In dealing with a subject in which the evidence is frequently ambiguous and conflicting, and sometimes of more than doubtful genuineness, and with a period of much obscurity, no amount of research will often serve to point to more than a conjectural conclusion. But, inasmuch as it is on the basis of the assumptions involved in the above theory that the claims of the Church of Rome mainly rest, it will be desirable to state, as concisely as possible, the main facts and arguments on which those who deny these assumptions ground their contrary opinion.

The question whether or no St Peter was designed for pre-eminence among the apostles resolves itself, it is evident, into one of New Testament criticism; but from the time of Origen, who visited Rome early in the 3d century, when the theory first began to be put forward, there has always been a certain section in the church who have distinctly repudiated the affirmative assumption. “For if,” says Origen, “you hold that the whole church was built by God on· Peter alone, what will you say concerning John, the son of thunder, and each of the other apostles?” (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, xiii. 397). Next, as regards the evidence for St Peter’s presence in Rome and lengthened labours there, as the head of a Christian congregation, it is maintained by the great majority of Protestant scholars that there is no proof that he was ever in Rome at all; that the “Babylon” referred to in his first epistle (ch. v. 13) is really the distant city of the East; and that, even if his presence in Rome be admitted, his arrival there must have been long subsequent to that of his brother apostle, and his labours altogether subordinate in importance,—conclusions supported by the complete silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles respecting both him and his work in the capital of the empire. On the other hand, it is urged that, as no known tradition assigns the martyrdom of Peter to any other place than Rome, every allusion to that event is implicitly an argument for his visit to the capital; and, generally speaking, it may be said that the most recent and authoritative research seems to point to the conclusion that he both visited Rome and taught there, but that his labours were carried on in a spirit of rivalry, not to say antagonism, to those of Paul, being bestowed exclusively on a Judaizing church, while those of his fellow-apostle were devoted to the Gentile community. Of the important feature which harmonizes perfectly with these conclusions—namely, that the Church of Rome, attaching itself directly to the church at Jerusalem, became the depositary of a Jewish-Christian rather than of a Pauline tradition—there can be no doubt whatever.

The existence of a considerable poor Jewish element in Rome as early as the latter half of the 1st century is attested by numerous facts and allusions in the classical writers. The Jews were everywhere actively engaged in commercial pursuits, and formed an influential section in all great centres. Josephus tells us that, when on one occasion the Jews of Palestine presented a petition to the emperor Augustus, it was supported by no less than eight thousand of their countrymen resident in the capital. The chief quarters of this Jewish colony were in the Trastevere, about the base of the Janiculum; and its members were distinguished by the fidelity with which they cherished their national customs and beliefs. Both Rome and the Jewish community in its midst must accordingly have appeared a field of primary importance in the work of evangelization; and it is evident that the questions raised by the claims of Christianity would there be discussed with the greatest ardour, and the most strenuous endeavours be made to bring them to an ultimate issue. That such was really the case is sufficiently proved by a well-known passage in Suetonius, who relates that about the middle of the 1st century there were constant riots among the Jewish population, their ringleader being one “Chrestus,” and that Claudius in consequence expelled them from the city. There is no reason for supposing that this section of the community would be estranged to any great degree, by the pursuits and associations of their daily life, from those by whom they were surrounded. The influences that then pervaded alike the Roman literature, culture, and civilization were mainly Greek, and the Jewish element was no less affected by these influences than the Latin. Greek, again, was the ordinary medium of commercial intercourse throughout the Roman world, and the Jew was largely engaged in commerce. Greek therefore had, except in the Syrian provinces, become the language of his daily life, as it had long been that of his sacred books read aloud in the synagogues, and of the annals of his race as recorded by the national writers.

The importance of the passage above referred to in Suetonius, of which the very inaccuracy which it embodies is in itself highly significant, has perhaps hardly been sufficiently recognized, for it not only records an important fact but it sheds light on subsequent history. It enables us to understand that, when the Jewish population was permitted to return to Rome, its members, whether adherents of the national faith or converts to the new, would, in common with the whole Christian community, feel the necessity of extreme caution lest their religious observances or their religious differences should again attract the notice of the Rofhan magistrate and expose them to fresh persecution. Of this character would appear to be the sentiments indicated in the epistle of Clemens Romanus (supposed by some to have been the same with the Clemens whose name is inserted as that of the third bishop of Rome) when he refers to the sudden and repeated “calamities and adversities which are befalling us”—a passage generally interpreted as having reference to the persecution under Nero and the impending persecution under Domitian (Lightfoot, Append., p. 267). In such considerations as these we may fairly consider that we have a reasonable explanation of the fact that during the first two centuries of its existence we hear so little of the Christian church in Rome.

