and continued so to his death; and (4) that those who succeeded Peter in this local office were also the inheritors of his jurisdiction over the whole Church. On this last point alone there would be ample room for controversy. If there be any faith due to the legend that Peter was Bishop of Rome there is some due also to the story that he had been previously Bishop of Antioch, which see might therefore contest with Rome the inheritance of his prerogatives. Again, it was never imagined that the bishop of the town where an Apostle might chance to die thereby derived a claim to apostolic jurisdiction. But Roman Catholic controversialists make short work of the dispute on the last two heads. They argue that if they can prove that Christ ever provided His Church with an infallible guide, and intended him to have a successor, we need not doubt that the Pope is that successor, since there is no rival claimant of the office. It is the more needful, then, to scrutinize carefully the proofs of the first two heads, as these are made to do double duty: not only to prove the proposition on behalf of which they are alleged, but also to induce us to dispense with proof of the others.

The Scripture proof, in the main, consists of three texts; sometimes called the three texts, viz. (1) the promise of our Lord to Peter (recorded Matt. xvi.), that upon this rock He would build His Church; (2) His promise (recorded Luke xxii.), 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted strengthen thy brethren'; and (3) the commission Feed my sheep,' related in the last chapter of St. John. Before giving a particular examination to these texts I would remark on the general presumption against the Roman Catholic theory arising out of the whole tenor of the N. T. history, from which we should conclude that, highly as Peter was honoured, he was not placed in an office having jurisdiction over the other Apostles; for the Apostolate is ever spoken of as the highest office in the Christian Church; 'God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets' (1 Cor. xii. 28): not, as it ought to be if the Roman theory had been true, first Peter, then the Apostles. The history related in the Acts gives no trace of Peter's having

exercised the prerogatives which are now attributed to him. To take a single example:-When Peter took the decisive step of eating with one uncircumcised, the Church of Jerusalem (Acts xi.) called him sharply to account for a proceeding 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 it 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 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

* Irish Annual Miscellany, iii. 300.

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.

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.'

· 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.'

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.

I ought to tell you, however, that St. Augustine is not perfectly uniform in his interpretation. In one of his latest 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

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*This expositon 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. 'Aλà kal 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 ἐκκλησιατικὸς πᾶς λόγος καὶ ἡ κατ' αὐτὸν πολιτεία· ἐν ἑκάστῳ γὰρ τῶν τελείων, ἐχόντων τὸ ἄθροισμα τῶν συμπληρούντων τὴν μακαριότητα λόγων καὶ ἔργων καὶ νοημάτων, ἔστιν ἡ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ οἰκοδομουμένη ἐκκλησία.

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