of his head and beard curled and thick, but withal was in a manner forced to threaten him into obe. short: though St. Jerome tells, out of Clemens's periods, that he was bald; which probably might be in his declining age. His eyes black, but specked with red; which Baronius will have to proceed from his frequent weeping: his eyebrows thin, or none at all; his nose long, but rather broad and flat than sharp. Such was the case and outside. Let us next look inwards, and view the jewel that was within. Take him as a man, and there seems to have been a natural eagerness predominant in his temper, which as a whetstone sharpened his soul for all bold and generous undertakings. It was this, in a great measure, that made him so forward to speak, and to return answers, sometimes before he had well considered them. It was this made him expose his person to the most imminent dangers, promise those great things in behalf of his master, and resolutely draw his sword in his quarrel against a whole band of soldiers, and wound the high-priest's servant: and possibly he had attempted greater matters, had not our Lord restrained and taken him off by that seasonable check that he gave him. dience. When Cornelius, heightened in his apprehensions of him by an immediate command from God concerning him, would have entertained him with expressions of more than ordinary honor and veneration, so far was he from complying with it, that he plainly told him, he was no other than such a man as himself. With how much candor and modesty does he treat the inferior rulers and ministers of the church! He, upon whom antiquity heaps so many honorable titles, styling himself no other than their fellow-presbyter. Admirable his love to, and zeal for his master, which he thought he could never express at too high a rate: for his sake venturing on the greatest dangers, and exposing himself to the most imminent hazards of life. It was in his quarrel that he drew his sword against a band of soldiers, and an armed multitude; and it was love to his master that drew him into that imprudent advice, that he should seek to save himself, and avoid those sufferings that were coming upon him; that made him promise and engage so deep to suffer and die with him. Great was his forwardness in owning Christ to be the Messiah and Son of God; which drew from our Lord that honorable encomium, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah." But greater his courage and constancy in confess ing Christ before his most inveterate enemies, especially after he had recovered himself of his fall. With how much plainness did he tell the Jews, at every turn, to their very faces, that they were the murderers and crucifiers of the Lord of glory! Nay, with what an undaunted courage, with what an heroic greatness of mind did he tell that very Sanhedrim that had sentenced and condemned him, that they were guilty of his murder; and that they could never be saved any other way than by this very Jesus whom they had crucified and put to death. 2. This temper he owed in a great measure to the genius and nature of his country, of which Josephus gives this true character: That it naturally bred in men a certain fierceness and animosity, whereby they were fearlessly carried out upon any action, and in all things showed a great strength and courage both of mind and body. The Galileans (says he) being fighters from their childhood; the men being as seldom overtaken with cowardice as their country with want of men. And yet, notwithstanding this, his fervor and fierceness had its intervals; there being some times when the paroxysms of his heat and courage did intermit, and the man was surprised and betrayed by his own fears. Witness his passionate crying out when he was upon the sea, in danger of his life, and his fearful deserting 4. Lastly, let us reflect upon him as an apostle, his master in the garden; but especially his car- as a pastor and guide of souls. And so we find riage in the high-priest's hall, when the confi- him faithful and diligent in his office; with an indent charge of a sorry maid made him sink so far finite zeal endeavoring to instruct the ignorant, beneath himself; and, notwithstanding his great reduce the erroneous, to strengthen the weak, and and resolute promises, so shamefully deny his confirm the strong, to reclaim the vicious, and master, and that with curses and imprecations."turn souls to righteousness." We find him But he was in danger, and passion prevailed over taking all opportunities of preaching to the people, his understanding, and fear betrayed the succors converting many thousands at once. How many which reason offered; and being intent upon voyages and travels did he undergo? With how nothing but the present safety of his life, he heed-unconquerable a patience did he endure all coned not what he did, when he disowned his master flicts and trials, and surmount all difficulties and to save himself. So dangerous is it to be left to oppositions, that he might plant and propagate the ourselves, and to have our natural passions let Christian faith; not thinking much to lay down loose upon us. his own life to promote and further it! Nor did he only do his duty himself, but as one of the prime superintendents of the