With such considerations before us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that Greek was also the language of the early Christian church in Rome. In whatever proportions, therefore, that church was composed of Christianized Jews or of Christianized pagans, its records would naturally be, as we find them to have been, in the Greek language. Hegesippus, “the father of church history,” makes a statement which is generally understood to imply that, being in Rome in the time of Anicetus (bishop 155- 168 A.D.), he made a list of the bishops of the see. This list is not extant; but in Irenaeus, who wrote his Adversus Heereses a few years later, we have another Greek list of twelve bishops, which shows the succession accepted at Rome in the time of Eleutherius, the contemporary of Irenaeus, and at the head of which stand the names of both Peter and Paul. To these lists are to be added two other Greek lists, the one in the Chronicon of Eusebius, the other in the Ecclesiastical History of the same writer. Of these, the former extends from Peter to Gaius (the last bishop before the Diocletian persecution), and gives the periods of office. It is derived from the Armenian translation, but is not contained in the version by Jerome. The first Latin list, the Catalogus Liberianus, — supposed by Mommsen to have been derived from the Chronicon, of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, and to have been in turn the original from which the Catalogus Felicianus (the oldest existing version of the Liber Pontificalis, — see infra} was taken,—is so called because it was compiled in the episcopate of Liberius, who succeeded 352 a.d. We have also two other Latin lists of some authority, in Augustine (Epist. 53; Migne, Patrol., xxxiii. 195) andin Optatus (De Schism. Don., ii. 3).

It is undeniable that in all the foregoing lists there are considerable discrepancies. The Liberian catalogue gives us a certain “Cletus,” as the immediate predecessor of Anacletus; scholars like Mommsen and Lipsius are divided in opinion as to whether Anicetus was the predecessor or the successor of Pius; while, as regards the duration of each episcopate, there are equally important discrepancies. But difficulties like these cannot justly prejudice our acceptance of the general tradition with which they are associated; they are rather to be looked upon as supplying valuable incidental evidence with respect to the status of the Roman episcopate; and, while the lists themselves prove, on the one hand, that before the termination of the 3d century the office was held to be of such importance that its succession was a matter of interest to ecclesiastics living in distant sees, the variations that the lists present indicate not less clearly that the Roman bishopric at this period could not have held that position in relation to the church—the parallel to that of the imperial office in the empire—claimed for it by writers like Bellarmine.

The comparative history of institutions would, in itself, incline us to look for a less precise and exalted conception of the office, as discharged by these early bishops, than when, after a lapse of centuries and a succession of varied experiences, its duties and responsibilities had become defined and developed; but it is also a fact of considerable significance that thöse who were elected to the office from the time of Clement were for the most part men whose very names would probably not have survived but for their appearance in these lists, and that, even when, in one or two instances, their individual careers emerge from the general obscurity, they themselves appear as speaking and acting in a manner which seems hardly compatible with those exalted prerogatives which, as some maintain, were inherent in the office from its first commencement. In: the recently recovered portion of the epistle of Clemens Romanus, above cited, it is, for example, highly significant to find that the letter purports to emanate, not from the “bishop of Rome,” but from “the church at Rome,” and to find again that, even so late as the 2d century, this letter is in like manner referred to as emanating from the community, and not from the individual. This feature, indeed, is not a little suggestive with respect to the development of the Roman supremacy. While the letter is wanting in anything that implies any special pre-eminence on the part of the Roman bishop, it is at the same time characterized by a certain admonitory tone, such as could hardly have been assumed if the community by whom it was sent had not been held to possess a recognized superiority over the community to whom it is written, but this superiority is not greater than would naturally belong (notwithstanding their common founder) to the church in imperial Rome as contrasted with the church at subject Corinth,—to the church of the august capital from whence emanated the laws which governed the empire and the church of the fallen city which, two centuries and a half before, the Roman arms had well nigh effaced from existence.

If again we accept as genuine the evidence afforded in * those seven letters of Ignatius which most critics are disposed to accept as genuine, the relations of the Roman Church to the other churches of the empire appear to be of the same character. Ignatius, when on his way to Rome (probably early in the 2d century) to suffer martyrdom, addressed a letter to the Christian community in that city. In this letter there is again an equally direct reference to a certain primacy of the church in Rome, which is addressed as “she who hath the presidency in the place of the region of the Romans.” But this expression is immediately followed by a definition of this primacy which is altogether incompatible with the theory that it is derived from the episcopal succession in the church; it is spoken of as founded upon sentiments of Christian fellowship, with the additional considerations attaching to the dignity and superior advantages belonging to the church of the capital.

The conclusion to which the foregoing evidence points is again strongly confirmed by the general fact that, as each new pretension on the part of the Roman see was put forward, it was called in question and repudiated by some one or other section of the Christian community. An obscure and doubtful passage in Irenaeus {Adv. Haeres., bk. iii. c. 3) testifies, at most, to nothing more than a fuller recognition of the primacy of the Roman Church, while in the same writer, who, it will be remembered, was bishop of the church at Lyons, we have a notable instance of a distinct repudiation of the claims of the Roman bishop to dictate to the bishops of other dioceses. This was ,on the occasion of a sentence of excommunication which Victor I. (c. 190-202 a.d.) had pronounced upon certain bishops in the province of Asia Minor, on account of their refusal to celebrate Easter at the particular time enjoined by the church in Rome. Victor appears not to have had recourse to this extreme measure until after he had consulted with his episcopal brethren in Palestine, Pontus, Gaul, and Corinth; but Irenaeus, notwithstanding, remonstrates boldly with him on the rigour of his proceeding, and on the impolicy of thus cutting himself off from an important section of the church on a mere matter of ceremonial observance. We find again Tertullian, who during his residence in Rome had acquired a certain practical knowledge of the administrative characteristics of its church, implicitly intimating his disapproval in his treatise De Pudicitia (sec. i.) of the assumption by the Roman bishop of the titles of “pontifex maximus” and “episcopus episcoporum”; in another of his treatises {De Virgin, veland., Migne, Patrol., pp. 767-8), he distinctly impugns the claim made by Zephyrinus (202-218) of a certain superiority in the Roman see derived as a tradition from St Peter.

