Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

Heaven’s queen and mother both.”

But this trash is not worth the time and paper I am spending upon it, since the main part of the story, concerning Simon Magus as having ever been seen or heard of in Rome, by senate, prince or people, in the days of Claudius, is shown, beyond all reasonable question, to be utterly false, and based on a stupid blunder of Justin Martyr, who did not know Latin enough to tell the difference between sanco and sancto, nor between Semoni and Simoni. And after all, this is but a fair specimen of Justin Martyr’s usual blundering way, of which his few pages present other instances for the inquiring reader to stumble over and bewilder himself upon. Take, for example, the gross confusion of names and dates which he makes in a passage which accidentally meets my eye, on a page near that from which the above extract is taken. In attempting to give an account of the way in which the Hebrew Bible was first translated into Greek, he says that Ptolemy, king of Egypt, sent to Herod, king of the Jews, for a copy of the Bible. But when or where does any history, sacred or profane, give any account whatever of any Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who was cotemporary with either of the Herods? The last of the Ptolemies was killed, while a boy, in the Egyptian war with Julius Caesar, before Herod had himself attained to manhood, or had the most distant thought of the throne of Palestine. The Ptolemy who is said to have procured the Greek translation of the Bible, however, lived about three hundred years before the first Herod. It is lamentable to think that such is the character of the earliest Christian father who has left works of any magnitude. Who can wonder that Apologies for the Christian religion, full of such gross blunders, should have failed to secure the belief, or move the attention of either of the Antonines, to whom they were addressed,——the Philosophic, or the Pious? And by a writer who pretended to tell the wisest of the Caesars, that in his imperial city, had been worshiped, from the days of Claudius, a miserable Samaritan impostor, who, an outcast from his own outcast land, had in Rome, by a solemn senatorial and imperial decree, been exalted to the highest god-ship, and that the evidence of this fact was found in a statue which that emperor well knew to be dedicated to the most ancient deities of Etruscan origin, worshiped there ever since the days of Numa Pompilius, but which this Syrian Christian had blunderingly supposed to commemorate a man who had never been heard of out of Samaria, except among Christians. And as for such martyrs, if there is any truth whatever in the story that his foolish head was cut off by the second Antonine, the only pity is, it was not done a little sooner, so as to have kept the Christian world from the long belief of all this folly about an invention so idle, and saved me the trouble of exposing it.

The fullest account ever given of this fable and all its progress, is found in the Annales Ecclesiastici of Caesar Baronius, (A. C. 44. § 51–59.) who, after furnishing the most ample references to sacred and profane authorities, which palpably demonstrate the falsity of the story, returns with all the solemn bigotry of a papist, to the solemn conviction that the fathers and the saints who tell the story, must have had some very good reason for believing it.

The other copyists of Justin hardly deserve any notice; but it is interesting and instructive to observe how, in the progress of fabulous invention, one lie is pinned on to the tail of another, to form a glorious chain of historical sequences, for some distant ecclesiastical annalist to hang his servile faith upon. Eusebius, for instance, enlarges the stories of Justin and Irenaeus, by an addition of his own,——that in his day there existed a sect which acknowledged this same Simon as God, and worshiped him and Helena or Selena, with some mysteriously wicked rites. Now all that his story amounts to, is, that in his time there was a sect called by a name resembling that of Simon, how nearly like it, no one knows; but that by his own account their worship was of a secret character, so that he could, of course, know nothing certainly. But this is enough for him to add, as a solemn confirmation of a story now known to have been founded in falsehood. From this beginning, Eusebius goes on to say that Peter went to Rome in the second year of Claudius, to war against this Simon Magus, who never went there; so that we know how much this whole tale is worth by looking into the circumstance which constitutes its essential foundation. The idea of Peter’s visit to Rome at that time, is no where given before Eusebius, except in some part of the Clementina, a long series of most unmitigated falsehoods, forged in the name of Clemens Romanus, without any certain date, but commonly supposed to have been made up of the continued contributions of several impudent liars, during different portions of the second, third and fourth centuries.

Creuzer also, in his deep and extensive researches into the religions of antiquity, in giving a “view of some of the older Italian nations,” speaks of “Sancus Semo.” He quotes Augustin (De civitate Dei. XVIII. 19,) as authority for the opinion that he was an ancient king, deified. He also alludes to the passage in Ovid, (quoted above by Baronius,) where he is connected with Hercules, and alluded to under three titles, as Semo, Sancus and Fidius. (Ovid, Fasti, VI. 213, et seq.) But the learned Creuzer does not seem to have any correct notion of the character of the Semones, as a distinct order of inferior deities;——a fact perfectly certain as given above, for which abundant authority is found in Varro, (de Mystag.) as quoted by Fulgentius and Baronius. From Creuzer I also notice, in an accidental immediate connection with Semo Sancus, the fact that the worship of the moon (Luna) was also of Sabine origin; and being introduced along with that of Sancus, by Numa, may have had some relation to that Semo, and may have concurred in originating the notion of the fathers about the woman Selena or Helena, as worshiped along with Simon. He also just barely alludes to the fact that Justin and Irenaeus have confounded this Semo Sancus with Simon Magus. (See Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alter Voelker, II. Theil. pp. 964–965.)