church, and as one that was sensible of the value and worth of souls, he was careful to put others in mind of theirs; earnestly pressing and persuading the pastors and governors of it, "to feed the flock of God take upon them the rule and inspection of it," "freely and willingly;" not out of a sinister end, merely, of gaining advantages to themselves, but out of a sincere design of doing good to souls; that they would treat them mildly and gently, and be themselves examples of piety and religion to 3. Consider him as a disciple and a Christian, and we shall find him exemplary in the great instances of religion, singular in his humility and lowliness of mind. With what a passionate earnestness, upon the conviction of a miracle, did he beg of our Saviour to depart from him; accounting himself not worthy that the Son of God should come near so vile a sinner? When our Lord, by that wonderful condescension, stooped to wash his apostles' feet, he could by no means be persuaded to admit it; not thinking it fit that so great a person should submit himself to so servile an office towards so mean a person as himself; nor could he be induced to accept it, till our Lord * 1 Pet. v. 3, 4. to them, as the best way to make their ministry successful and effectual. And because he could not be always present to teach and warn men, he ceased not by letters "to stir up their minds" to the remembrance and practice of what they had been taught. A course, he tells them, which he was resolved to hold as long as he lived; as "thinking it meet while he was in this tabernacle to stir them up, by putting them in mind of these things;" that so they might be able after his decease to have them always in remembrance. And this may lead us to the consideration of those writings which he left behind him for the benefit of the church. 5. Now the writings that entitle themselves to this apostle, were either genuine or supposititious. The genuine writings are his two epistles, which make up part of the sacred canon. For the first of them, no certain account can be had when it was written though Baronius and most writers commonly assign it to the year of Christ 44. But this cannot be, Peter not being at Rome, (from whence it is supposed to have been written) at that time, as we shall see anon. He wrote it to the Jewish converts dispersed through Pontus, Galatia, and the countries thereabouts, chiefly upon the occasion of that persecution which had been raised at Jerusalem. And, accordingly, the main design of it is, to confirm and comfort them under their present sufferings and persecutions, and to direct and instruct them how to carry themselves in the several states and relations, both of the civil and the Christian life. For the place whence it was written, it is expressly dated from Babylon: but what or where this Babylon is, is not so easy to determine. Some think it was Babylon in Egypt, and probably Alexandria; and that there Peter preached the gospel. Others will have it to have been Babylon the ancient metropolis of Assyria, and where great numbers of Jews dwelt ever since the times of their captivities. But we need not send Peter on so long an errand, if we embrace the notion of a learned man, who by Babylon will figuratively understand Jerusalem; no longer now the holy city, but a kind of spiritual Babylon, in which the church of God did at this time groan under great servitude and captivity. And this notion of the word he endeavors to make good, by calling in to his assistance two of the ancient fathers, who so understand that of the prophet, "We have healed Babylon, but she was not healed." Where the prophet, say they, by Babylon means Jerusalem, as differing nothing from the wickedness of the nations, nor conforming itself to the law of God. But generally the writers of the Romish church, and the more moderate of the reformed party, acquiescing herein in the judgment of antiquity, by Babylon understand Rome. And so it is plain St. John calls it in his "Revelation," either from its conformity in power and greatness to that ancient city, or from that great idolatry which at this time reigned in Rome. And so we may suppose St. Peter to have written it from Rome, not long after his coming thither, though the precise time be not exactly known. 6. As for the second epistle, it was not accounted of old of equal value and authority with the first; and, therefore, for some ages, not taken into the sacred canon, as is expressly affirmed by Eusebius, and many of the ancients before him. The ancient Syriac church did not receive it; and accordingly it is not to be found in their ancient copies of the New Testament. Yea, those of that church at this day do not own it as canonical, but only read it privately, as we do the apocryphal books. The greatest exception that I can find against it, is the difference of its style from the other epistle; whence it was presumed, that they were not both written by the same hand. But St. Jerome, who tells us the objection, does elsewhere himself return the answer, that the difference in the style and manner of writing might very well arise from hence, that St. Peter, according to his different circumstances, and the necessity of affairs, was forced to use several emanuenses