of the east and of the west. These three things-divine commission, uninterrupted succession, and general acknowledgment -are manifestly necessary to sustain the lofty pretensions of the Church of Rome; and in every one of them Mr. Shepherd asserts the Roman Church to be deficient, there being nothing in Scripture to warrant the first assertion-nothing in history to warrant the second and third.

We apprehend the chief objection to Mr. Shepherd's book with many will be that which arises from the completeness of his proof of there being no warrant whatever for the Papal claims-no divine commission-no uninterrupted succession -no general acknowledgment of the Roman supremacy. For men will say "How, then, came it to be so firmly established, and so universally admitted by the whole Western Church for so many centuries, and at various times conceded by the Eastern Church also?" We forget the gross ignorance of the ages when these pretensions were first put forward. We can scarcely believe the forgeries and artifices of all kinds which were unscrupulously employed to sustain and propagate the claims. Generation after generation they were sedulously inculcated-men drank in the delusion with their mother's milk; and what is bred in the bone cannot easily be got out of the flesh. Let the incredulous examine the book for themselves.

Of the first bishops of Rome so little is known that historians are not agreed as to their names, or even the order in which they succeeded each other. Clement is usually made the third, and Linus and Anancletus are named as his predecessors. But others make Clement the immediate successor of Peter, though it is impossible to prove that St. Peter ever was at Rome; and the Clementine epistles addressed to James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, manifestly designed to support the assertion that Clement succeeded St. Peter and was invested by him with supremacy over the whole Church, are now given up by every well-informed person as gross and palpable forgeries.

Another large mass of forgeries-namely, Isidore's decretalsare now unanimously rejected by the learned, which writings professed to be authoritative decisions of the early bishops of Rome in the form of epistles to the various Churches, and were meant, like the spurious writings attributed to Clement, as so many proofs of the supremacy claimed and exercised by the Roman Church from the earliest times. These acknowledged forgeries being withdrawn, nothing actually remains capable of sustaining in the least degree the Papal claims; and of the first thirty of the bishops of Rome we have scarcely any historical records whatever, except the one epistle of Clement to

the Corinthians, and the doubtful notice of Eleutherius and Lucius by the venerable Bede.

"It is my belief (says Mr. Shepherd) that I have, in the proofs and illustrations, justified the history I have given of the Roman Church during the period embraced by this volume. If I have, it will be seen that what is recorded of the Roman Church is almost nothing, and that those acts of interference with other Churches which appear in the histories, and some other writings, are forgeries of a much later date, manifestly written to create a belief in a supremacy which had never existed, but which, at the time they were made, the Roman Church was endeavouring to introduce. I shall conclude this volume by an inquiry whether there is any evidence in the writings of this period that the Church acknowledged any supremacy by divine right in the bishop of Rome, which is the present pretension of his party."

After stating what is the extent of the Papal claim, our author proceeds:

"Such a claim will, no doubt, strike the unprejudiced reader, after the perusal of the foregoing pages, as deserving only of ridicule. He will have seen that during three hundred and eighty four years, thirty-six of these awful personages, all, too, with one exception, apparently orthodox, passed through the world, and yet that, beyond their names, we scarcely know more about them than about their humble neighbours, the bishops of Gubio; while he will have seen the most barefaced impositions practised upon the credulity of mankind to gain credit for this fable about them.

Nothing could save a claim like this from the most unredeemable ridicule had it not been, and where it not still, the faith of a large portion of Christendom. This faith was, no doubt, in a great degree, produced and maintained by such stories as I have been exposing. They were auxiliary to attempts made on the weakness of the churches to throw around them the shackles of Rome. If, however, the question be carefully and dispassionately examined, it will be acknowledged that a claim like this, requiring communion with the Roman bishop, the adoption of his tenets, and submission to his laws, on pain of exclusion from eternal life, cannot expect to be met by rational obedience, unless it rests on the most clear and undeniable testimony. It ought to be distinctly proved from the word of God: no less testimony ought to be received; and then, no doubt, the concurrent voice and practice of primitive Christian antiquity will illustrate and enforce it. It is no transcendental mystery that cannot be defined; nor is there any difficulty in our comprehension of it. If the Roman story be true, it was from the beginning a practical fact to which neither ear nor eye could be shut. The committal of such a power into any hands would be an event of such overwhelming importance as to be of necessity a primary subject of revelation, and consequently of the apostolic teaching......If, then, the apostles and their congregations knew of this bishopric, and that it was to be continued to St. Peter's successors, they must also have known in what way his YOL, XXX.-Q

successors were to be discovered that they were to be the bishops of the city in which he died. It would seem natural, therefore, that we should hear of many anxious thoughts and guesses during St. Peter's life time, as to the line of bishops on which his mantle was to fall: we should surely hear something of the interest which his movements would create of the joy which his presence in any city would cause, and of the sorrow which would be felt on his departure. Moreover, when St. Peter's death had taken place, and his mantle was found on the shoulders of the Roman bishop, it would seem natural that the news should have immediately spread far and wide-that Church should have passed it onward to Church over the length and breadth of Christendom. The supremacy which St. Peter had been exercising would be seen immediately exercised by the Roman bishop: it could wait for no tedious development of centuries. The spiritual authority of every bishop, the grace of every sacrament, the salvation of every soul, would depend upon its acknowledgment, and call for its immediate manifestation. The exercise of the Roman bishop's prerogative, together with the submission of the universal Church, must have been from the beginning an obvious fact, constantly pressed on the attention of the Church."