The next conclusion authorized by those who support this fable is, that Peter, after achieving this great work of vanquishing the impostor Simon, proceeded to preach the gospel generally; yet not at first to the hereditary citizens of imperial Rome, nor to any of the Gentiles, but to his own countrymen the Jews, great numbers of whom then made their permanent abode in the great city. These foreigners, at that time, were limited in Rome to a peculiar section of the suburbs, and hardly dwelt within the walls of the city itself;——an allotment corresponding with similar limitations existing in some of the modern cities of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, and even in London, though there, only in accordance with long usage, and with actual convenience, but not with any existing law. The quarter of Rome in which the Jews dwelt in the days of Claudius, was west of the central section of the city, beyond the Tiber; and to this suburban portion, the story supposes the residence and labors of Peter to have been at first confined. But after a time, the fame of this mighty preacher of a new faith spread beyond, from this despised foreign portion of the environs, across the Tiber, over the seven hills themselves, and even into the halls of the patrician lords of Rome. Such an extension of fame, indeed, seems quite necessary to make these two parts of this likely story hang together at all; for it is hard to see how a stranger, from a distant eastern land, could thus appear suddenly among them, and overturn, with a defeat so total and signal, the pretensions of one who had lately been exalted by the opinions of an adoring people to the character of a god, and had even received the solemn national sanction of this exaltation by a formal decree of the senate of Rome, confirmed by the absolute voice of the Caesar himself; and after such a victory, over such a person, be left long unnoticed in an obscure suburb. In accordance, therefore, with this reasonable notion, it is recorded in the continuation of the story, that when Peter, preaching at Rome, grew famous among the Gentiles, he was no longer allowed to occupy himself wholly among the Jews, but was thereafter taken by Pudens, a senator who believed in Christ, into his own house, on the Viminal Mount, one of the seven hills, but near the Jewish suburb. In the neighborhood of this house, as the legend relates, was afterwards erected a monument, called “the Shepherd’s,”——a name which serves to identify this important locality to the modern Romans to this day. Being thus established in these lordly patrician quarters, the poor Galilean fisherman might well have thought himself blessed, in such a pleasant change from the uncomfortable lodgings with which the royal Agrippa had lately accommodated him, and from which he had made so willing an exit. But the legend does the faithful and devoted apostle the justice, to represent him as by no means moved by these luxurious circumstances, to the least forgetfulness of the high commission which was to be followed through all sorts of self-denial,——no less that which drew him from the soft and soul-relaxing enjoyments of a patrician palace, than that which led him to renounce the simple, hard-earned profits of a fisherman, on the changeful sea of Gennesaret, or to calmly meet the threats, the stripes, the chains, and the condemned cell, with which the enmity of the Jewish magistrates had steadily striven to quench his fiery and energetic spirit. He is described as steadily laboring in the cause of the gospel among the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and with such success during the whole of the first year of his stay, that in the beginning of the following year he is said by papist writers to have solemnly and formally founded the church of Rome. This important fictitious event is dated with the most exact particularity, on the fifteenth of February, in the forty-third year of Christ, and the third year of the reign of the emperor Claudius. The empty, unmeaning pomposity of this announcement is a sufficient evidence of its fictitious character. According to the story itself, here Peter had been preaching nearly a whole year at Rome; and if preaching, having a regular congregation, of course, and performing the usual accompaniments of preaching, as baptism, &c. Now there is not in the whole apostolic history the least account, nor the shadow of a hint, of any such ceremony as the founding of a church, distinct from the mere gathering of an assembly of believing listeners, who acknowledged their faith in Jesus by profession and by the sacraments. The organization of this religious assembly might indeed be made more perfect at one time than at another; as for instance, a new church, which during an apostle’s stay with it and preaching to it, had been abundantly well governed by the simple guidance of his wise, fatherly care, would, on his departure, need some more regular, permanent provision for its government, lest among those who were all religious co-equals, there should arise disputes which would require a regularly constituted authority to allay them. The apostle might, therefore, in such advanced requirements of the church, ordain elders, and so on; but such an appendix could not, with the slightest regard to common sense or the rules of honest interpretation of language, be said to constitute the founding of a church. The very phrase of ordaining elders in a church, palpably implies and requires the previous distinct, complete existence of the church. In fact the entity of a church implies nothing more than a regular assembly of believers, with an authorized ministry; and if Peter had been preaching several months to the Jews of the trans-Tiberine suburb, or to the Romans of the Viminal mount, there must have been in one or both of those places, a church, to all intents, purposes, definitions and etymologies of a church. So that for him, almost a year after, to proceed to found a church in Rome, was the most idle work of supererogation in the world. And all the pompous statements of papist writers about any such formality, and all the quotations that might be brought out of the fathers in its support, from Clement downwards, could not relieve the assertion of one particle of its palpable, self-evident absurdity. But the fable proceeds in the account of this important movement, dating the apostolic reign of Peter from this very occasion, as above fixed, and running over various imaginary acts of his, during the tedious seven years for which the story ties him down to this one spot. Among many other unfounded matters, is specified the assertion, that from this city during the first year of his episcopate, he wrote his first epistle, which he addressed to the believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,——the countries which are enumerated as visited by him in his fictitious tour. This opinion is grounded on the circumstance of its being dated from Babylon, which several later fathers understood as a term spiritually applied to Rome; but in the proper place this notion will be fully discussed, and the true origin of the epistle more satisfactorily given. Another important event in the history of the scriptures,——the writing of the gospel of Mark,——is also commonly connected with this part of Peter’s life, by the papist historians; but this event, with an account of the nature of this supposed connection, and the discussion of all points in this subject, can be better shown in the life of that evangelist; and to that it is therefore deferred. These matters and several others as little in place, seem to be introduced into this part of Peter’s life, mainly for the sake of giving him something particular to do, during his somewhat tedious stay in Rome, where they make him remain seven years after his first journey thither; and give him here the character, office and title of bishop,——a piece of nomenclature perfectly unscriptural and absurd, because no apostle, in the New Testament, is ever called a bishop; but on the contrary, the office was evidently created to provide a substitute for an apostle,——a person who might perform the pastoral duties to the church, in the absence of its apostolic founder, overseeing and managing all its affairs in his stead, to report to him at his visitations, or in reply to his epistolary charges. To call an apostle a bishop, therefore, implies the absurdity of calling a superior officer by the title of his inferior,——as to call a captain, lieutenant, or a general-in-chief, colonel, or even as to call a bishop, deacon. During the life-time of the apostles, “bishop” was only a secondary title, and it was not till the death of all those commissioned by Christ, that this became the supreme officer in all churches. But the papists not appreciating any difficulty of this kind, go on crowning one absurdity with another, which claims, however, the additional merit of being amusing in its folly. This is the minute particularization of the shape, stuff, accoutrements and so on, of the chair in which bishop Peter sat at Rome in his episcopal character. This identical wooden chair in which his apostolical body was seated when he was exerting the functions of his bishopric, is still, according to the same high papal authorities which maintain the fact of his ever having been bishop, preserved in the Basilica of the Vatican, at Rome, and is even now, on certain high occasions, brought out from its holy storehouse to bless with its presence the eyes of the adoring people. This chair is kept covered with a linen veil, among the various similar treasures of the Vatican, and has been eminent for the vast numbers of great miracles wrought by its presence. As a preliminary step, however, to a real faith in the efficacy of this old piece of furniture, it is necessary that those who hear the stories should believe that Peter was ever at Rome, to sit in this or any other chair there. It is observed, however, in connection with this lumbering article, in the papist histories, that on taking possession of this chair, as bishop of Rome, Peter resigned the bishopric of Antioch, committing that see to the charge of Euodius, it having been the original diocese of this chief apostle,——a story about as true, as that any apostle was ever bishop any where. The apostles were missionaries, for the most part, preaching the word of God from place to place, appointing bishops to govern and manage the churches in their absence, and after their final departure, as their successors and substitutes; but no apostle is, on any occasion whatever, called a bishop in any part of the New Testament, or by any early writer. The most important objection, however, to all this absurd account of Peter, as bishop of Rome, is the fact uniformly attested by those early fathers, who allude to his having ever visited that city, that having founded the church there, he appointed Linus the FIRST BISHOP,——a statement in exact accordance with the view here given of the office of a bishop, and of the mode in which the apostles constituted that office in the churches founded and visited by them.