and interpreters; sometimes St. Mark, and after his departure some other person, which might justly occasion a difference in the style and character of these epistles. Not to say, that the same person may vastly alter and vary his style, according to the times when, or the persons to whom, or the subjects about which he writes, or the temper and disposition he is in at the time of writing, or the care that is used in doing it. Who sees not the vast difference of Jeremiah's writing in his prophecy, and in his book of Lamentations? between St. John's, in his Gospel, his Epistles, and Apocalypse? How oft does St. Paul alter his style in several of his epistles; in some more lofty and elegant; in others more rough and harsh? Besides hundreds of instances that might be given, both in ecclesiastical and foreign writers, too obvious to need insisting on in this place. The learned Grotius will have this epistle to have been written by Symeon, St. James's immediate successor in the bishopric of Jerusalem, and that the word (Peter) was inserted into the title by another hand. But, as a judicious person of our own observes, these were but his posthume annotations, published by others, and no doubt never intended as the deliberate result of that great man's judgment; especially since he himself tacitly acknowledges, that all copies extant at this day read the title and inscription as it is in our books. And, indeed, there is a concurrence of circumstances to prove St. Peter to be the author of it. It bears his name in the front and title, yea, somewhat more expressly than the former, which has only one; this both his names. There is a passage in it which cannot well relate to any but him when he tells us he was present with Christ in the holy mount; when he "received from God the Father honor and glory:" where he "heard the voice which came from heaven, from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."* This evidently refers to Christ's transfiguration, * 2 Pet. i. 16, 17, 18. F where none were present but Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, neither of which was ever thought to be the author of this epistle. Besides that there is an admirable consent and agreement in many passages between these two epistles, as it were easy to show in particular instances. Add to this, that St. Jude, speaking of the "scoffers" who should come "in the last time, walking after their own ungodly lusts,"* cites this as that which had been "before spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ;" wherein he plainly quotes the words of this second epistle of Peter, affirming, that "there should come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts." And that this does agree to Peter, will further appear by this, that he tells us of these scoffers that should come in the last days; that is, before the destruction of Jerusalem; (as that phrase is often used in the New Testament;) that they should say, "Where is the promise of his coming?" Which clearly respects their making light of those threatenings of our Lord, whereby he had foretold that he would shortly come in judgment for the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. This he now puts them in mind of, as what probably he had before told them of vivâ voce, when he was amongst them: for so we find he did elsewhere. Lactantius assuring us, "That amongst many strange and wonderful things which Peter and Paul preached at Rome, and left upon record, this was one that within a short time God would send a prince who should destroy the Jews, and lay their cities level with the ground, straitly besiege them, destroy them with famine, so that they should feed upon one another: that their wives and daughters should be ravished, and their children's brains dashed out before their faces: that all things should be laid waste by fire and sword, and themselves perpetually banished from their own country; and this for their insolent and merciless usage of the innocent and dear Son of God." All which, as he observes, came to pass soon after their death, when Vespasian came upon the Jews, and extinguished both their name and nation. And what Peter here foretold at Rome, we need not question but he had done before to those Jews to whom he wrote this epistle. Wherein he especially antidotes them against those corrupt and poisonous principles, wherewith many, and especially the followers of Simon Magus, began to infect the church of Christ. And this but a little time before his death, as appears from that passage in it, where he tells them, "That he knew he must shortly put off his earthly tabernacle." 