GEORGE SALMON. THE PREROGATIVES OF PETER

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 IT remains now to speak of that theory of Infallibility which makes the Pope personally its organ. It is the theoiy now in the ascendant ; and, since the Vatican Council, may be regarded as the theory recognized exclusively by the Roman Church ; and it is the only theory which satisfies the demands of the a priori arguments showing the necessity of an infallible guide. What these arguments try to show to be needful is a guide able infallibly to resolve every controversy as it arises ; and this need can only be satisfied by a living speaking voice, not by the dead records of past Councils. The truth is, that the much desired object, of uniformity of opinion in the Church, can only be obtained, either on the terms of resolute abstinence from investigation, or else upon the terms of having an inspired teacher at hand competent to make new revelations on every desired occasion. If we adhere to the old theory, that Christ made one revelation, which it was His Church's business to preserve and teach ; let that revelation have been as copious as you please, still if it is limited at all, it is of necessity that questions must arise which that revelation will not have determined ; on which private judgment is therefore free, and on which, therefore, there will be difference of opinion. If such diversity of opinion is thought an evil, there must be a new revelation to supplement or explain the old one. And this necessity must go on as long as men continue to exercise their thoughts on religious subjects. The difficulty and inconvenience of assembling Councils is so great that the number of General Councils during the whole duration of Christendom has been comparatively few, and the likelihood that many more will be assembled is but small. The Roman theory then leads younecessarily to expect a kind of incarnation of deity uponearth ; one which with infallible voice will decide and silenceevery dispute. And if this is not to be found in the personof the Pope it is to be found nowhere else. 

The marvel however is, that if the Church had fromthe first possessed this wonderful gift it should have takeneighteen centuries to find it out. It is historically certainthat in the year 1870, when it was proposed at the VaticanCouncil to proclaim the fact, the doctrine was opposed by anumber of the leading bishops ; and that since the publication a number of most learned, and who up to that time hadbeen most loyal, Roman Catholics, consented to suffer ex-communication rather than agree to it. And the reason fortheir refusal, alleged, as we shall see, with perfect truth, is that this new doctrine is utterly opposed to the facts of history. Although, then, the theory is condemned from thefirst by its novelty, let us not refuse to examine the groundson which it is defended. 

But I must warn you at the outset that, although it wasonly the question of Infallibility that I proposed in theseLectures to discuss, I am now forced to spend time on what is really a different question, that of the Pope's alleged supre-macy. I am obliged to do so, because I must follow the lineof argument adopted by the Roman advocates. Their methodis to try to show that Christ made the constitution of HisChurch monarchical, that He appointed St. Peter to be its first ruler and governor, and that He appointed, moreover, thatthe bishop of Rome, for the time being, should perpetuallybe Peter's successor in that office. Suppose they succeed inproving all this : suppose it established that the Pope is, bydivine right, sovereign ruler of the Church, it still remainspossible that in the course of his rule he may make mistakes,as earthly monarchs who reign by the most legitimate titles are liable to do. And in point of fact it is fully admitted that, in his capacity of ruler and governor, the Pope may makemistakes, and often has made very great ones. To name noother, one has already come before us in the course of theseLectures. Whether or not it be true that the Popes, in their capacity of teachers, have committed themselves to the de- claration that it is heresy to maintain that the earth goes round the sun, it is certain that, in their capacity of rulers, they endeavoured for a long series of years to put down the teaching of that doctrine ; and all will own that this attempted suppression was unwise and impolitic, and has brought great discredit on their Church. Clearly, therefore, if the Roman advocates even succeed in establishing the Pope's supremacy, the task still lies before them of proving that the Pope, in his capacity of teacher, is infallible. We sometimes read of Alpine explorers who, in attempting to reach a virgin peak, have found themselves, after infinite labour, on a summit separated by impassable ravines from that which it was their desire to attain. And so in this case, between the doctrines of the Pope's supremacy and of his Infallibility there lies a gulf which it is, in my opinion, impossible to bridge over. To begin with : suppose it proved that St. Peter was universal ruler of the Churches, he certainly was not universal teacher ; for the other Apostles who were inspired as well as he had no need to learn from him ; and their hearers were as much bound to receive their independent teaching as were St. Peter's own hearers. But I postpone the consideration of difficulties of this kind. At present let us examine what success our opponents have in establishing the doctrine of the Pope's supremacy. If they succeed, it will be time enough then to discuss the question of the Pope's Infalli- bility ; for if they fail, it is all over with the latter doctrine. 