This line of argument is pressed with great force in the concluding chapters of the volume, and we think it irresistible, provided the reader will not allow himself to be turned aside from the real point, which is not whether Peter himself had the authority claimed, but whether it descended to a Roman bishop at Peter's death in preference to St. John and the other apostles who were still alive. We deny that Peter had any such supremacy; but, even granting that he had it, this is not the point. And then we must remember that Rome does not claim it as chief city of the empire, or because that bishop is the chief bishop, but because he sits in St. Peter's chair. Therefore, our author's line of argument is the only admissible line. The question is not whether St. Peter visited Rome, nor even whether he had his seat there, for the Romanists themselves allow that he had his first seat at Antioch: the question is whether he died Bishop of Rome and transmitted to a bishop, who was no apostle, supremacy over apostles still living, and over the universal Church. The Romanists themselves felt that this was the point; and in order to meet it they fabricated the Clementine epistles, which are now given up by every one as gross and palpable forgeries. But in these Clement professes to write in the most condescending and patronising spirit to St. James at Jerusalem, informing him of the death of St. Peter, and of his having been appointed his successor, and of his readiness to take the Church of Jerusalem under his patronage, as being invested with the power exercised by St. Peter

over all the Churches. It is assumed that St. James is well acquainted with St. Peter's supremacy, and with his power to transmit it to the line of bishops which he might choose, and, therefore, tends to corroborate Mr. Shepherd's argument; for it was not enough to name a successor-it must be a line of suc

cession.

Cyprian's writings Mr. Shepherd treats without any mercy, regarding all that has been attributed to him either as spurious or as so much interpolated that it is scarcely possible to distinguish between the parts that are genuine and the parts that are forged. Many anachronisms are pointed out by which a great suspicion is cast upon them all. And the same is the case with some of Basil's letters, which are addressed to persons who were dead at the time when the letters profess to have been written, or which contain the mention of persons or of facts as standing in connection with each other, when they are known to belong to different periods, and were not thus contemporaneous. The discussion of these points seems to be conducted with great fairness and care, and will well repay an attentive perusal and study, and it is only another proof of the fact-which all scholars are already pretty well aware of-that we must receive with caution, and not without suspicion, every thing that has passed through Roman hands in reaching us; so many are the detected forgeries-so many the known interpolations. And the avowed principle of the Romanist is that the aggrandisement of his Church should be the first object with every member of that communion. Truth and integrity, and consistency of character, are only secondary objects in their estimation, when put in comparison with what they are accusstomed to regard as for the glory of God.

Papers on the Papal Aggression. 1850-1851. Westerton. THIS is a valuable collection of Tracts, any of which may, however, be obtained separately. It contains Lord John Russell's "Letter to the Bishop of Durham," "The Pope's Bull" and "Dr. Wiseman's Pastoral Letter," "Dr. Cumming's Second Lecture," Dr. Nolan's Lecture," "Dr. Mc. Neile's Speech at Exeter-hall," "Speech of Sir R. Peel in the House of Commons," "Charge of the Bishop of London," "Correspondence between the Bishop of London and the Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, A.M., respecting the Church of St. Barnabas," "Letter of Lady Morgan to Dr. Wiseman regarding St. Peter's Chair," and "The Legend of St. Peter's Chair," by Anthony Rich, Jun. B.A. It is on account of this last, tract that we now notice the collection, for all the other tracts are become

matters of public notoriety-most of them matters of history. Lady Morgan, it seems, had affirmed that Denon and Champollion asserted that St. Peter's chair had been examined by the French savans while the army of the Republic held possession of Rome, and that it was found to have a Cufic inscription, and so had been in Mahommedan hands, or made for the infidels at least, if not made by them as a chair of state for one of their sultans. Dr. Wiseman professed to be greatly scandalized at this report: to say that such a chair, from the occupation of which a man becomes a Pope, was the chair of an infidel, was next door to saying that the man who sits in the chair is an infidel, and this is a slander which was not to be borne. One would think that the simple way of settling the question would be for Dr. Wiseman to say, I have seen the chair, and it is not as you say, Lady Morgan. But this is not the way they manage things at Rome: they have more respect for their own dignity than to take common sense for their guide; nor will they expose the mysteries of their religion to contempt by allowing men to determine by the use of their eye-sight whether the chair is of Roman or Mahommedan workmanship, and whether it has an Arabic inscription or not.

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Dr. Wiseman must, of course, do all things "secundum artem Romanam," and, therefore, undertakes to crush poor Lady Morgan with an elaborate argument, proving incontestably, by the most weighty reasons, that the chair is none other than St. Peter's chair, of which we may be henceforward better assured than if we had seen the chair ourselves with our own eyes. "I will set this calumny at rest ”—“ I will describe""I will give the grounds," &c. ("Remarks," pp. 8, 9). "Would any one imagine (says Mr. Rich, p. 10) that Dr. Wiseman was merely going to transfer into a pamphlet of thirty-seven pages another pamphlet of similar dimensions, published sixty-three years before in a dead language, and that without the slightest acknowledgment, but with a studied concealment, of its real author?-yet such is the fact."

Mr. Rich, like a gallant champion, has stept forth in defence of Lady Morgan, and poor Dr. Wiseman makes as sorry a figure as the boastful Irus when he unconsciously defied the son of Laertes and both stood up for the conflict

"Irus, alas! shall Irus be no more!"

After transcribing Dr. Wiseman's description of the chair, Mr. Rich says :—

"Never have there been so many solecisms in historical knowledge