XVIII.]

CHRIST'S PRAYER FOR Peter.

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danger, and we see that this prayer did not exclude a grievous fall. If no security of unbroken constancy in the faith was thereby gained to Peter, for whom the prayer was directly made, we have no ground for supposing that it had greater efficacy in the case of any alleged successors, to whom the petition can at most apply indirectly. It may be added that the work of 'strengthening' his brethren, thereby committed to Peter (one to which he was peculiarly bound, whose fall had perilled men's faith), was no peculiar prerogative of Peter's. The same word orηpíše is used in three or four places in the Acts (xiv. 22; xv. 32, 41; xviii. 23) of Paul's confirming the Churches of Syria and Cilicia, of Judas and Silas confirming the brethren at Antioch, of Timothy confirming the Thessalonian Church. And most remarkable of all, Paul when purposing to visit Rome, which is said to have been Peter's peculiar charge, expects that it is by his instrumentality this benefit will be conferred on the Roman Church: 'I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established eis tò ornpixθῆναι ὑμᾶς (Rom. i. 11).

I may here, in passing, mention another passage (2 Cor. xi. 28), where Paul shows himself strangely unconscious of Peter's prerogatives. For, having enumerated some of his labours and sufferings in the cause of the Gospel, he adds: Beside those things that are without, that which cometh on me daily, the care of all the Churches.' If, as Roman theory would have it, the care of all the Churches was Peter's province, St. Paul is most unreasonable in complaining of the trouble he had incurred through gratuitously meddling with another man's work, thus literally becoming what St. Peter himself called an ἀλλοτριοεπίσκοπος (1 Pet. iv. 15). But Paul elsewhere (Gal. ii. 8) limits Peter's province to the Apostleship of the Circumcision,' that is to say, to the superintendence of the Jewish Churches; and states that the work of evangelizing the Gentiles had, by agreement with the three chief Apostles, been specially committed to himself and Barnabas.

This prayer for Peter is so clearly personal that some Roman Catholic controversialists do not rely on this passage

at all. Neither can they produce any early writers who deduce from it anything in favour of the Roman See. Bellarmine can quote nothing earlier than the eleventh century, except the suspicious evidence of some Popes in their own cause, of whom the earliest to speak distinctly is Pope Agatho in his address to the sixth general council, A.D. 680. How earlier Fathers understood the passage will appear plainly from Chrysostom's commentary,* when he answers the question why Peter is especially addressed: He said this sharply reproving him, and showing that his fall was more grievous than that of the others, and needed greater assistance. For he had been guilty of two faults, that he contradicted our Lord when He said all shall be offended, saying, "though all should be offended, yet will I never be offended;" and secondly, that he set himself above the others and we may add a third fault, that he ascribed all to himself. In order, then, to heal these diseases, our Lord permitted him to fall; and therefore passing by the others He turns to him: "Simon, Satan hath desire to have you, that he may sift you as wheat (that is to say, might trouble you, harass you, tempt you), but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." Why, if Satan desired to have all, does not our Lord say, I have prayed for all? Is it not plainly for the reason I have mentioned? By way of rebuke to him, and showing that his fall was worse than that of the others He turns His speech to him.'t Similar language is used by

Hom. 82. In Matt. xxvi., vol. vii., p. 785.

+ It is proper to mention, by way of set off, that in the Homilies on the Acts, ascribed to Chrysostom (vol. ix., p. 26), the part taken by Peter in initiating the election of Matthias is treated as resulting from the prerogatives bestowed in the words recorded in St. Luke's Gospel: eiKórws πρῶτος τοῦ πράγματος αὐθεντεῖ, ἅτε αὐτὸς πάντας ἐγχειρισθείς, πρὸς γὰρ τοῦτον εἶπεν ὁ Χριστός· καὶ σύ ποτε ἐπιστρέψας στήριξον τοὺς ἀδελφούς σου. Chrysostom's authorship of the Homilies on the Acts has been much disputed on account of their great inferiority, both in style and treatment, to his unquestioned writings. Erasmus is so impolite as to say Nihil unquam legi indoctius. Ebrius ac stertens scriberem meliora.' Great preachers, however, are not always at their best, and possibly these Homilies, as they have come down to us, are a bad report of sermons really delivered by St. Chrysostom. And vacillations of interpretations are so common with the Fathers, that I do not regard it as a proof of diverse authorship that the text in St. Luke is dealt with differently in these Homilies and those in St. Matthew. But on no supposition is the

XVIII.]

THE TEXT FEED MY SHEEP.'