And first we have to consider the Scripture argument, resting on a supposed transmission to the Pope of certain prerogatives of St. Peter. In order to make out the theory by this process four things ought to be proved (i) that Christ gave to St. Peter a primacy over the other Apostles not merely in dignity and precedence, but in authority and jurisdiction, constituting him their guide and teacher and ruler; (2) that this prerogative was not merely personal but designed to be transmitted to successors ; (3) that Peter was Bishop of Rome and continued so to his death; and (4) that those who suc- ceeded Peter in this local office were also the inheritors of his jurisdiction over the whole Church. On this last point alone there would be ample room for controversy. If there be anyfaith due to the legend that Peter was Bishop of Rome thereis some due also to the story that he had been previouslyBishop of Antioch, which see might therefore contest withRome the inheritance of his prerogatives. Again, it wasnever imagined that the bishop of the town where an Apostlemight chance to die thereby derived a claim to apostolic juris-diction. But Roman Catholic controversialists make shortwork of the dispute on the last two heads. They argue thatif they can prove that Christ ever provided His Church withan infallible guide, and intended him to have a successor, weneed not doubt that the Pope is that successor, since there isno rival claimant of the office. It is the more needful, then,to scrutinize carefully the proofs of the first two heads, asthese are made to do double duty : not only to prove theproposition on behalf of which they are alleged, but also toinduce us to dispense with proof of the others. 

The Scripture proof, in the main, consists of three texts; sometimes called the three texts, viz. (i) the promise of ourLord to Peter (recorded Matt, xvi.), that upon this rock Hewould build His Church ; (2) His promise (recorded Lukexxii.), ' I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, andwhen thou art converted strengthen thy brethren'; and (3) the commission 'Feed my sheep,' related in the last chapterof St. John. Before giving a particular examination to thesetexts I would remark on the general presumption against theRoman Catholic theory arising out of the whole tenor of theN. T. history, from which we should conclude that, highly asPeter was honoured, he was not placed in an office havingjurisdiction over the other Apostles; for the Apostolate isever spoken of as the highest office in the Christian Church; 'God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, secondarilyprophets' (i Cor xii. 28) : not, as it ought to be if the Romantheory had been true, first Peter, then the Apostles. Thehistory related in the Acts gives no trace of Peter's havingexercised the prerogatives which are now attributed to him.To take a single example : When Peter took the decisivestep of eating with one uncircumcised, the Church of Jeru-salem (Acts xi.) called him sharply to account for a pro-ceeding so repugnant to Jewish traditions ; and Peter did not justify himself by pleading his possession of sovereign authority to decide the Church's action in such a matter, but by relating a special revelation sanctioning what he had done. As for the Epistles, they certainly give no support to the theory of Peter's supremacy ; and in the story of Paul's resistance to Peter at Antioch they throw in its way one formidable stumbling-block. 

Still less is any hint given that Peter was to transmit his office to any successor. I need not say that we are not so much as told that Peter was ever at Rome. The New Testa- ment contains two letters from Peter himself ; one purporting to be written immediately before his death, and with the express object that those whom he was leaving behind should be able to keep in memory the things that it was most important for them to know (2 Pet. i. 15). We may be sure that if Peter had any privileges to bequeath he would have done so in this his last will, and that if there was to be any visible head of the Church to whom all Christians were to look for their spiritual guidance, Peter would in these letters have commended him to the reverence of his converts, and directed them implicitly to obey him. 