7. Besides these divine epistles, there were other supposititious writings which, in the first ages were fathered upon St. Peter. Such was the book called his Acts, mentioned by Origen, Eusebius, and others; but rejected by them. Such was his gospel, which probably at first was nothing else but the gospel written by St. Mark, dictated to him (as is generally thought) by St. Peter; and therefore, as St. Jerome tells us, said to be his. Though in the next age there appeared a book under that title, mentioned by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, and by him at first suffered to be read in the church; but afterwards, upon a more careful perusal of it, he rejected it as apocryphal, as it was by others after him. Another was the book styled his Preaching, mentioned and quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, and by Origen, but not acknowledged by them to be genuine; nay, expressly said to have been forged by heretics, by an ancient author contemporary with St. Cyprian. The next was his Apocalypse, or Revelation; rejected, as Sozomen tells us, by the ancients as spurious, but yet read in some churches in Palestine in his time. The last was the book called his Judgment, which probably was the same with that called Hermes, or Pastor, a book of good use and esteem in the first times of Christianity, and which, as Eusebius tells us, was not only frequently cited by the ancients, but also publicly read in churches. 8. We shall conclude this section by considering Peter with respect to his several relations: that he was married is unquestionable, the sacred history mentioning his wife's mother: his wife (might we believe Metaphrastes) being the daughter of Aristobulus, brother to Barnabas the apostle. And though St. Jerome would persuade us that he left her behind him, together with his rets, when he forsook all to follow Christ; yet we know that father too well to be over-confident upon his word in a case of marriage or single life, wherein he is not over-scrupulous sometimes to strain a point, to make his opinion more fair and plausible. The best is, we have an infallible authority which plainly intimates the contrary, the testimony of St. Paul, who tells us of Cephas, that "he led about a wife, a sister," along with him; who for the most part mutually cohabited and lived together, for aught that can be proved to the contrary. Clemens Alexandrinus gives us this account, though he tells us not the time or place; that Peter, seeing his wife going towards martyrdom, exceedingly rejoiced that she was called to so great an honor, and that she was now returning home; encouraging and earnestly exhorting her, and calling her by her name, bade her be mindful of our Lord. Such, says he, was the wedlock or that blessed couple, and the perfect disposition and agreement in those things that were dearest to them By her he is said to have had a daughter, called Petronilla, (Metaphrastes* adds a son,) how truly I know not. This only is certain that Clemens of Alexandria, reckons Peter for one of the apostles that was married and had children. And surely he who was so good a man, and so good an apostle, was as good in the relation both of an husband and a father. Metaphrastes was one of the principal Greek writers of the age in which he lived, but his Lives of the Saints are too filled with fable to possess any authority with ecclesiastical historians. SECTION XI. An Inquiry into St. Peter's going to Rome. Christian world; that not one syllable should be said of a church planted by Peter at Rome; a church that was to be paramount, the seat of all spiritual power and infallibility, and to which all It is not my purpose to swim against the stream other churches were to veil and do homage; nay, and current of antiquity, in denying St. Peter to that he should not so much as mention that ever have been at Rome; an assertion easilier per- he was there, and yet all this said to be done plexed and entangled than confuted and disproved: within the time he designed to write of, is by no we may grant the main, without doing any great means reasonable to suppose. Especially conservice to that church; there being evidence sidering that St. Luke records many of his jour enough to every impartial and considering man, neys and travels, and his preaching at several to spoil that smooth and plausible scheme of times, places, of far less consequence and concernment. which Baronius and the writers of that church Nor let this be thought the worse of, because a have drawn with so much care and diligence.-negative argument, since it carries so much raAnd in order to this we shall first inquire, whether tional evidence along with it, that any man who that account which Bellarmine and Baronius give is not plainly biassed by interest will be satisfied us of Peter's being at Rome, be tolerably recon- with it. cileable with the history of the apostles' acts, re- 3. But let us proceed a little further to inquire, corded by St. Luke; which will be best done by whether we can meet any probable footsteps afterbriefly presenting St. Peter's acts in their just wards. About the year 53, towards the end of series and order of time, and then see what coun-Claudius's reign, St. Paul is thought to have writ tenance and foundation their account can receive his epistle to the church of Rome, wherein he from hence.