It was when all opposition had ceased to the spread of Christianity, and the sword of persecution was sheathed in its scabbard, the Emperors themselves being turned from Idols to serve the living and true GOD, that the Bishops of Rome began to imagine, that they were entitled to that in the CHURCH, which the Emperors themselves were in the whole Roman State. Then the idle and un founded report was propagated and received, that Peter himself, having full authority over the rest of the Apostles, had been Bishop of Rome, where he established a sovereign and universal Episcopacy over all the Churches in the world. It may be observed, however, that the whole tradition of St. Peter's voyage to Rome, was first derived from Papias, an author characterized by Eusebius as being very credulous and of a mean judgment. That St. Peter established a universal episcopacy there, is a very idle and groundless imagination, by no means consistent with the account given of him, in the Scriptures of truth. As the Apostle of the circumcision, St. Peter's connexion with the Churches of the believing Jews by no means corresponds with the taking the charge of a Gentile Church, and, making that his residence and chief Episcopal See, rather than Jerusalem and Antioch; (of which he undoubtedly was the Bishop,) to which, as the D Apostle of the circumcision, he had, above all other Churches, a peculiar relation. 'Jerusalem was, in fact, the first and truly Mother Church; the Seminary of Christianity from which many other Churches were planted, in Judæa,' in Samaria,' in Syria, and particularly in Antioch, where the diciples were first called Christians. All this time, the City of Rome lay in darkness; its Church had no being; its Tarpeian Hill was covered with a thick Fog of Paganism. If Peter indeed visited it afterwards, when the light of divine truth had dispelled the darkness in which it had been shrouded, the Churches of the circumcision would, of course, become his chief and proper charge. St. Clement, Bishop of Rome, and a Contemporary and Fellow-labourer of the great apostle of the Gentiles, in speaking of St. Peter and St. Paul, not even mentions St. Peter's coming to Rome; whilst, at the same time, he dwells most eloquently on the praises of the latter. Jerusalem was, allowedly, the chief Church of the circumcision; to her then, as such, the pre-eminence was undoubtedly due; since the blessings of Salvation were to be dispensed "To the Jew first, and then to the Gentile." St. James, the brother Acts ix. 31. 2 Acts viii. 5. 3 Acts xi. 26. 4 Philipp. iv. 3. 5 Rom. ii. 10. of our blessed LORD, was appointed the first Bishop of the first Christian Church. Epiphanius calls him the first Bishop who had an Episcopal Chair, the first to whom Christ committed his own Throne upon earth. And Eusebius informs us, that a strange kind of veneration was given to the very Throne and Episcopal Chair of St. James, kept at Jerusalem, even to his days, by certain superstitious Christians, who, if they had dreamt of an Infallible Chair left by St. Peter at Rome, would doubtless have paid their homage there." It appears evident then from the proofs which have been adduced, and the observations which have been made, that the Church of Rome was only one of the younger daughters of Sion; that, though the Apostle Peter suffered at Rome, his ever being Bishop there, is a fact very doubtful indeed; and that we have no warrant to conclude, either from history or the testimony of Scripture, that a universal and sovereign Episcopacy was ever established there by St. Peter of the circumcision. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy succeeded the Apostolic; and the following is a chronological list of some of the most celebrated Bishops and Popes, 1 See Bishop Bull's Vindication of the Church of England. |