Let us turn now to the texts appealed to. That in St. Matthew is so familiar to you all that I need not read it : but I will give you, in the words of Dr. Murray, one of the ablest of the Maynooth Professors, what this text is supposed to mean. He says, '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 legis- late 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 well-being or existence of the Church.' * It takes one's breath away to read a commentary which finds so much morein a text than lies on the surface of it. If our Lord meant allthis, we may ask, why did He not say it? Who found outthat He meant it? The Apostles did not find it out at thetime; for up to the night before His death the dispute wenton, which should be the greatest. When James and Johnpetitioned that in His kingdom they might sit with Him, oneon each hand, they do not seem to have suspected, and theirMaster then gave them no hint, that the chief place in Hiskingdom had already been given away. There is, as I havejust pointed out, no other indication in the New Testamentthat the Apostolic Church so understood our Lord's wordsrecorded by St. Matthew. 

It remains that this interpretation must have been gotfrom unwritten tradition. We eagerly turn to explore therecords of that tradition. Here, surely, if anywhere, we shallfind that unanimous consent of the Fathers of which theCouncil of Trent speaks. I have already said that I do notrefuse to attribute a certain weight to tradition in the inter-pretation of Scripture. I have owned that an interpretationof any passage has a certain presumption against it if it is clearly new-fangkd : if it derive from the text a doctrinewhich the Church of the earliest times never found there.The more important the doctrine, the greater the presumptionthat if true it would have been known from the first. Butcertainly here is a case where, if the Fathers wr ere everunanimous, they could not fail to be so if the Roman theorybe true. This is no obscure text; no passing remark of aninspired writer ; but the great charter text, which for all timefixed the constitution of the Christian Church. If, in thesewords, our Lord appointed a permanent ruler over HisChurch, the Church would from the first have resorted tothat authority for guidance and for the composing of alldisputes, and there never could have been any hesitation torecognize the meaning of the charter on which the authoritywas founded. Yet I suppose there is not a text in the wholeNew Testament on which the opinion of the Fathers is sodivided; and you have to come down late indeed beforean}rone finds the bishop of Rome there.

The most elaborate examination of the opinions of the Fathers is in an Epistle * by the French Roman Catholic Launoy, in which, besides the interpretation that Peter was the rock, for which he produces seventeen Patristic testimonies, he gives the interpretations that the rock was the faith which Peter confessed, supported by forty-four quotations ;f that the rock was Christ Himself, supported by sixteen ; and that the Church was built on all the Apostles, supported by eight. But as Launoy was a Gallican, and as through the progress of development he would not be acknowledged as a good Roman Catholic by the party now in the ascendant, I prefer to quote the Jesuit Maldonatus, whose Romanism is of the most thorough-going kind, and who I may add, on questions where his doctrinal prepossessions do not affect his judgment, is an interpreter of Scripture whose acuteness makes him worth consulting. He begins his commentary on this passage by saying, 'There are among ancient authors some who interpret "on this rock," that is, "on this faith," or "on this confession of faith in which thou hast called me the Son of the living God," as Hilary,+ and Gregory Nyssen, and Chrysostom,|| and Cyril of Alexandria.H St. Augustine going still further away from the true sense, interprets "on this rock," that is, "on myself Christ," because Christ was the rock. But Origen "on this rock," that is to say, on all men who have the same faith.' And then Maldonatus goes on with truly Protestant liberty to discuss each of these inter- pretations, pronouncing them to be as far as possible from Christ's meaning; &nd to prove, not by the method of authority, but of reason, that these Fathers were wrong, and that his own interpretation is the right one. 