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a much later expositor, the Venerable Bede, in his commentary on this text of St. Luke. He explains it as I have by praying preserved thy faith that it should not fail under the temptation of Satan, so also do thou be mindful to raise up and comfort thy weaker brethren by the example of thy penitence, lest perchance they despair of pardon.' It is plain that the great teachers of the Church were ignorant for hundreds of years that this text contained more than a personal promise to the Apostle about to be tried by a special temptation, and that they never found out it was a charter text revealing the constitution of the Christian Church.

I come now to the third text, the 'Feed my sheep' of St. John; and here too, certainly, there is no indication in the text itself that there was an appointment to an office peculiar in its kind. The office of tending Christ's sheep is certainly not peculiar to St. Peter. It is committed, in even more general terms, by St. Paul to the Ephesian elders, Feed the Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood' (Acts xx. 28)' and by Peter himself to his fellow elders, Feed the flock of God which is among you' (1 Pet. v. 2). The sequel of the story, too, is adverse to the supposition that our Lord meant to confer on St. Peter the oversight of his fellow Apostles. For when he asks concerning St. John, 'What shall this man do?' he receives something like a rebuke: 'What is that to thee? follow thou me.' I don't know any respectable Patristic authority for understanding the passage otherwise than Cyril of Alexandria does, whose commentary we may well adopt: 'If anyone asks for what cause he asked Simon only, though the other disciples were present, and what he means by "Feed my lambs," and the like, we answer that St. Peter, with the other disciples, had been already chosen to the Apostleship, but because meanwhile Peter had fallen (for under great fear he had thrice denied the Lord), he now heals him that was sick, and exacts a threefold confession in place of his triple denial, contrasting

question at issue more than the speculative one, what prerogatives were enjoyed by Peter personally; no ambiguity of interpretation could have been tolerated if Chrysostom had imagined that the text in Luke determined the constitution of the Church in his own day.

the former with the latter, and compensating the fault with the correction.' And again, 'By the triple confession Peter abrogates the sin contracted in his triple denial. For from what our Lord says, "Feed my lambs," a renewal of the Apostolate already delivered to him is considered to have been made which presently absolves the disgrace of his sin and blots out the perplexity of his human infirmity.' I shall not detain you longer with the Scripture argument; nor shall I examine, for instance, how Romanist advocates struggle to make out that the appointment of Matthias was made by the single authority of Peter, because the whole history of the Acts (as, for instance, the appointment of the seven deacons, the conversion of Samaria, where we find not 'Peter took John' but the Apostles sent Peter and John '), shows that the original constitution of the Church was not monarchical, and that when that of the Jerusalem Church became so, James, and not Peter, was its ruler. I may mention that in the Clementines of which I shall have occasion to speak again presently, and which did so much to raise the authority attributed to Peter in the Church, it is James, not Clement, who is bishop of bishops and supreme ruler; and to James Peter must yearly render an account of his doings.*

In a still later forgery, the Decretal Epistles, this is rectified. Among these is a letter supposed to be written by Clement, after Peter's death, to James, although, according to Eusebius, James died before Peter. In this letter Clement, as Peter's successor, assumes the position of James's master and teacher:- Quoniam sicut a beato Petro Apostolo accepimus, omnium Apostolorum patre qui claves regni coelestis accepit, qualiter tenere debemus de sacramentis, te ex ordine nos decet instruere."

I

COUNT it as proved in the last Lecture that we have no Scripture warrant for regarding Peter as more than a foremost (or, if you will, the foremost) member of the Apostolic college, or as having any precedence but such as his boldness, promptitude, and energy gave him; and that there is no trace of his having held over the Church any official position of headship, wherein, according to Christ's intention, he was to have a successor. I go on now to consider Peter's connexion with Rome, which I look on as a mere historical problem, without any doctrinal significance whatever way it may be determined. The generally received account among Roman Catholics, and one which can claim a long traditional acceptance, is that Peter came to Rome in the second year of Claudius (that is, A.D. 42), and that he held the see twentyfive years, a length of episcopate never reached again until by Pio Nono, who exceeded it. It used to be said (but I believe untruly) that as part of the ceremony of a Pope's installation he was addressed 'Non videbis annos Petri.' Now if it is possible to prove a negative at all, we may conclude, with at least high probability, that Peter was not at Rome during any of the time on which the writings of the canonical Scriptures throw much light, and almost certainly that during that time he was not its bishop. We have an Epistle of Paul to the Romans full of salutations to his friends there, but no mention of their bishop. Nor is anything said of work done by Peter in founding that Church. On the contrary, it is implied that no Apostle had as yet visited it; for such is the inference from the passage already cited, in which Paul expresses his wish to see the Roman Christians