maynooth Professors, what this text is supposed to mean. He says, 'Peter was thus established by our Lord as the means of imparting to the Church indefectibility and unity, and of permanently securing these properties to her. Peter was invested with supreme spiritual authority to legislate for the whole Church; to teach, to inspect, to judge, to proscribe erroneous doctrine, or whatever would tend to the destruction of the Church; to appoint to offices or remove therefrom, or limit or extend the jurisdiction thereof, as the safety or welfare of the Church would require: in one word, to exercise as supreme head and ruler and teacher and pastor all spiritual functions whatever that are necessary for the well-being or existence of the Church.'* It takes one's * Irish Annual Miscellany, iii. 300. breath away to read a commentary which finds so much more in a text than lies on the surface of it. If our Lord meant all this, we may ask, why did He not say it? Who found out that He meant it? The Apostles did not find it out at the time; for up to the night before His death the dispute went on, which should be the greatest. When James and John petitioned that in His kingdom they might sit with Him, one on each hand, they do not seem to have suspected, and their Master then gave them no hint, that the chief place in His kingdom had already been given away. There is, as I have just pointed out, no other indication in the New Testament that the Apostolic Church so understood our Lord's words recorded by St. Matthew. It remains that this interpretation must have been got from unwritten tradition. We eagerly turn to explore the records of that tradition. Here, surely, if anywhere, we shall find that unanimous consent of the Fathers of which the Council of Trent speaks. I have already said that I do not refuse to attribute a certain weight to tradition in the interpretation of Scripture. I have owned that an interpretation of any passage has a certain presumption against it if it is clearly new-fangled: if it derive from the text a doctrine which the Church of the earliest times never found there. The more important the doctrine, the greater the presumption that if true it would have been known from the first. But certainly here is a case where, if the Fathers were ever unanimous, they could not fail to be so if the Roman theory be true. This is no obscure text; no passing remark of an inspired writer; but the great charter text, which for all time fixed the constitution of the Christian Church. If, in these words, our Lord appointed a permanent ruler over His Church, the Church would from the first have resorted to that authority for guidance and for the composing of all disputes, and there never could have been any hesitation to recognize the meaning of the charter on which the authority was founded. Yet I suppose there is not a text in the whole New Testament on which the opinion of the Fathers is so divided; and you have to come down late indeed before anyone finds the Bishop of Rome there. XVIII.] THE TEXT FROM ST. MATTHEW. 335 The most elaborate examination of the opinions of the Fathers is in an Epistle* by the French Roman Catholic Launoy, in which, besides the interpretation that Peter was the rock, for which he produces seventeen Patristic testimonies, he gives the interpretations that the rock was the faith which Peter confessed, supported by forty-four quotations;† that the rock was Christ Himself, supported by sixteen; and that the Church was built on all the Apostles, supported by eight. But as Launoy was a Gallican, and as through the progress of development he would not be acknowledged as a good Roman Catholic by the party now in the ascendant, I prefer to quote the Jesuit Maldonatus, whose Romanism is of the most thorough-going kind, and who I may add, on questions where his doctrinal prepossessions do not affect his judgment, is an interpreter of Scripture whose acuteness makes him worth. consulting. He begins his commentary on this passage by saying, 'There are among ancient authors some who interpret "on this rock," that is, on this faith," or "on this confession of faith in which thou hast called me the Son of the living God," as Hilary, and Gregory Nyssen,§ and Chrysostom,|| and Cyril of Alexandria.¶ St Augustine going still further away from the true sense, interprets on this rock," that is, "on myself Christ," because Christ was the rock. But Origen " on this rock," that is to say, on all men who have the same faith.' And then Maldonatus goes on with truly Protestant liberty to discuss each of these interpretations, pronouncing them to be as far as possible from Christ's meaning; and to prove, not by the method of authority, but of reason, that these Fathers were wrong, and that his own interpretation is the right one. 66 I ought to tell you, however, that St. Augustine is not * Epist. vii., Opp. vol. v., pt. 2. p. 99: Geneva, 1731. This interpretation may claim the sanction of the Council of Trent, which (Sess. III.) describes the Creed as 'principium illud in quo omnes qui fidem Christi profitentur necessario conveniunt, ac fundamentum firmum et unicum contra quod portae inferi nunquam praevalebunt.' De Trin. lib. vi., 36, 37. De advent. Dom. in Carne adv. Judaeos. Hom. in hunc