PETER'S ALLEGED ROMAN EPISCOPATE.

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

in order that he might impart some spiritual gift to the end that they might be established. We have letters of Paul from Rome in which no message is sent from Peter; and in the very last of these letters Paul complains of being left alone, and that only Luke was with him. Was Peter one of the deserters? The Scripture accounts of Peter place him in Judæa, in Antioch, possibly in Corinth, but finally in Babylon. I have discussed, in a former series of Lectures, whether this is to be understood literally, or whether we have here the first indication of Peter's presence at Rome. But plainly, if Peter was ever at Rome, it was after the date of Paul's second Epistle to Timothy.

Some Protestant controversialists have asserted that Peter was never at Rome; but though the proofs that he was there are not so strong as I should like them to be if I had any doctrine depending on it, I think the historic probability is that he was; though, as I say, at a late period of the history, and not long before his death. I dare say some of you know that there was a controversy on this subject at Rome not long after the Pope ceased to be the temporal ruler of the city. Quite lately I have seen it still placarded as 'the immortal discussion at Rome.' Roman Catholic priests are, as a general rule, not fond of controversy; but they were tempted into it this time by the fact that victory seemed certain; for the Protestant champions had undertaken the impossible task of proving the negative, that Peter was never at Rome. They might as well have undertaken to prove out of the Bible that St. Bartholomew never preached in Pekin. I don't suppose he did; but I don't know how you could prove out of Scripture that he didn't. The event showed, however, of how little use a logical victory sometimes is. When the Protestants began to use such arguments as I employed just now in order to prove that Peter had not been twenty-five years bishop, the Romanists interrupted them by pointing. out that that was not the question. You undertook to prove he was never at Rome. We need not talk about twenty-five years; if he was there a day, or an hour, your cause is lost.' Thereupon their opponents raised a shout of triumph. 'Here are the men who, until we encountered them, had been assert

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THE PLACE OF PETER'S MARTYRDOM.

349

ing a twenty-five years' episcopate; and now they give up the whole fable the moment they are grappled with, and are reduced to contend for a day or an hour.'

For myself, I am willing, in the absence of any opposing tradition, to accept the current account that Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome. We know with certainty from John xxi. that Peter suffered martyrdom somewhere. If Rome, which early laid claim to have witnessed that martyrdom, were not the scene of it, where then did it take place? Any city would be glad to claim such a connexion with the name of the Apostle, and none but Rome made the claim. The place of Peter's martyrdom was, no doubt, known to St. John, and, we may reasonably think, was also known in the circle where his Gospel was first published. Now all agree that the date of that publication was quite late in the apostolic age; and the interval, till the time when men began to make written record of what they could learn by apostolic tradition, is too short to allow of the true tradition as to the place of St. Peter's martyrdom being utterly lost, and a quite false one substituted. In the earliest uninspired Christian writing, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, he makes mention of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, but does not name the place where they suffered. There is a fair presumption, however, that in this Roman document Rome is intended. The earliest express mention of Italy as the place of their martyrdom is in a letter of Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, about 170. There is mention of their tombs at Rome in a dialogue of Caius the Roman presbyter, about A. D. 200, and from that time this tradition reigned without a rival. If this evidence for Peter's Roman martyrdom be not deemed sufficient, there are few things in the history of the early Church which it will be possible to demonstrate.

From the question, whether Peter ever visited Rome, we pass now to a very different question: whether he was its bishop. Absentees are not popular in this country; but the worst of absentees is an absentee bishop. We think it scandalous when we read of bishops a hundred years ago who never went near their sees; but this abuse has now been completely rooted out of our Church. Canons against non-residence

were made in earlier times; but, if we are to believe Roman theory, the bad example had been set by St. Peter, who was the first absentee bishop. If he became bishop of Rome in the second year of Claudius, he appears never afterwards to have gone near his see until close upon his death. Nay, he never even wrote a letter to his Church while he was away; or if he did, they did not think it worth preserving.

Baronius (in Ann. Iviii. § 51) owns the force of the Scripture reasons for believing that Peter was not in Rome during any time on which the New Testament throws light. His theory is that, when Claudius commanded all Jews to leave Rome, Peter was forced to go away. And as for his subsequent absences, they were forced on him by his duty as the chief of the Apostles, having care of all the Churches. 'Paul preached the Gospel from Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum, and, not satisfied with that, designed to go even to Spain besides. Can we imagine Peter to have been less active ?" These, no doubt, are excellent reasons for Peter's not remaining at Rome; but why, then, did he undertake duties which he must have known he could not fulfil?

There is another respect in which the accepted version of Peter's history accuses him of having set a bad example. In the primitive Church it was accounted a discreditable thing for a bishop to migrate from one see to another; and especially from a poorer see to a richer; it was accounted a kind of spiritual adultery, this forsaking a poorer wife for a richer. Several early canons forbade the practice; and I have mentioned how one of them was worked against Gregory Nazianzen. Pope Leo (Ep. 84), in a decree incorporated in the Canon Law (Si quis Episcopus, c. 7, qu. 1, cap. 31), ordered: If any bishop, despising the meanness of his see, seeks for the administration of a more eminent place, and for any reason transfers himself to a greater people, he shall not only be driven out of the see which did not belong to him, but he shall also lose his own, so as neither to preside over those whom in his avarice he coveted, nor over those whom in his pride he despised.' Yet we are told that Peter, in order to obtain the see of Rome, abandoned that of Antioch, which he had previously held for seven years.

XIX.]

PETER'S ANTIOCHENE EPISCOPATE.

351

On this charge, at least, Peter may fairly claim an acquittal; for whatever credit may be due to the story of his Roman episcopate, the story of the Antiochene episcopate is entitled to still less, being both of later origin and far less widely believed. In fact, I consider that it was the circulation of the tale of Peter's Roman episcopate which stimulated the invention of Syrian Christians to make out an equal honour for their capital. There is a current story of an Englishman, who, in a country where veracity was not cultivated, found a claim made on him for the repayment of money which he had never received. At the trial he heard the fact of his having received the money attested by so many witnesses that he could not conceive how his own advocate could be able to break the case down. But he was not prepared for the line of defence actually adopted, which was to produce an equal number of credible witnesses who had been present when the money was duly paid back. On much the same system Eastern Christians attempted no contradiction of the story that Peter had been bishop of Rome; but they had the wit to see that the date assigned for his coming to that city left some years free, between the dates of our Lord's Ascension and A. D. 42, of which use might be made to establish an earlier dignity for Antioch. The Westerns were equally polite in accepting the Eastern story, the truth of which is strenuously maintained by Baronius, who relies on its being adopted in the Chronicle of Eusebius. And it is true that the story was fully accepted in the fourth century; but much earlier evidence would be necessary in order to establish its truth.*

I chanced lately to have my attention drawn to another attempt to give early Church history a Syrian colouring. I looked into the Evidence for the Papacy, by the late Lord Lindsay, in order to see whether it was a book of which I needed to take notice. I found that, in producing his very first Patristic witness, the author was so unlucky as to stumble into both the traps into which an inexperienced explorer of antiquity is in danger of falling: he took a spurious work for genuine; and he completely misconceived what his witness meant to say. The witness was Ignatius, who, in writing to the Romans, says: 'I do not command you like Peter and Paul;' from which it is a common and, as I believe, a just inference that Ignatius regarded these two Apostles as having some local connexion with that Church. But Lord Lindsay goes on to argue that Ignatius says