The date of the foundation.——All this is announced with the most elaborate solemnity, in all the older papist writers, because on this point of the foundation of the Roman church by Peter, they were long in the habit of basing the whole right and title of the bishop of Rome, as Peter’s successor, to the supremacy of the church universal. The great authorities, quoted by them in support of this exact account of the whole affair, with all its dates, even to the month and day, are the bulls of some of the popes, enforcing the celebration of that day throughout all the churches under the Romish see, and the forms of prayer in which this occasion is commemorated even to this day. Moreover, a particular form is quoted from some of the old rituals of the church, not now in use, in which the ancient mode of celebrating this event, in prayer and thanksgiving, is verbally given. “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui ineffabili sacramento, apostolo tuo Petro principatum Romae urbis tribuisti, unde se evangelica veritas per tota mundi regna diffunderet: praesta quaesumus, ut quod in orbem terrarum ejus praedicatione manavit, universitas Christiana devotione sequatur.”——“Almighty, eternal God, who by an ineffable consecration, didst give to thy apostle Peter the dominion of the city of Rome, that thence the gospel truth might diffuse itself throughout all the kingdoms of the world: grant, we pray, that what has flowed into the whole circuit of the earth by his preaching, all Christendom may devoutly follow.”——A prayer so melodiously expressed, and in such beautiful Latin, that it is a great pity it should have been a mere trick, to spread and perpetuate a downright, baseless lie, which had no other object than the extension of the gloomy, soul-darkening tyranny of the papal sway. Other forms of prayer, for private occasions, are also mentioned by Baronius, as commemorating the foundation of the church of Rome by Peter; and all these, as well as the former, being fixed for the fifteenth of February, as above quoted. Those records of fables, also, the old Roman martyrologies, are cited for evidence. The later Latin fathers add their testimony, and even the devout Augustin (sermons 15, 16, de sanct, &c.) is quoted in support of it. Baronius gives all these evidences, (Annales, 45, § 1,) and goes on to earn the cardinal’s hat, which finally rewarded his zealous efforts, by maintaining the unity and universality of this apostolic foundation, and the absolute supremacy consequently appertaining to the succession of Peter in the Roman see.

