passages and those acts would require a volume. I have given a short account of some of them in my second lecture and in Appendix A.2 The defenders of the English Church may safely stake their case, so far as it relates to the papal claims, on the witness borne by S. Cyprian. May the prayers of that blessed martyr draw down upon the Church of England and upon us her children a full measure of the divine blessing and protection !

1 See pp. 49-72.

See pp. 72-77.

LECTURE III.

THE RELATION OF S. PETER TO THE APOSTOLIC

COLLEGE AND TO THE CHURCH.

IN my two previous lectures I adduced various historical facts and various passages from the writings of the Fathers, which seemed to me to prove that the view of the papal authority laid down in the Vatican decrees was not accepted by the Church during the first three centuries of our era. The conditions, under which these lectures are given, prevent my attempting any exhaustive treatment of the question; but I have not consciously kept back any facts or passages belonging to those centuries, which would in my opinion avail to rebut or qualify the general conclusion at which we arrived.1 I believe that that conclusion is in complete agreement with the truth. The Church at large, during the ages of persecution, did not recognize in the Roman see any primacy of jurisdiction outside Italy, and still less did it recognize in that see any gift of infallibility.

We may, therefore, enter on the consideration of the scriptural evidence with the expectation of finding that the papal claims find no solid support in the Bible. It would be strange, indeed, if the New Testament pointed plainly to the pope as the infallible monarch of the Church, and yet that the great saints and martyrs of the first three centuries should ignore such a fundamentally important principle of Church polity. Such an argument might be inapplicable, if we were dealing with some very abstract question of theology. But if great body like the Church had been subjected by its Divine Founder to an infallible king, it could hardly exist for three centuries without there being very evident proofs that

1 A friend has suggested that it would be well that I should refer to the genuine epistle of S. Clement of Rome to the Corinthian Church, in which he, suppressing his own name, and writing in the name of his church, uses an urgent tone in remonstrating with the Corinthian Christians on the subject of their impious rebellion against their duly appointed presbyters. I can see no expression in that epistle in any way implying a claim on the part of S. Clement to exercise jurisdiction as pope over the Corinthian Church. As Dr. Salmon observes (Infallibility, p. 379, 2nd edit.), the tone "is only that of the loving remonstrance which any Christian is justified in offering to an erring brother." The reader is referred to Dr. Salmon's treatment of the whole subject of this remonstrance (Infallibility, pp. 377-379, 2nd edit.). See also Additional Note 51, p. 471.

the rule of such infallible king was one of the chief factors in its life. Government is not an abstract theory, but a practical fact.

Let us, however, approach the study of the scriptural evidence in a teachable and dispassionate spirit, desiring to perceive, and having perceived to accept, whatever our Lord and His apostles intended to teach.

I suppose that all will agree that, if the doctrine of the papal monarchy is taught anywhere in Holy Scripture, it is taught in the promise made by our Lord to S. Peter at Caesarea Philippi, as we find that promise recorded in S. Matt. xvi. 17-19. The Vatican decree quotes this passage and also the passage in the last chapter of S. John's Gospel, in which our Lord is recorded to have said to S. Peter, " Feed My lambs," "Feed My sheep," and it deduces, from what it calls "this plain teaching of Holy Scripture," the conclusion that "a primacy of jurisdiction over the universal Church of God was promised and given immediately and directly to blessed Peter the apostle by Christ the Lord." Following the guidance of the council, let us proceed to consider the first of these two passages, which, if I am not mistaken, is allowed by every one to be the fundamental passage.

It will be well, I think, to quote the whole passage together with the verses which immediately precede it; and I will read them first of all as they stand in the Revised Version. S. Matthew says, "Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, Who do men say that the Son of man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But who say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." The Authorized Version and the Douay Version have "the gates of hell" instead of "the gates of hades;" but of course those two expressions, as used here, are identical in meaning, and in other respects the Authorized Version and the Douay Version agree substantially with the

The other passage, contained in S. John xxi. 15-17, is discussed in Appendix C, pp. 117-128.