I ought to tell you, however, that St. Augustine is not perfectly uniform in his interpretation. In one of his latest works, his Retractations, which does not mean retractations in our modern sense of the word, but a re-handling of thingspreviously treated of, he mentions having sometimes adoptedthe language which St. Ambrose had used in a hymn, andwhich designates Peter as the rock of the Church, but mostfrequently he had interpreted the passage of Christ Himself,led by the texts "that rock was Christ," and "other foundation can no man lay." He leaves his readers at liberty tochoose, but his mature judgment evidently inclines to thelatter interpretation. He lays more stress than I am inclinedto do on the distinction between Petra and Petrus, regardingthe latter as derived from the former in the same manner asChristianus from Christus.* 'Thou art Petrus,' he says, 'andon this Petra which thou hast confessed, saying, "thou art Christ the Son of the living God," will I build my Church : that is to say, on myself. I will build thee on myself, notmyself on thee. Men willing to build on man said, " I amof Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Peter." But others, whowere unwilling to be built upon Peter, but would be built onthe rock not on Petrus but on Petra said, I am of Christ.' Such is Augustine's commentary, which, using my Protestantliberty, I shall not scruple presently to reject. Other Fathersbesides Augustine and Origen are not quite uniform in theirinterpretation : and this is not to be wondered at ; because, as we shall presently see, there is a sense in which the Church is founded on Christ alone, a sense in which it was founded on Peter's confession, a sense in .which it was founded on Peter or on all the Apostles ; so that no matter which inter- pretation gives the true sense of this particular passage, it is quite easy to harmonize the doctrines which different Fathers derive from it. But none of these can be reconciled with the interpretation which regards this text as containing the charter of the Church's organization. A charter would be worthless if it were left uncertain to whom it was addressed or what powers it conferred. So that the mere fact that Fathers differed in opinion as to what was meant by ' this rock,' and that occasionally the same Father wavered in his opinion on this subject, proves that none of them regarded this text as one establishing a perpetual constitution for the Christian Church. My case is so strong that I could afford to sweep away all evidence of diversity of Patristic interpre- tation of this text. I could afford to put out of court every Father who interprets 'this rock' of Christ, or of all the Apostles, or of Peter's confession, and to allow the contro- versy to be determined by the evidence of those Fathers only who understand 'this rock' of Peter himself, and by examining whether they understood this text as conferring a perpetual privilege on Peter and a local successor. But at present it is enough that the extract I read from St. Augustine shows plainly enough that at the beginning of the fifth century it had not been discovered that this text contained the charter of the Church's organization, the revelation of the means of imparting to her indefectibility and unity. And if, as I said, it had ever been known in the Church that this was what Christ intended by the words, the tradi- tion could not have been lost; for the constant habit of resorting to this authority would have kept fresh the memory of our Lord's commands. 

We may, then, safely conclude that our Lord did not, in that address to Peter, establish a perpetual constitution for His Church ; but as to the historical question, whether He did not, in these words, confer some personal prerogative on Peter, I do not myself scruple to differ from the eminent Fathers whom I have cited as holding the contrary opinion.It seems to me that they have erred in considering thegeneral doctrine of Scripture, rather than what is required bythe context of this particular passage. It is undoubtedly thedoctrine of Scripture that Christ is the only foundation: ' other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, whichis Jesus Christ* (i Cor. iii. n). Yet we must remember thatthe same metaphor may be used to illustrate different truths,and so, according to circumstances, may have different significations. The same Paul who has called Christ the onlyfoundation, tells his Ephesian converts (ii. 20) : 'Ye arebuilt upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.' Andinlike manner we read (Rev. xxi. 14) : 'The wall of the cityhad twelve foundations, and on them the names of the twelveApostles of the Lamb.' How is it that there can be noother foundation but Christ, and yet that the Apostles arespoken of as foundations ? Plainly because the metaphorisused with different applications. Christ alone is that foundation, from being joined to which the whole building of theChurch derives its unity and stability, and gains strength todefy all the assaults of hell. But, in the same manner asany human institution is said to be founded by those mento whom it owes its origin, so we may call those men thefoundation of the Church whom God honoured by usingthem as His instruments in the establishment of it ; whowere themselves laid as the first living stones in that holytemple, and on whom the other stones of that temple werelaid; for it was on their testimony that others received thetruth, so that our faith rests on theirs ; and (humanly speaking) it is because they believed that we believe. So, again,in like manner, we are forbidden to call anyone on earth ourFather, 'for one is our Father which is in heaven.' And yet,in another sense, Paul did not scruple to call himself thespiritual father of those whom he had begotten in theGospel. You see, then, that the fact that Christ is called therock, and that on Him the Church is built, is no hindranceto Peter's also being, in a different sense, called rock, andbeing said to be the foundation of the Church ; so that I consider there is no ground for the fear entertained by some, in ancient and in modern times, that, by applying the words personally to Peter, we should infringe on the honour due to Christ alone. 

