whole Church militant, or that he received the Primacy of honor only, and not directly one of true and proper jurisdiction from the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

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If any should say that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord Himself, or by Divine right that Blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of successors in the Primacy over the Church universal, or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of Blessed Peter in this Primacy, let him be anathema." The claim is strong, clear, definite. It should have strong foundation and clear, definite evidence.

But we find not a word in Holy Scriptures clearly naming any such Primacy of jurisdiction, or assigning it to Peter. We do not find that the other Apostles ever alluded to it or recognized it. We do not find word or act from St. Peter himself intimating that he ever thought of it. We do find another, St. James, in authority superior to St. Peter. We find St. Paul, in word and deed, claiming and exercising an authority as Apostle in which he recognizes no human superior. We find the Churches everywhere accepting that. We find the foundation text of "the rock" upon which Rome would build her claim, absolutely set aside on Rome's own declared principles; only thirteen out of eighty-five early Fathers giving clearly the Roman interpretation. We find the

very Missal of Rome itself as used in her public worship, denying the Roman interpretation. We find St. Paul, not St. Peter, the great dogmatic teacher, organizer, authorizer and transmitter. We find not only St. Paul most emphatic in scouting any thought of authority in apostleship superior to his own, but such men as St. Cyprian, Firmilian and Origen equally bold in their rejection. We find not a shadow of evidence that St. Peter himself was ever Bishop of Rome, but on the contrary, a clear assertion that the first Bishop was ordained by St. Paul; not an atom of proof that he ever pretended to transmit Primacy; not a shadow of testimony that the first six or seven Bishops of Rome ever dreamed that they had such power. We find the whole story of those first Bishops of Rome in a mist of obscurity and uncertainty. And we find, too, an historical fact absolutely inconsistent with any Primacy of authority in the first two Bishops of Rome. There was an inspired Apostle who outlived St. Peter thirty years; even St. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. Granting for argument's sake, that St. Peter had first authority while he lived, and that Linus or Clement succeeded him, shall we be asked to believe will any one dare claim it-that Linus or Clement, who never saw the Lord or heard a word that fell from His lips, had authority over the Apostle who leaned upon Jesus'

bosom, and looked into the open tomb, who was of the chosen three to be with our Lord in His agony, who received from our Lord Himself the guardianship and care of her whom the Romanists worship as Guardian and Mistress and Queen of the Church, who was chosen of Christ to see Him in the final vision in Heaven and to be His authoritative rebuker and rewarder to the angels of the seven churches, who received and wrote that revelation after St. Peter's death, and who was one of the three whom St. Paul named as the Pillars-shall we believe that St. John was under the Primacy of Linus or Clement? If there was any Primate of authority on earth, from 67 to 97, it is absolutely certain that it was no Bishop of Rome, but it must have been St. John the Divine.

But how should a claim such as Rome makes, to supreme authority, be established and verified? Cardinal Bellarmine says that in dealing with the Primacy, "we are dealing with the principal matter of Christianity." Perrone, the Jesuit, says "It is the principal point of the matter on which the existence and safety of the Church altogether depends." How, then, shall such a claim be verified? Holy Scripture gives the rule. No one is to be recognized as in spiritual authority unless he can show full, clear and open proof. From Aaron down, no man could be accepted without God's unmistakable designation in the appointed

THE PRIMACY

will build my CH

before quote." The Archbishop Kenrick is anothell d was Archbishop of Baltimore; there burch." bisevner of the same name, until recently ArchO shop of St. Louis. In the Vatican Council he had prepared a speech which he was not permitted to deliver, but for which he secured publication. And he shows the interpretation of eighty-five of the accepted Fathers and Doctors, giving as the number of those who by the "Rock" understand St. Peter, only seventeen; out of which, four, Origen, Cyprian, Jerome and Augustine, are shown holding as equally acceptable a different interpretation, so reducing the number to thirteen; while forty-four make the faith which Peter professed to be the "Rock," and sixteen understood Christ Himself as the "Rock." Thirteen for the Roman claim; seventy-two, the Archbishop being witness, against it. But the Roman Creed of Pius IV. requires the promise "I will never take nor interpret the Holy Scriptures except in accordance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers." So out of her own mouth, Rome's claim to St. Peter as the "Rock" is made utterly void.

But I must confine myself to the Fathers of the first three centuries, and not pass the point to which I am limited. Happily for your patience there are only three or four to whom we can refer as clear. Tertullian plainly makes St. Peter the "Rock," though he asserts that the privilege given

to St. Peter died with him, and was not transmissible; that it was absolutely personal. Origen (A.D. 200-254,) preaching on these words, says "That rock is every disciple of Christ. But if thou thinkest that the Church is built by God on St. Peter alone, what dost thou say of John, the Son of Thunder and every one of the Apostles? Or shall we dare to say that the gates of hell were not to prevail against Peter in particular, but that they were to prevail against the other Apostles and perfect ones? Is it not true for each and all, what was said before, that 'the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,' and also that other saying, 'Upon this rock I will build my Church'?"

We come next to St. Cyprian, whose Christian career was from A.D. 245 to 258. And from his special relation to the Church of Rome and his strong controversies with the Bishop of Rome, his evidence is important. The passages which might be quoted are many. Some of them, though still often quoted by Roman writers as strongly in their favor, are undoubted forgeries or perversions of the true text, and have been so acknowledged, and were as such for some time omitted by fairminded Roman editors. We omit them therefore. As to the rest, there seem to be at first very marked contradictions, and yet they may be entirely harmonized. St. Cyprian clearly recog