* spends the greatest part of one chapter in saluting 2. After our Lord's ascension, we find Peter, for particular persons that were there; amongst the first year at least, staying with the rest of the whom it might reasonably have been expected, apostles at Jerusalem. In the next year he was that St. Peter should have had the first place.sent, together with St. John, by the command of And supposing with Baronius,* that Peter at this the apostles, to Samaria, to preach the gospel to time might be absent from the city, preaching the that city, and the parts about it. About three gospel in some parts of the west, yet we are not years after, St. Paul meets him at Jerusalem, with sure that St. Paul knew of this; and if he did, it whom he staid some time. In the two following is strange that in so large an epistle, wherein he years he visited the late planted churches, preach- had occasion enough, there should be neither died at Lydda and Joppa, where having "tarried rect nor indirect mention of him, or of any church many days," he thence removed to Cæsarea, there founded by him. Nay, St. Paul himself where he preached to, and baptized Cornelius and intimates, what an earnest desire he had to come his family. Whence, after some time, he return- thither, that he might "impart unto them some ed to Jerusalem, where he probably staid, till cast spiritual gifts, to the end they might be established into prison by Herod, and delivered by the angel. in the faith;" for which there could have been After which we hear no more of him, till three or no such apparent cause, had Peter been there so four years after we find him in the council at Je- lately and so long before him. Well, St. Paul rusalem. After which he had the contest with himself, not many years after, is sent to Rome, St. Paul at Antioch. And thence forward the ann. Chr. 56, or as Eusebius, 57; (though Barosacred story is altogether silent in this matter.- nius makes it two years after ;) about the second So that in all this time we find not the least foot- year of Nero: when he comes thither, does he go step of any intimation that he went to Rome.-to sojourn with Peter, as it is likely he would, had This Baroniust well foresaw; and therefore once he been there? No, but dwelt by himself in his and again inserts this caution, that St. Luke did own hired house. No sooner was he come, but not design to record all the apostles' acts, and he called the chief of the Jews together, acquaintthat he has omitted many things which were done ed them with the cause and end of his coming, by Peter which surely no man ever intended to explains the doctrine of Christianity; which when deny. But then, that he should omit a matter of they rejected, he tells them, that "henceforth the such vast moment and importance to the whole salvation of God was sent unto the Gentiles," who would hear it, to whom he would now address himself. Which seems to intimate, that however some few of the Gentiles might have been brought over, yet that no such harvest had been made before his coming, as might reasonably have been expected from St. Peter's having been so many years amongst them. Within the two first years after St. Paul's coming to Rome, he wrote epistles to several churches, to the Colosians, Ephesians, Philippians, and one to Philemon; in none whereof is there the least mention of St. Peter, or from whence the least probability can be derived that he had been there. In that to the Colossians, he tells them, that of the Jews at Rome he had had The united learning, candor, and honesty of our author are here conspicuously displayed: few passages in history are more strongly confirmed than that which relates the apostle's residence at Rome. In the summary of the opposite arguments, given by Basnage, Liv. vii. c. 3, (Histoire de l'Eglise,) this must be apparent to every candid inquirer; and in all subjects of this kind, it should always be observed as a principle, that no circumstance in history can by any possibility be rendered doubtful by the disputed inferences drawn therefrom. However erroneous the use made of facts, never let the facts on that account be disallowed. The Roman Catholic writers, however, have endangered the apparent truth of history, by forcing what is supported on sufficient evidence into assertions to which the historical evidence does not extend.-ED.. + Ad. Ann. 39, num. 12, ad. Ann. 34, num. 285. that the account which even they themselves give us is not very consistent with itself. So fatally does a bad cause draw men, whether they will or no, into errors and mistakes. 5. The truth is, the learned men of that church are not well agreed among themselves, to give in their verdict in this case. And indeed how should they, when the thing itself affords no solid foundation for it? Onuphrius, a man of great learn "no other fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, which had been a comfort unto him, save only Aristarchus, Marcus, and Jesus, who was called Justus" which evidently excludes St. Peter. And in that to Timothy, which Baronius confesses to have been written a little before his martyrdom, (though probably it was written at the same time with the rest above mentioned,) he tells him, that "at his first answer at Rome, no man stood with him, but that all men forsook him;"+ing and industry in all matters of antiquity, and which we can hardly believe St. Peter would have done, had he then been there. He further tells him, that “only Luke was with him ;" that Crescens was gone to this place, Titus to that, and Tychicus left at another. Strange, that if Peter was at this time gone from Rome, St. Paul should take no notice of it as well as the rest! Was he so inconsiderable a person as not to be worth the remembering? or