With regard to the Roman episcopate-in other words, with regard to the charge against Peter, of having undertaken local duties which he must have known his apostolic labours could not permit him to fulfil-we might be disposed to give him an acquittal on the ground of character alone. But it is satisfactory to be able to report that the case against him. completely breaks down. In fact, we can say with confidence that the story had not arisen in the year 180; for Irenæus, in a work published shortly after that year (Hær. iii. 3), ascribes the establishment of the Roman Church to Paul as well as Peter; and then adds, 'the blessed apostles having founded and built the Church, committed the episcopal office to Linus. Of this Linus St. Paul makes mention in his Epistle to Timothy. To him succeeded Anencletus* [elsewhere called Cletus, or Anacletus]. After him Clement succeeded in the third place from the apostles.' Thus Linus is made the first bishop of Rome, and his appointment St. Paul's work as much as Peter's. This is the earliest account we have of the succession of the Roman bishops. It is really useless to cite other authorities; for a doctrine so fundamental as Peter's episcopate and its consequences is alleged to be, if true at all, could not but be known to Irenæus. It is worth men

elsewhere (Ad Magnes. 10) that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch when Peter and Paul were founding the Church.' He asks why Ignatius did not say, 'when the Apostles were founding the Church,' unless that he regarded these two Apostles, with whom the Church of Rome was connected, as superior in rank to the rest. But the second passage has a coincidence with Irenæus which would have awakened Lord Lindsay's suspicions if he had been more familiar with early Fathers; and it is, in fact, taken from the longer form of the Ignatian Epistles, which critics of all schools now own to be spurious. But what is amusing is, that nothing could be further from this Syrian forger's intention than to furnish evidence in support of Roman claims. On the contrary, he takes the phrase which Irenæus had used about Peter and Paul founding the Church of Rome, and transfers it to the Church of Antioch.

* Anacletus is no name I ever heard of. But Anencletus (meaning the same as Innocentius) is found as a man's name in a Greek inscription (Boeckh, Corp. Inscr. i. 116, n. 1240). The Greeks always have Anencletus. In Photius (Cod. 113, p. 90, Bekker) the name stands Anacletus; but the Cod. Marc. has the right form, Anencletus, as Dindorf observes (Thes. Gr.). The name Cletus is equally unknown, and is clearly a corruption of Anencletus, which sounded strange to Latin ears.'-(Von Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ii. 153, Oxenham's translation, 1877).

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THE TESTIMONY OF IRENEUS.

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tioning, as a sample of the way in which controversy is conducted, that in Wiseman's Lectures this quotation from Irenæus is prominent among the proofs that Peter was bishop of Rome, the quotation being so garbled as to make it seem that Linus succeeded Peter in the episcopate instead of being appointed first bishop by Peter and Paul.*

I have said quite enough for the mere purpose of refutation of the Roman claims; but to me it is always pleasanter to deal with questions historically than controversially; and I wish, therefore, to state the conclusions (some of them as I think certain, some of them from the nature of the case only probable) which I consider would be arrived at by a historical inquirer with no theological purpose in view, on the questions: What was the connexion of Peter and Paul with the Roman Church? How came it to believe that Peter had been its first bishop? and, How came the duration of his episcopate to be fixed at twenty-five years? I am justified in thinking that candid inquirers need not differ very much on these questions, because I find that the results at which I had arrived independently are, on several points, in agreement with those obtained by von Döllinger in his First Age of the Church, a book published while he was still in full communion with the Church of Rome, and was regarded as its ablest champion.

I have seen, in a Roman Catholic book of controversy, the question put, Who founded the Church of Rome? and the answer given: It could not have been St. Paul, because we learn from his Epistle that there was a Church at Rome

* The whole passage is amusing :-'I presume it will not be necessary to enter into any argument to show that St. Peter was the first bishop of Rome.. Among the moderns it may be sufficient to observe that no "To St. ecclesiastical writer of any note pretends to deny this fact. Peter," as St. Irenæus observes, "succeeded Linus, to Linus Anacletus, then in the third place Clement" (Lectures on the Catholic Church, Lect. 8, vol. i., p. 278). I think I have already remarked that a controversialist who has ventured on an assertion which, when challenged, he finds himself unable to prove, has no better resource than to protest loudly that the thing is too evident to need any proof. Dr. Cunningham is equally positive the other way. He says (Growth of the Church, p. 43):— No ecclesiastical historian, who is free from ecclesiastical trammels, now believes that Peter was bishop of Rome.' And he is the nearer the truth of the two, as may be judged from the line taken by von Döllinger.

