build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

II. We pass on to apply to the words thus limited the second test, that of the Foundation of Privilege. And here we affirm that the foundations of the church as a corporation were laid long before this privilege was granted; that, according to the maxim of the school of Paris, "Ecclesia per et propter Christum, Petrus autem, per et propter ecclesiam subsistit;" or, as the apostle puts it, "All are yours (ie., the church's), whether Paul or Cephas; and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." The general laws of the church were already laid down, its corporate privileges were granted, its charter was given it long before this address of Christ to one of its members, as such. And the church as it was prior in tempore, is also potior in jure. For its authority and jurisdiction were established by Christ in the calling of the apostles (Matt. x.), in their mission (Luke ix.), in the power of jurisdiction given afterwards (Matt. xviii. 17), in the congregational and synodical charge (vv. 19, 20), in the last prayer of Christ (John xvii.), and in the postresurrection commission (Matt. xxviii. 18, 19, 20).

Looking back upon these powers, and during their full exercise in the primitive body, St. Paul describes the constitution and government of the Christian church in the words, "He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers;" and proceeds to describe its organization and government to lie in orders and bodies of men holding their powers, as lawyers would say, "in undivided moieties" (a singulis in solidum), and exercising through this united action every faculty and authority which the church can possibly possess at any time.

To reconcile this view of the privilege of the entire community with the alleged Petrine privilege, is absolutely impossible; for had such a monarchical system existed, the apostle would have said, "He gave first a pope, then patriarchs, then metropolitans, then bishops and pastors." St. Bernard admirably vindicates this primitive doctrine against Eugenius III., and warns him against dislocating the members of Christ's body by attempting to hang every one immediately upon the head, "Monstrum facis si manui submovens digitum, facis pendere de capite, superiorem manu, brachio col

lateralem: tale est si in Christi corpore membra aliter locas quam disposuit ipse qui posuit in ecclesid quosdam quidem apostolos,” etc.*

The privilege claimed for Peter would absolutely reverse the primary theory of the relations between the individual and the community, the member of the body and the body itself. It would simply create on a personal and individual privilege a baseless structure of universal power, whose stones would literally become "pondera ad ruinam” to the whole church of Christ.

At a better period Pope Sixtus III. wrote to the bishops of Illyria, "As every body is ruled by its head, so the head, unless it is supported by the body, loses its firmness and vigour, and does not preserve the dignity it first possessed.† In the present Roman Church this goodly order is inverted, and the whole body is made perilously and unnaturally to stand upon its head.

III. We pass on to apply the test of Conveyance of Privilege. This ought to be framed in the plainest and most perspicuous terms. Hence Pope

* Bernardi de Consideratione, l. iii. c. 10.

† Ap. Colet, tom. v. Concil. p. 857.

Benedict XIV. holds that if the style and structure of an ecclesiastical law should be such as to admit of several meanings, any one of them might be followed without the guilt of a violation of the law being incurred; nay, such an ambiguity he holds to affect its binding character. Now, we might safely affirm that never have any words received a greater variety of meaning and interpretation than have these in every age and place. By some attached to the faith of Peter, by others to his person; by the far greater number of commentators interpreted of the confession of Peter (of which alone they have really been proved true), by others again referred back to Christ Himself, we are lost in a maze of confusion whenever we approach the investigation of this perplexed passage. The Council of Trent (which itself charges us to interpret Scripture according to the consent of the Fathers) here teaches us what their consent is, by referring the rock of the church to the creed of our common faith, declaring that to be the "firm and only foundation, against which the gates of hell

* De Synodo Diœces, l. vi. c. ii. sec. ii.

shall not prevail." If this be true (and it ought to a member of the Roman Church to be infallibly true), the whole question of the privilege of Peter falls to the ground. The inheritance of the gift (if it ever was a gift) would devolve in such a case to all who (in the apostle's words) "have obtained like precious faith with him." And we might say with St. Ambrose, “non extra te sed intra te petram require."*

This was the doctrine of the Church of England when Cardinal Pole asserted, "They who are founded upon this rock of faith, which Peter, as the first stone laid in the foundation professed, these Christ in this place calls His church."+ Even in the Council of Constance, our church, through one of its representatives, complained of the perversion of this text by the Roman interpreters, as being "derogatory to the law of Christ."+

When we consider that the whole Eastern Church has unanimously, and from the beginning, rejected

* Ambros in Luc. cap. ix.

+ De Concil. quæst. ii.

Ric. de Ullerston, " Petitiones quoad Reformationem," ap Von der Hardt, p. i. tom. iv. p. 1126.