If there be no such fear, the context inclines us to look on our Lord's words as conferring on Peter a special reward for his confession. For that confession was really the birth of the Christian Church. Our Lord had grown up to the age of thirty, it \vould seem, unnoticed by His countrymen ; certainly without attempting to gather disciples. Then, marked out by the Holy Ghost at His baptism, and proclaimed by John as the Lamb of God, He was joined by followers. They heard His gracious words ; they saw His mighty works ; they came to think of Him as a prophet, and doubted, in themselves, whether He were not something more. Was it possible that this could be the long-promised Messiah ? This crisis was the date of Peter's confession. Our Lord saw His disciples' faith struggling into birth, and judged that it \vas time to give it the confirmation of His own assurance that they had judged rightly. By His questions He encouraged them to put into words the belief which was forcing itself on them all, but to which Peter first dared to give profession. In that profession he claimed the distinguishing doctrine of the Christian Church. Up to that time the Apostles had preached repentance. They had been commissioned to announce that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. But thenceforward the religion they preached was one whose main article was faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour. 

When you once understand the importance of this confession, you will understand the warmth of commendation with which our Lord received what seems to us but the simple profession of an ordinary Christian's faith. We are apt to forget what an effort it was for a Jew, at the time when the nation was in a state of strained and excited expectation of some signal fulfilment of the prophetic an- nouncement of a coming deliverer, to give up his ideal of a coming triumphant Messiah, to fix his hopes on a man of lowly rank, who made no pretensions to the greatness of this world, and to believe that the prophecies were to receive no better fulfilment than what the carpenter's son could givethem. One proportions praise and encouragement, not onlyto the importance of the thing done, but also to its difficultyto him who does it. The act of running a few steps alone,or of saying a few articulate words, is a feat on which noneof you would dream of priding himself ; but with what praiseand encouragement parents welcome a child's first attemptto walk without support ; with what delight they catch at thefirst few words he is able to pronounce. And it is not onlythat the first efforts of the child are as difficult to himas>ome more laborious exercise would be to us ; but also thatfirst victory is the pledge of many more. The very firstwords a child pronounces give his parents the assurance thatthat child is not, either through want of intellect or throughwant of powers of speech, doomed to be separated from inter-course with mankind. The learning these two or three wordsgives the assurance that he will afterwards be able to masterall the other difficulties of language, and will be capable ofall the varied delights which speech affords. And so inthat first profession of faith in Christ, imperfect thoughit was, and though it was shown immediately afterwardshow much as to the true character of the Messiah re-gained to be learned, was contained of the pledge of everyfuture profession of faith which the Church then foundedhas since been able to put forth. This accounts for theencouragement and praise with which our Lord received it. I own it seems to me the most obvious and natural wayofunderstanding our Lord's words to take them as conferringapersonal honour in reward for that confession. Thy nameIhave called Rock : and on thee and on this confession ofthine I will found my Church. For that confession really wasthe foundation of the Church. Just as in some noble sacredmusic, the strain which a single voice has led is responded toby the voices of the full choir, so that glorious hymn of praise,which Peter was the first to raise, has been caught up andre-echoed by the voices of the redeemed in every age. Nay,the anthem of thanksgiving to Jesus, the Son of God, whichhas filled the mouths of the Church militant on earth, shallstill be the burden of their songs in heaven as they ascribe 'blessing, and honour, and glory, and power to Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb.' 

It was not only in this first recognition of the true character of our Lord that Peter was foremost. Jesus fulfilled His promise to him by honouring him with the foremost place in each of the successive steps by which the Church was developed. It was through St. Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost that the first addition was made to the number of the disciples whom our Lord Himself had collected, when on one day there was added to the Church 3000 souls ; and it was by Peter's mission to Cornelius that the first step was made to the admission of Gentiles to the Church : thus causing it to overleap the narrow barriers of Judaism and to embrace all the families of the earth. Thus the words of our Lord were fulfilled in that Peter was honoured by being the foremost among the human agents by which the Church was founded.* But I need not say that this was an honour in which it was impossible he could have a successor. We might just as well speak of Adam's having a successor in the honour of being the first man, as of Peter's having a successor in the place which he occupied in founding the Christian Church. 