locum, et Orat. ii., Cont. Judaeos. In one of his latest perfectly uniform in his interpretation. works, his Retractations, which does not mean retractations in our modern sense of the word, but a re-handling of things previously treated of, he mentions having sometimes adopted the language which St. Ambrose had used in a hymn, and which designates Peter as the rock of the Church, but most frequently he had interpreted the passage of Christ Himself, led by the texts "that rock was Christ," and "other foundation can no man lay." He leaves his readers at liberty to choose, but his mature judgment evidently inclines to the latter interpretation. He lays more stress than I am inclined to do on the distinction between Petra and Petrus, regarding the latter as derived from the former in the same manner as Christianus from Christus.* Thou art Petrus,' he says, 'and on this Petra which thou hast confessed, saying, “thou art Christ the Son of the living God," will I build my Church : that is to say, on myself. I will build thee on myself, not myself on thee. Men willing to build on man said, “I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Peter." But others, who were unwilling to be built upon Peter, but would be built on the rock-not on Petrus but on Petra-said, I am of Christ.' Such is Augustine's commentary, which, using my Protestant liberty, I shall not scruple presently to reject. Other Fathers besides Augustine and Origen are not quite uniform in their interpretation: and this is not to be wondered at; because, as This exposition of St. Augustine's was derived, probably indirectly, from Origen, who, though he speaks incidentally of Peter on whom the Church is built' (Ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 25), yet, when directly commenting on the passage in St. Matthew (tom. xii. §§ 10, 11), teaches that every one who makes the same confession of faith as Peter may claim the blessing given to Peter as given to himself. If you imagine that it was on Peter alone the Church is built, what then would you say about John the son of Thunder, or any other of the Apostles?' But he teaches that if we make Peter's confession we all are 'Peters.' Just as because we are members of Christ we are called Christians;' so Christ being the Petra -the rock-every one who drinks of that spiritual rock which follows us' is entitled to be called Petrus. 'Αλλὰ παὶ Χριστοῦ μέλη ὄντες παρώνυμοι ἐχρημάτισαν χριστιανοὶ, πέτρας δὲ Πέτροι. . . . Πέτρος γὰρ πᾶς ὁ χριστοῦ μαθητὴς, ἀφ ̓ οὗ ἔπινον οἱ ἐκ πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας, καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν τὴν τοιαύτην πέτραν οἰκοδομεῖται ὁ ἐκκλησιαστικὸς πᾶς λόγος καὶ ἡ κατ' αὐτὸν πολιτεία· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ τῶν τελείων, ἐχόντων τὸ ἄθροισμα των συμπληρούντων τὴν μακαριότητα λόγων καὶ ἔργων καὶ νοημάτων, ἔστιν ἡ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ οἰκοδομουμένη ἐκκλησία. · XVIII.] THE ROCK OF THE CHURCH. 337 we shall presently see, there is a sense in which the Church is founded on Christ alone, a sense in which it was founded on Peter's confession, a sense in which it was founded on Peter or on all the Apostles; so that no matter which interpretation gives the true sense of this particular passage, it is quite easy to harmonize the doctrines which different Fathers derive from it. But none of these can be reconciled with the interpretation which regards this text as containing the charter of the Church's organization. A charter would be worthless if it were left uncertain to whom it was addressed or what powers it conferred. So that the mere fact that Fathers differed in opinion as to what was meant by 'this rock,' and that occasionally the same Father wavered in his opinion on this subject, proves that none of them regarded this text as one establishing a perpetual constitution for the Christian Church. My case is so strong that I could afford to sweep away all evidence of diversity of Patristic interpretation of this text. I could afford to put out of court every Father who interprets this rock' of Christ, or of all the Apostles, or of Peter's confession, and to allow the controversy to be determined by the evidence of those Fathers only who understand this rock' of Peter himself, and by examining whether they understood this text as conferring a perpetual privilege on Peter and a local successor. But at pre 6 sent it is enough that the extract I read from St. Augustine shows plainly enough that at the beginning of the fifth century it had not been discovered that this text contained the charter of the Church's organization, the revelation of the means of imparting to her indefectibility and unity. And if, as I said, it had ever been known in the Church that this was what Christ intended by the words, the tradition could not have been lost; for the constant habit of resorting to this authority would have kept fresh the memory of our Lord's commands. We may, then, safely conclude that our Lord did not, in that address to Peter, establish a perpetual constitution for His Church; but as to the historical question, whether He did not, in these words, confer some personal prerogative on Peter, I do not myself scruple to differ from the eminent |