in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles" (xv. 16). St. Paul goes on to declare his practice of not building on another man's foundation, and also the great desire he had for many years entertained of visiting Rome, and his fixed intention of doing so whenever he should take his journey into Spain. From all which circumstances we may confidently infer that neither St. Peter nor any other apostle had at that time visited Rome; and be very sure that no regularly organized Church existed there at the time when St. Paul wrote this epistle, which is confirmed by reverting to what he had said in commencing it--"I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end you may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me" (Rom. i. 12),

St. Paul's epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, all tend to strengthen the impression that he was the only apostle that had visited Rome at that time. The epistles were written during Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, and there is not in any of them the slightest allusion to St. Peter, or to anything that had been done by him in planting a Church there an omission which is utterly at variance with his having established a primacy in Rome some time before this. There is not the least intimation of bishop or elders as in regular Churches, but only of fellow-labourers with St. Paul in preaching the Gospel. Yet the salutations in some of these epistles avowedly include all of the circumcision who had been fellow-workers with him-"Aristarchus my fellow-prisoner saluteth you, and Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, and Jesus which is called Justus, who are of the circumcision. These only are my fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, which have been a comfort unto me" (Col. iv. 14). This Marcus is Mark the Evangelist, who probably wrote his Gospel at this very time, and afterwards became the first Bishop of Alexandria when a Church was planted in that city. And Timothy was also with St. Paul, as the opening verses of this epistle show. But we learn from the epistle to the Hebrews (xiii. 23), that Timothy was set at liberty earlier than St. Paul; and consequently the two epistles to Timothy were written at a much later period-the last being written during St. Paul's second imprisonment at Rome, and only a short time previous to his martyrdom. The faithful Luke was with him then (2 Tim. iv. 9); and he requests Timothy to come, and to bring Mark with him. But not a word of Peter still; which is

most extraordinary if Peter was, as they say, then at Rome, and underwent martyrdom there at the same time as St. Paul.

The general epistle of Peter affords no support to the idea that he exercised an universal episcopacy over Gentiles as well as over Jews. It is to the Hebrew converts that it is addressed, as strangers scattered abroad throughout Asia Minor and the Eastern Empire. It is like the epistle general of James, which was addressed to the twelve tribes scattered abroad-that is, to the Hebrew converts sojourning in distant countries such as those strangers and proselytes who are spoken of in the second chapter of the Acts as having witnessed the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It is rather to be inferred from these epistles that Peter and James still continued to limit their attention to those of the circumcision alone, leaving the care of the heathen converts to Paul and Barnabas, as arranged in the conference at Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 9). Many of St. Peter's expressions acquire fresh point by regarding them as addressed to Hebrew Christians dispersed among the heathen: such as the exhortation"Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles; that whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may, by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1 Pet. ii. 12). For the heathen commonly held the Christians to be a Jewish sect, and suspected the Jews of practising all manner of abominations, as we learn from Tacitus and the best accredited of their historians. also the many references to the Old Testament in St. Peter's epistle have much more force when they are regarded as addressed to Jewish converts-such as the general reference, i. 10; the stone of stumbling, ii. 8; the royal priesthood, ii. 9; the ark, iii. 20; the chief shepherd, v. 4; and many more.

So

And as to the idea that Peter meant to date his epistle from Rome when he wrote " the Church that is at Babylon elected together with you saluteth you"-it is an idea so absurd as scarcely to be worth reasoning upon. For, if it be said it was meant for concealment, it may be asked, concealment from whom? Not surely from those to whom the epistle was written, for this would be senseless; and care for their own safety would prompt them to keep the epistle to themselves; for the possession of such a letter would be sufficient proof of their complicity with the writer and expose them to the same persecutions as St. Peter. Besides, we altogether deny the fact that Rome had been called Babylon at the time when St. Peter wrote; for the Apocalypse was not then in existence, and it was by means of this book that the Christians were first taught

to regard Rome as Babylon. Moreover, it is the woman that rides on the beast, and not the beast, that is called the mystical Babylon: therefore, it is the Church of Rome and not the civil power-it is Papal Rome and not Imperial Rome--that is meant by the mystic Babylon, and the adopting such an interpretation of St. Peter's words is a suicidal act.

The Papal supremacy was not thought of till after the time of Constantine, who first made Christianity the religion of the State; and, during the fourth and fifth centuries, this claim to universal supremacy was rested entirely on the imperial patronage, and not on any inherent right supposed to be derived from St. Peter. And the first legal title to the exercise of such supremacy was given by the Emperor Justinian A.D. 533, at a time when there was no emperor of the west, which shows that the Church up to that time had been subject to the State; and we know as matter of fact that councils were called by the emperors, and that their decrees must then receive imperial sanction to make them valid; and even the Popes themselves were nominated by the Emperor.