H

Revised Version in their translation of the promise to S. Peter. The question before us is, What does that promise mean? If the view taken by the Vatican Council is correct, we have here the creation, or at any rate the promise of the creation, of a permanent institution of the most transcendently important kind. Christ is creating, or at any rate is promising to create, an office, the holder of which shall be His sole vicar and representative in the supreme government of His Church. Dr. Murray of Maynooth, referring to this passage, says that "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 wellbeing or existence of the Church." This is how a learned professor at Maynooth describes the office which he considers to have been promised to S. Peter by the words recorded in S. Matthew, and afterwards to have been conferred on him, and from time to time, as occasion has arisen, to have been conferred also on his successors in the see of Rome. Now, if this really was our Lord's meaning, this passage is a passage of the most tremendous importance. On that hypothesis, one could not but agree with Cardinal Bellarmine when he first puts the question, "What are we dealing with, when we deal with the papal primacy?" and then proceeds to answer his own question thus: "We are dealing with the principal matter of Christianity" (de summa rei Christianae). Similarly the Jesuit Perrone says, "When we are treating about the head of the Church, we are treating about the principal point of the matter on which the existence and safety of the Church herself altogether depends."3 Similarly, M. de Maistre says, "The sovereign pontiff is the necessary, only, and exclusive foundation of Christianity. To him belong the promises, with him disappears unity, that is the Church ;" and again, "The supremacy of the pope is the capital dogma without which Christianity cannot subsist." I say once more, If our 1 Quoted from the Irish Annual Miscellany, iii. 300, by Dr. Salmon (Infalli bility of the Church, 2nd edit., p. 333).

2

2

Quoted by Perrone, Praelectt. Theoll., edit. 1841, tom. ii. pars i. p. 308, n.
Perrone, loc. cit.

Du Pape, Discours Prelim., i. 13, and iv. 5, quoted by Allies, Church of England cleared from Schism, 2nd edit., p. 358, n.

Lord, by His promise to S. Peter, meant to declare that He would create a permanent representative of Himself to be the infallible monarch of His Church on earth, as the Vatican Council teaches, then I think that we should all agree with Bellarmine, Perrone, and De Maistre, and we should hold that in this passage of S. Matthew we have delivered to us a dogma of the most fundamental character. Surely, therefore, if this view be the true view, when we come to examine the comments of the holy Fathers on this passage, we shall find them unanimously agreeing in the interpretation which they give. Even if they differed about some minor points, yet they will be in complete accord as to the substance. But when we proceed to investigate the comments of the Fathers, we do not find that unanimity which on the Romanist hypothesis would have been anticipated. The Fathers are by no means agreed in holding that the rock was S. Peter himself. It is true that that is decidedly the more common opinion and the oldest; but, nevertheless, some hold that the rock is Christ, and others that it is the doctrine of our Lord's Godhead, which S. Peter had confessed when he said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."1

But any candid Roman Catholic who looks carefully into the matter will be astonished when he examines those passages in which the "rock" is interpreted of S. Peter himself. He will be amazed to find that hardly any of them connect the building of the Church on S. Peter with any successors to S. Peter in the see of Rome. It is true that a fair number of such passages might probably be found in the writings of the popes or of papal legates and other similar officials, from the time of Pope Damasus (circa A.D. 370) onwards. But, apart

In the Liturgy of S. James, at the point in the service where the consecration of the Gifts has just been consummated by the Epiklesis, the priest prays that the Body and Blood of our Lord "may be to those who communicate of them, for remission of sins and for life everlasting, for the strengthening of Thy holy Catholic Church, which Thou didst found upon the rock of the faith, that the gates of Hades should not prevail against it." These words occur both in the Greek and in the Syriac forms of the Liturgy, and therefore belong to its more ancient portion (see Hammond's Ancient Liturgies, pp. 43, 72). In the Roman Missal, the collect for the Vigil of S. Peter and S. Paul runs as follows: "Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we whom Thou hast established on the rock of the apostolic confession (quos in apostolicae confessionis petra solidasti) may be shaken by no disturbances." I quote these two liturgical interpretations of "the rock," partly because of their great interest, and partly because I have not noticed them in the ordinary catenas illustrating the patristic interpretation of our Lord's promise to S. Peter.

2

Quotations from such sources will not count for much in a controversy of this kind. Our contention is that the idea of a divinely appointed supremacy over the whole Church, as a prerogative of the Roman see, arose very largely out of the exorbitant claims made by the popes. It follows that exaggerated claims in favour of the papacy, when they occur in the writings of the popes or of other persons living, so to speak, in a papal atmosphere, and when they stand in marked contrast with the general teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church,