sense which Roman controversialists now allege as the only proper one. In the case of the first of the three passages some of the Fathers see in Christ's words" this rock" an allusion to Himself, that one foundation other than which no man can lay; some understand it to signify the truth of our Lord's divinity to which Peter had just borne the earliest human witness; while still others connect the promise with those providential features in Peter's personal history which made him the first stone in that great edifice, the building of which is still in progress. In a true sense the Church began with Peter, for it was he who led at Pentecost, and it was he whose first use of "the keys of the kingdom of heaven" threw open to the nations the door that had been shut against them so long. But Jerusalem and Cæsarea, not Rome, are the geographical names we associate with these greatest of the acts of Peter; and there lies a wide gap between assent to the primacy of this foremost of the Twelve, and consent to the doctrine that dominion has been given to the Bishops of Rome even to the end of the world.

The fact of Peter's leadership among the disciples, in itself sufficiently evidenced by the position given to his name in all of the lists, is a sufficient clew to the meaning of the second of the great papal texts. Nothing could be more natural than the singling out for special prayer the man who had been bold to say, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God," and nothing could have been more natural than to

select him to be the strengthener of his brethren in their hour of need; but that this strengthening function was not peculiar to the Apostle Peter is evident from its being associated in the New Testament with no fewer than four of St. Peter's colleagues in the work of evangelization.

With respect to the scene upon the shore of the sea of Tiberias, where Jesus said to Simon Peter once, "Feed my lambs," twice, "Feed my sheep," the last of the alleged Gospel evidences in behalf of the Papacy, it would seem to be enough simply to put in contrast the view which sees in it an exclusive bestowal of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and that which discerns, rather, a singularly tender and touching suggestion of a duty that appertains to every shepherd of souls as such. Peter had three times denied his Master; three times, therefore, does the Master reestablish Peter in his pastoral office; but His doing so in no sense disestablishes the rest. If any mystical and symbolic inference with respect to the perpetual government of the Church is to be forced out of this beautiful closing chapter of the Fourth Gospel, it would seem as if St. John, rather than St. Peter, ought to have the benefit of it, for of him are those strange words written, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" If this thing had been said of Simon Peter, what volumes of rhetoric might it not have furnished to the upholders of the papal claim?

But the Roman Catholic argument from the New Testament is supplemented by another from tradition.

St. Peter, we are assured, was the first bishop of Rome, and as such transmitted his plenary powers to those who have succeeded him in that see, from Linus, the first, to Leo XIII., the latest of them.

Protestant writers who spend their strength in trying to prove that St. Peter never was at Rome make a mistake. Very possibly they are right; but it is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and in making so much effort to demonstrate this particular negative they betray a misgiving that unless it can be done the case is lost. Even when it has been conceded that St. Peter, in the course of his travels, may have visited Rome, it by no means follows that he was either the exclusive founder or the first bishop of the Roman Church. St. Paul prided himself on never trespassing on the missionary fields of other Apostles. But we have among St. Paul's writings a letter to the Church of the Romans. Would he have been likely to write his Epistle had there been a bishop in charge at Rome? And supposing that bishop to have been no less a dignitary than the Apostle Peter, should we find no reference made to him in the long list of salutations with which the writer closes his communication?

An early author of repute (Irenæus) makes St. Peter and St. Paul jointly the founders of the Roman Church. According to him, Linus was the first bishop of the series, not the second, and received his commission at the hands of both of the great Apostles. A happy omen this of the better day to come, when St. Peter,

as the representative of ecclesiastical order, and St. Paul, as the representative of the freedom that comes with faith, shall strike hands in that "Holy Catholic Church" in which, spite of all set-backs and discouragements, those who say the Apostles' Creed continue to believe.1

But it is still further urged that, in the absence of any other claimant, Rome ought to hold supremacy by virtue of her being, so to speak, the residuary legatee. If Jerusalem, or Antioch, or even Alexandria had maintained an unbroken line of bishops from the beginning, there might be grounds for partitioning the sovereignty among all the survivors, but inasmuch as Rome is actually the only survivor, ought not the whole inheritance to be hers ?2

Yes, perhaps so, if we can agree about what the inheritance is. If it be simply an inheritance of fair fame, certainly all who value what is ancient for its own sake, and who hold that what is time-honored ought to be by man honored as well, will concede the thing asked for not only cheerfully but thankfully. There never has been a time when the Church of Rome, if content to be the Church of Rome, would not have received from the rest of Christendom her

1 For an admirable summary of the heads of the Roman controversy, see Dr. Salmon's " Infallibility of the Church," a work characterized by the late Von Döllinger as one of the great polemical achievements of the century.

2 See "A Letter to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion of Mr. Gladstone's recent Expostulation," by John Henry Newman, D.D., of the Oratory, London, 1875, p 26, § 3.

full measure of respect. It is not against the Church of Rome, it is against the self-styled Mother and Mistress of all the Churches that we have made war, or rather are defending ourselves.

But just as the disproof of the Scriptural argument for the supremacy of St. Peter turned the flank of the argument from tradition, so the disproof of the a priori argument for the necessity of a single visible headship over the Church, may be said to have anticipated the defeat of this argument from survival. If it could be proved that the Church absolutely required for its efficiency the recognition of a supreme Pontiff, why then the fact that there lived within our horizon only one pretender to the post would unquestionably make the claim of such survivor a very strong one. But if, on the other hand, the supposition in question be, as we have seen that it is, a wholly gratuitous one, why then Rome's cry, "Come unto me, for there is none other whom it is possible for you to seek," falls dead. There remain to be considered the supplementary arguments that are supposed to make Rome's contention a particularly strong one in the case of the United States.

It is hardly possible to take seriously the argument that because Christopher Columbus was a Roman Catholic, therefore all of us who occupy the new world he discovered ought to be of his religion. In the fifteenth century all Europe was under the Papacy; the note of revolt had not yet been sounded, and if America was to be discovered by a European it must