The Romanists tacitly ignore these facts, and hope to conceal from their dupes the very late origin of the extravagant hypothesis that the Papal supremacy is derived from St. Peter having been Bishop of Rome for five and twenty years, or from the beginning of the reign of Claudius. The first who promulgated this wild notion was Baronius, A.D. 1607; and, curiously enough, he allows that we have no trustworthy evidence on which to rest such an opinion, and know nothing whatever beyond the scanty notices contained in Scripture concerning the missionary labours of St. Peter or the place where he suffered martyrdom. But, treating it one while as a not improbable supposition that St. Peter had gone to Rome and had been executed there, he on other occasions deals with these suppositions as if they were indubitable facts established by the most authentic records :-"As to the history of the apostles, after they once separated from each other, the whole matter is overhung with extreme obscurity We cannot now hope to be ever able to know, with anything like historical certainty, what really took place in the subsequent lives of the apostles" (Bar. Ann., A.D. 44). Yet a few pages before Baronius had said:-"To ascertain into what countries each of the apostles went, we shall cite all that we can find in the fathers and elsewhere; and above all we must speak of Peter, who, according to the general opinion, came to Rome in the second year of Claudius.......................

All the ecclesiastical writers have confirmed this same Peter's journey to Rome and have adorned it with everlasting records......... In short, not to lose time in a thing so evident, all the general councils have confirmed this great fact; all the bishops of Rome in their letters, and all the emperors in their edicts, have confirmed it: the event was of such vast importance that it was most deservedly recorded in writings of every description."

A writer who thus contradicts himself does not need refutation; but it may be as well to remind our readers that the writings of every description to which Baronius refers are no other than such forgeries as are found in Gratian's "Decretals"-writings which had been palmed off as genuine upon an ignorant and credulous age, but which are now given up by the Roman Catholics themselves as clumsy attempts at imposture to give a semblance of truth to a fiction.

Bellarmine is more guarded and handles his subject in a formal and less summary way, saying-" We have four questions here to consider. 1. Was Peter ever at Rome at all? 2. Did he die there? 3. Was he bishop there? 4. Was he never translated from that see to any other? Of these four it is the last only that is either absolutely necessary for the Papal supremacy or sufficient to establish it; for, as to the first, it is clearly neither necessary nor sufficient for the purpose we have in view, as many people come to Rome without being bishops of that city, and many bishops of Rome have never been in that city at all, as Clemens V., &c. As to the second, that also is neither necessary nor sufficient, as is proved by the facts that many bishops of Rome did not die there, and that many other people who never were bishops of the city die daily within its walls," &c. (De Sum. Pont. ii. 1-3). This and much more that follows is only an endeavour to throw dust in our eyes, that we may not see through the flimsy arguments by which Romanists attempt to defend the Papal usurpations; for, though it is a mere truism to say that numbers come to Rome who do not thereby become bishops of Rome, yet it is equally obvious that if Peter never was at Rome at all he could not have been bishop of that city in the Papal sense, so as to transmit his supposed prerogatives to his successors in that see. And all that follows is equally evasive, since it is assumed that the supreme and exclusive privileges claimed for the Roman see, because it was Peter's seat, does not imply or rather necessitate the presence of Peter; or, as if a primacy could begin without a primate; or, as if exceptions were the rule, and local and inferior episco

pates had any analogy with the foundation of an universal episcopacy. The fourth question in fact involves the previous determination of the preceding ones; for it is quite idle to ask—“ Was he never translated from that see to any other ?" —if we are not first assured that he really held that see.

Bellarmine, however, thinks better of it afterwards, and endeavours to prove the first three points: and these are his arguments to that effect. 1. Peter has written an epistle from Babylon (1 Pet. v. 13), and Babylon means Rome. 2. There were numerous converts when Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans, and if Peter had not been to Rome to make them, there is no satisfactory evidence that any one else did So. 3. Mark wrote his Gospel at Rome at the dictation of Peter. 4. Peter defeated Simon Magus at Rome. 5. Peter's tomb is at Rome; and therefore he died there, and "he could not have died there if he had never been there"

-a very notable conclusion! And it shows the very little truth there is to be found when an able man, like Bellarmine, has recourse to such trumpery arguments as these in support of so tremendously important a doctrine as the infallibility and supremacy of the Roman Church, deduced from the Papal figment of succeeding to St. Peter's Chair. For Peter's contest with Simon Magus, we imagine, there is little better authority than the "Golden Legend," a work of the thirteenth century. And in the ap peals to older tradition, which is the common resort of Romanists when their arguments fail, we have to make sure of two things-first, that the works appealed to are genuine and have not been interpolated; secondly, that the meaning of the writers is correctly interpreted; and, as a preliminary to this, we ought to bear in mind the manner in which the Church of Rome had its beginning, and in ascertaining this we may be able to supply an answer to Bellarmine's second argument, by producing "satisfactory evidence" by what means those numerous converts were found at Rome when Paul wrote his epistle to them, and also when he was afterwards carried a prisoner to Rome, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

The Roman character appears to have been more simple, and more open to the reception of the Gospel, than that of other Gentile nations. Of one centurion our Lord spake, saying, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel" (Luke vii. 9). Another centurion, beholding the prodigies which accompanied the crucifixion, said—" Truly this was the Son of God" (Matt. xxvii, 54). And the centurion