The evidence with which we are presented for the rest of the 3d century is of a similar character. Callistus (218-223), the successor to Zephyrinus, was originally a Christian slave in Rome during the bishopric of Victor, who (if we accept the narrative of Hippolytus) had been sent on account of his turbulence and dishonest practices to the mines in Sardinia. Victor, who was acquainted with the circumstances of his career, deemed him, notwithstanding, so little deserving of commiseration that, when, through the influence of Marcia, the mistress of the emperor Commodus, he had succeeded in bringing about the liberation of a certain number of Callistus’s Christian fellow-sufferers in Sardinia, he did not include in the list the name of Callistus himself. The latter, however, managed to regain his freedom, and ultimately himself became bishop of Rome. During his brief episcopate his administration, as well as that of his predecessor Zephyrinus, was unsparingly criticized by Hippolytus, the well-known bishop of Portus. Against Callistus Hippolytus alleges the greatest laxity in the admission of candidates to ecclesiastical orders, and also undue connivance at marriages dishonourable to those professing the Christian faith; while Zephyrinus is depicted as a man of but little intelligence and of ignoble aims. It is evident that when a suffragan bishop could venture thus to criticize his metropolitan the authority wielded by the latter, even in his own diocese, was very far from meeting with unquestioning obedience.

The foregoing evidence, together with many other similar facts which cannot here be enumerated, points clearly to two important conclusions: first, that in the course of the 2d and 3d centuries the Church of Rome began to put forth unprecedented claims to a certain superiority among other churches; and, secondly, that these claims not unfrequently encountered considerable opposition as novel and unjustifiable.

The circumstances which contributed to bring about their ultimate establishment were various. The Roman Church itself had, from the first, been associated with that severer type of Christian belief which had its chief seat at Jerusalem; and, after the Holy City and its temple were alike razed to the ground by Titus (70 a.d.), much of the reverence which had belonged to Jerusalem was transferred to Rome. In relation to the episcopal office itself, again, it is to be noted that the general conception of its functions underwent, at this period, considerable change. On this point a passage in Jerome (Ad Tit., i. 7) is of special significance. He here expressly attributes the institution of the episcopal order to the necessity which had arisen of repressing the numerous schisms in the church; and he goes on to observe that bishops would consequently do well to bear in mind that their office, with its involved authority over presbyters, was to be regarded rather as the result of custom and tradition than of divine appointment. As regards any special supremacy attaching to the Roman episcopate, the evidence afforded by another passage in Jerome is not less notable. In one of his most important letters (Ad Rusticum ; Migne, Patrol., xxii. 932) he fully recognizes the expediency and value of a central supreme authority, vested in a single individual. In support of his position he adduces examples from the animal kingdom, from the imperial power, from the judicial power, from the military power, and then goes on to say, “so again each church has its one bishop, its one arch-presbyter, its one archdeacon, every ecclesiastical grade relying on its leader,” but to the clenching example, derivable from the supreme pontiff himself, no reference is made. It seems, accordingly, an inevitable inference that by one of the greatest of the Latin fathers, writing at the close of the 4th century, the Roman theory of the popedom was unrecognized. But the circumstance which perhaps most conduced to the acceptance of the papal pretensions was the creation of a new office in the ecclesiastical organization, that of the metropolitan. So long as Christianity was the religion only of an obscure sect, or of a persecuted minority in the Roman state, lying also under the suspicion of political disaffection, it probably sought to avoid attracting further attention to itself by any elaborate attempt at organization. At the same time the political organization of the empire, from its Jong established and universally recognized territorial divisions, its system of intercommunication, and its arrangement of the executive power, must have obviously seemed to furnish the most practicable outlines for the administration of a great and growing ecclesiastical community. The chief cities or metropoleis of the several Roman provinces were accordingly from the first selected as the seats of the principal Christian churches—Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonica respectively representing the chief ecclesiastical centres of Syria, Achaia, Asia, and Macedonia. And when, again, under Constantine and his successors, the distribution of civil authority was further modified by the creation of four patriarchates, subdivided into twelve “dioceses” or major provinces, these changes were soon followed by corresponding modifications on the part of the church organization. In this manner we are able to understand how it is that we find the bishop of Rome successively assuming, as in the pontificates of Fabianus and Cornelius, the more extended authority of a...