I have said that the Romanist interpretation of the text we have been considering is refuted by the fact that many eminent Fathers do not understand the rock as meaning St. Peter. You will see now, that even if they did,f as I do myself, the Romanist consequences would not follow. If Peter were the foundation of the Church in any other sense than I have explained, it would have shaken immediately afterwards when our Lord said unto him : 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' and tottered to its base when he denied his Lord. Immediately after Peter had earned commendation by his acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, the doctrine of a crucified Messiah was proposed to him and he rejected it. So that if the Apostles had believed that the words 'On thisrock I will build my Church' constituted Peter their infallibleguide, the very first time they followed his guidance theywould have been led into miserable error. They would havebeen led by him to reject the Cross, on which we rely as ouratonement, and on which we place all our hope of salvation.I will not delay to speak of the latter part of the passage,because it is clear that the privileges therein spoken of arenot peculiar to Peter, very similar words being used in thei8th of St. Matthew to all the Apostles. 

I hasten on to the words in St. Luke, on which RomanCatholics are forced to lay much of their case. For whenit is pointed out, as I did just now, that the charge in St.Matthew clearly did not render Peter competent to guide theApostles, it is owned that the due powers were not givento him then, but it is said they were conferred afterwards.When it is pointed out that the disputes among the Apostlesfor precedence show that they were not aware that Peter hadbeen made their ruler, it is answered that our Lord on thenight before He was betrayed decided the subject of thesedisputes in His charge to Peter. Our habitual use of thesecond person plural in addressing individuals so disguisesfrom the modern English reader the force of the RomanCatholic argument, that I have hardly ever found anyone whocould quote correctly that familiar text about sifting as wheatunless his attention had been specially called to it. OurLord's words do very strongly bring out a special gift toPeter : ' Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you(v/ms, all the Apostles) that he may sift you as wheat ; butI have prayed for thee (Peter) that thy faith fail not, and whenthou art converted strengthen thy brethren.' But certainlyno one who interpreted Scripture according to its obviousmeaning could suspect that the passage contains a revelationconcerning the Church's appointed guide to truth in all time.The whole passage refers, on the face of it, to the immediatedanger the faith of the Apostles was in from those trialsunder the pressure of which they all deserted their Master.There was a special prayer for Peter because of his special danger, and we see that this prayer did not exclude a griev- ous fall. If no security of unbroken constancy in the faith was thereby gained to Peter, for whom the prayer was directly made, we have no ground for supposing that it had greater efficacy in the case of any alleged successors, to whom the petition can at most apply indirectly. It may be added that the work of 'strengthening* his brethren, thereby committed to Peter (one to which he was peculiarly bound, whose fall had perilled men's faith), was no peculiar prerogative of Peter's. The same word o-nj/aifeiv is used in three or four places in the Acts (xiv. 22 ; xv. 32, 41 ; xviii. 23) of Paul's confirming the Churches of Syria and Cilicia, of Judas and Silas confirming the brethren at Antioch, of Timothy con- firming the Thessalonian Church. And most remarkable of all, Paul when purposing to visit Rome, which is said to have been Peter's peculiar charge, expects that it is by his instrumentality this benefit will be conferred on the Roman Church : 'I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established' ts TO a-rrjpLxOrjvai ryzas (Rom. i. n). 

I may here, in passing, mention another passage (2 Cor. xi. 28), where Paul shows himself strangely unconscious of Peter's prerogatives. For, having enumerated some of his labours and sufferings in the cause of the Gospel, he adds : ' Beside those things that are without, that which cometh on me daily, the care of all the Churches.' If, as Roman theory would have it, the care of all the Churches was Peter's province, St. Paul is most unreasonable in complaining of the trouble he had incurred through gratuitously meddling with another man's work, thus literally becoming what St. Peter himself called an aAAorptoeTrto-KOTros (i Pet. iv. 15). But Paul elsewhere (Gal. ii. 8) limits Peter's pro- vince to the 'Apostleship of the Circumcision,' that is to say, to the superintendence of the Jewish Churches : and states that the work of evangelizing the Gentiles had, by agreement with the three chief Apostles, been specially committed to himself and Barnabas. 