his errand of so small importance as not to deserve a place in St. Paul's account, as well as that of Crescens to Galatia, or of Titus to Dalmatia? Surely the true reason was, that St. Peter as yet had not been at Rome, and so there could be no foundation for it. who (as the writer of Baronius's life informs us) designed before Baronius to write the history of the church, goes away by himself, in assigning the time of St. Peter's founding his see both at Antioch and Rome. For finding, by the account of the sacred story, that Peter did not leave Judea for the first ten years after our Lord's ascension, and consequently could not in that time erect his see at Antioch, he affirms that he went first to Rome, whence returning to the council at Jerusalem, he thence went to Antioch, where he remained seven years, till the death of Claudius; and having spent almost the whole reign of Nero in several parts of Europe, returned in the last of 4. It were no hard matter further to demon- Nero's reign to Rome, and there died. An opistrate the inconsistency of that account which nion for which he is sufficiently chastised by Ba. Bellarmine and Baronius give us, of Peter's being ronius and others of that party. And here I canat Rome from the time of the apostolical synod at not but remark the ingenuity (for the learning Jerusalem. For if St. Paul went up to that coun- sufficiently commends itself) of Monsieur Valois, cil fourteen years after his own conversion, as he who freely confesses the mistake of Baronius, Pe plainly intimates, and that he himself was con- tavius, &c. in making Peter go to Rome in the verted in the year 35, somewhat less than two year 44, the second year of Claudius, whereas it years after the death of Christ, then it plainly ap- is plain, says he, from the history of the Acts, that pears that this council was holden in the year 48, Peter went not out of Judea and Syria, till the in the sixth year of Claudius, if not somewhat death of Herod, the fourth of Claudius, two whole sooner; for St. Paul's dia dekateboapwv srov does not years after. Consonant to which, as he observes, necessarily imply that fourteen years were com- is what Apollonius, a writer of the second centu pletely past; a signifying circa, as well as post; ry, reports from a tradition current in his time, but that it was near about that time. This being that the apostles did not depart asunder till the granted, (and if it be not, it is easy to make it twelfth year after Christ's ascension, our Lord good) then three things amongst others will follow himself having so commanded them. In confirfrom it. First, that whereas, according to Bellar-mation whereof, let me add a passage that I meet mine and Baronius, St. Peter after his first coming to Rome, (which they place in the year 44, and the second of Claudius,) was seven years before he returned thence to the council at Jerusalem; they are strangely out in their story, there being but three, or at most four years between his going thither and the celebration of that council. Secondly; that when they tell us, that St. Peter's leaving Rome to come to the council, was upon the occasion of the decree of Claudius, banishing all Jews out of the city, this can no ways be; for Orosius does not only affirm but prove it from Josephus, that Claudius's decree was published in the ninth year of his reign, or anno Chr. 51; three years at least after the célebration of the council. Thirdly; that when Baronius tells us, that the reason why Peter went to Rome after the breaking up of the synod, was because Claudius was now dead, he not daring to go before for fear of the decree; this can be no reason at all, the council being ended at least three years before that decree took place; so that he might safely have gone thither without the least danger from it. It might further be showed (if it were necessary) • Acts iv. 10, 11. * Gal. ii 1. with in Clemens of Alexandria, where from St. Peter he records this speech of our Saviour to his apostles, spoken, probably either a little before his death or after his resurrection: "If any Israelite shall repent, and believe in God through my name, his sins shall be forgiven him after twelve years. Go ye into the world, lest any should say, We have not heard." This passage, as ordinarily pointed in all editions that I have seen, is scarce capable of any tolerable sense; for what is the meaning of a penitent Israelite's being pardoned "after twelve years?" It is therefore probable, yea, certain with me, that the stop ought to be after apapria, and pera dwdena srn joined to the following clause, and then the sense will run clear and smooth: "If any Jew shall repent and believe the gospel, he shall be pardoned: but after twelve years, go ye into all the world; that none may pretend that they have not heard the sound of the gospel." The apostles were first to preach the gospel to the Jews for some considerable time, twelve years after Christ's ascension, in and about Judæa, and then to betake themselves to the provinces of the Gentile world, to make known to them the glad tidings of salvation; exactly answerable to the tradition mentioned by Appollo# Ad. Ann. 58, n. 61. nius. Besides, the Chronicon Alexandrinum tells 41 Tim. iv. 16. |