2 A

no

before he had visited that city; therefore the founder could have been no one but St. Peter. But there are absolutely no grounds for the tacit assumption in this argument, that the Church of Rome must have been founded by some Apostle. On the contrary, we know (Acts ii. 10) that 'strangers of Rome' were present on the day of Pentecost; and we may reasonably believe that some of them soon returned to that city, whither also the constant influx of visitors from every part of the empire would be sure soon to bring some professors of the Christian faith. It follows that the origin of the Church of Rome is not to be ascribed, as in the case of some other cities, to the exertions of some missionary arriving with the express intention of evangelizing the city, but was due to silent and spontaneous growth. It is quite possible that among those who came to Rome were some 'prophets or teachers,' but very unlikely that for some time any Apostles were among the visitors. I do not attach credit to the tradition told in the Preaching of Peter,* and also by Apollonius,† that our Lord commanded His Apostles not to leave Jerusalem for twelve years after His Ascension; but all probability is opposed to their having, for a considerable time, made missionary journeys to distant places. The example seems to have been set by Paul in the year 48; and even he seems to have needed special revelation to induce him to cross from Asia into Europe (Acts xvi. 9): so that, bearing in mind how slowly the idea of throwing open the doors of the Church to the Gentiles gained acceptance with the first disciples, we must pronounce it a complete anachronism to imagine an assault made by an Apostle on the capital of the Gentile world so early as the year 42. I have already said that the Epistle to the Romans gives us every reason to think that Paul was the first Apostle to visit that city.‡

Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 5.

+ Euseb. H. E. v. 18.

On this point I differ from von Döllinger, who says (First Age, i. 160): The notion of a gradual origin of the community without any particular founder, or of Aquila and Priscilla being its founders, or St. Paul himself, is self-evidently untenable.' As I remarked just now, if a man says a thing is self-evident, it usually means that he can give no proof of it.

xIx.] THE FOUNders of THE ROMAN CHURCH.

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But what, then, are we to say to the statement of Irenæus that Peter and Paul founded the Church of Rome? Probably the simple account of the matter is, that the visit of the two great Apostles was such an important event in the history of the Roman Church that the men of the next generations did not care to trace that history further back; but it is likely enough that these Apostles, at the time of their visit, did important work in organizing the Roman Church, and guiding it through the period of transition from the state in which the Church was taught by missionaries, or men endowed with miraculous gifts, to the permanent state in which it was under the guidance of a settled ministry. That the two Apostles founded the Church of Rome in the sense of appointing its first bishop is a thing by no means incredible, even if we do not regard the authority of Irenæus sufficient to enable us to assert it as an ascertained fact.

But we travel at once out of the region of historic probability when any evidence, tending to induce us to believe that St. Peter once visited Rome, is taken as establishing that he was bishop of Rome. The case is much the same as if some person, zealous for the honour of the city of London, were to maintain that King Alfred had been its first Lord Mayor; and by way of proof were to present us with some evidence that King Alfred had visited London, in which city he would, of course, when present, have been the most important personage. The functions of a King and a Lord Mayor are not more distinct than those of an Apostle and a local bishop.

On the question of the date of the origin of episcopacy, candid men on both sides appear to me to be now approaching to very close agreement. On the one hand, it may be regarded as certain that, at the end of the second century, there not only were bishops everywhere, but there was no recollection that the constitution of the Church had ever been different; and men even found it hard to conceive the idea of a Church without its bishop. On the other hand, we find, in the Acts of the Apostles, but one clear indication of a Church being presided over by a single resident ruler, namely, that of the Church of Jerusalem, presided over by

St. James. For other such indications we have to go down to St. Paul's later Epistles, and perhaps to the Revelation and the third Epistle of St. John. In the New Testament records of the apostolic age, though we find bishops' mentioned, the word does not appear to denote persons singly bearing rule in separate Churches, but to be employed as equivalent to 'presbyters'; and this use is continued in the genuine epistle of Clement of Rome. It is found also in the lately recovered Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Thus, then, although I hold that the episcopal form of Church government dates from apostolic times, I consider also that its rise must be placed quite late in apostolic times. This is the opinion of von Döllinger, who says (First Age, ii. 130):-The office afterwards called episcopal was not yet marked off; the Episcopate slept in the Apostolate. It was the last branch to grow out of the apostolic stem. In Jerusalem it had already taken shape in the person of St. James, whose attitude towards the local Church, his renunciation of missionary work, and his remaining within the holy city, point him out as the first true and proper bishop. The other Apostles discharged their episcopal office in superintending and guiding different communities.' My own opinion is that St. James was not only bishop of Jerusalem, but that the veneration gained for him, both by his personal character and by his kinship to our Lord, obtained for him, as the Clementine author believed, that position of primacy over the whole Church which, in later times, it was imagined had been possessed by Peter. In fact, Jerusalem, being the mother Church, naturally exercised commanding influence over the daughter Churches (Acts xv. 1, Gal. ii. 12); and so the head of the Church of Jerusalem possessed, over the entire, authority the exact extent of which we need not trouble ourselves to define.

Von Döllinger attempts to explain why the branching off of the Episcopate as a distinct office did not take place earlier. He considers that, while the Temple stood, and the connexion with Judaism was not finally dissolved, the organization of the Church was, in one sense, incomplete and provisional. It might in the interval have presbyters, who