This prayer for Peter is so clearly personal that some Roman Catholic controversialists do not rely on this passage at all. Neither can they produce any early writers whode-duce from it anything in favour of the Roman See. Bellar-mine can quote nothing earlier than the eleventh century,except the suspicious evidence of some Popes in their owncause, of whom the earliest to speak distinctly is PopeAgatho in his address to the sixth general council, A.D. 680.How earlier Fathers understood the passage, will appearplainly from Chrysostom's commentary,* when he answersthe question why Peter is especially addressed : 'He saidthis sharply reproving him, and showing that his fall wasmore grievous than that of the others, and needed greaterassistance. For he had been guilty of two faults, that hecontradicted our Lord when He said all shall be offended,saying, "though all should be offended, yet will I never beoffended"; and secondly, that he set himself above theothers : and we may add a third fault, that he ascribed all tohimself. In order, then, to heal these diseases, our Lordpermitted him to fall : and therefore passing by the othersHe turns to him : "Simon, Satan hath desire to have you,that he may sift you as wheat (that is to say, might troubleyou, harass you, tempt you), but I have prayed for thee thatthy faith fail not." Why, if Satan desired to have all, doesnot our Lord say, I have prayed for all ? Is it not plainlyfor the reason I have mentioned ? By way of rebuke to him,and showing that his fall was worse than that of the othersHe turns His speech to him.'f Similar language is used by a much later expositor, the Venerable Bede, in his commentary on this text of St. Luke. He explains it 'as I have by praying preserved thy faith that it should not fail under the temptation of Satan, so also do thou be mindful to raise up and comfort thy weaker brethren by the example of thy penitence, lest perchance they despair of pardon.' It is plain that the great teachers of the Church were ignorant for hundreds of years that this text contained more than a per- sonal promise to the Apostle about to be tried by a special temptation, and that they never found out it was a charter text revealing the constitution of the Christian Church. 

I come now to the third text, the 'Feed my sheep* of St. John ; and here, too, certainly, there is no indication in the text itself that there was an appointment to an office peculiar in its kind. The office of tending Christ's sheep is certainly not peculiar to St. Peter. It is committed, in even more general terms, by St. Paul to the Ephesian elders, 'Feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood ' (Acts xx. 28), and by Peter himself to his fellow elders, ' Feed the flock of God which is among you' (i Pet. v. 2). The sequel of the story, too, is adverse to the supposition that our Lord meant to confer on St. Peter the oversight of his fellow Apostles. For when he asks concerning St. John 'What shall this man do?' he receives something like a rebuke : ' What is that to thee? follow thou me.' I don't know any respectable Patristic authority for understanding the passage otherwise than Cyril of Alexandria does, whose commentary we may well adopt : 'If anyone asks for what cause he asked Simon only, though the other disciples were present, and what he means by "Feed my lambs," and the like, we answer that St. Peter, with the other disciples, had been already chosen to the Apostleship, but because meanwhile Peter had fallen (for under great fear he had thrice denied the Lord), he now heals him that was sick, and exacts a threefold confession in place of his triple denial, contrasting the former with the latter, and compensating the fault withthe correction.' And again, 'By the triple confession Peterabrogates the sin contracted in his triple denial. For fromwhat our Lord says, "Feed my lambs," a renewal of theApostolate already delivered to him is considered to havebeen made which presently absolves the disgrace of his sinand blots out the perplexity of his human infirmity.' I shallnot detain you longer with the Scripture argument ; nor shallI examine, for instance, how Romanist advocates struggle tomake out that the appointment of Matthias was made by thesingle authority of Peter, because the whole history of theActs (as, for instance, the appointment of the seven deacons,the conversion of Samaria, where we find not 'Peter tookJohn' but -the Apostles sent Peter and John'), shows thatthe original constitution of the Church was not monarchical,and that when that of the Jerusalem Church became so,James, and not Peter, was its ruler. I may mention that inthe Clementines of which I shall have occasion to speakagain presently, and which did so much to raise the authorityattributed to Peter in the Church, it is James, not Clement,who is bishop of bishops and supreme ruler ; and to JamesPeter must yearly render an account of his doings.*