Peter’s chair.——This fable (page 225) is from Baronius, who wrote about 1580; but alas! modern accidental discoveries make dreadful havoc with papistical antiquities, and have done as much to correct the mistake in this matter, as in Justin’s blunder about Simon Magus. I had transcribed Baronius’s story into the text as above without knowing of the fact, till a glance at the investigations of the sagacious Bower gave me the information which I here extract from him.

“They had, as they thought, till the year 1662, a pregnant proof, not only of St. Peter’s erecting their chair, but of his sitting in it himself; for till that year, the very chair, on which they believed, or would make others believe, he had sat, was shown and exposed to public adoration on the 18th of January, the festival of the said chair. But while it was cleaning, in order to be set up in some conspicuous place of the Vatican, the twelve labors of Hercules unluckily appeared engraved on it. ‘Our worship, however,’ says Giacomo Bartolini, who was present at this discovery, and relates it, ‘was not misplaced, since it was not to the wood we paid it, but to the prince of the apostles, St. Peter.’ An author of no mean character, unwilling to give up the holy chair, even after this discovery, as having a place and a peculiar solemnity among the other saints, has attempted to explain the labors of Hercules in a mystical sense, as emblems representing the future exploits of the popes. (Luchesini catedra restituita a S. Pietro.) But the ridiculous and distorted conceits of that writer are not worthy our notice, though by Clement X. they were judged not unworthy of a reward.” (Bower’s Lives of the Popes, Vol. I. p. 7, 4to. ed. 1749.)

The next noticeable thing that Peter is made to do at Rome, is the sending out of his disciples from Rome to act as missionaries and bishops in the various wide divisions of the Roman empire, westward from the capital, which were yet wholly unoccupied by the preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his supposed character of keeper of the great flock of Christ, having now fully established the Roman see, he turned his eyes to those distant regions, and considering their religious wants and utter spiritual destitution, sent into them several disciples whom he is supposed to have qualified for such labors by his own minute personal instructions. Thus, as rays from the sun, and as streams from the fountain, did the Christian faith go forth through these from the see of Peter, and spread far and wide throughout the world. So say the imaginative papist historians, whose fancy not resting satisfied with merely naming the regions to which these new missionaries were now sent, goes on with a catalogue of the persons, and of the places where they became finally established in their bishoprics. But it would be honoring such fables too much, to record the long string of names which are in the papist annals, given to designate the missionaries thus sent out, and the particular places to which they were sent. It is enough to notice that the sum of the whole story is, that preachers of the gospel were thus sent not only into the western regions alluded to, but into many cities of Italy and Sicily. In Gaul, Spain and Germany, many are said to have been certainly established; and to extend the fable as far as possible, it is even hinted that Britain received the gospel through the preaching of some of these missionaries of Peter; but this distant circumstance is stated rather as a conjecture, while the rest are minutely and seriously given, in all the grave details of persons and places.