"But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to those who, in these last days, have wrestled manfully for the faith; let us take the noble examples of our own age. Through envy, the faithful and most righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted even to the most dreadful deaths. Let us place before your eyes the good Apostles. Peter, by unjust envy, underwent not one or two, but many labors: and thus having borne testimony unto death, he went into the place of glory, which was due to him. Through envy, Paul obtained the reward of patience. Seven times he was in bonds; he was scourged; was stoned. He preached both in the East and in the West, leaving behind him the glorious report of his faith. And thus having taught the whole world of righteousness, and reached the fullest extremity of the West, he suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and departed out of this world, and went to the holy place, having become a most exemplary pattern of patience." (Epistle I. of Clement to Corinthians, sec. 5.) By the side of this extract we will lay a passage of Irenæus. Speaking of the writers of the Gospels, he says: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church." (Book iii. chap. 1.) Now, we assert with confidence, that the hand which penned the first passage wrote them both. It is not said in so many words, in Clement's letter, that Peter was in Rome, but it is to be inferred, as in the case of John at Eph-esus. Irenæus seldom states anything which is positively untrue in direct language, but makes falsehood inferential. The passage we have quoted does not contain a single truth, except as it relates to Paul. Paul and Peter were never engaged together in laying the foundation of a church. They quarrelled in Damascus and could never agree. The doctrine of circumcision formed an impassable wall between them, and, as we will show, was never given up by Peter. Besides, it is not true that Peter had anything to do in laying the foundation of the church at Rome.
Christians, during the reign of Claudius in Rome, were too few in number and too poor to form a church, especially such an one as would require the office of a Bishop. Renan, in speaking of the church in the time of Claudius, says it was composed of a "little group—every one smelt of garlic. These ancestors of Roman prelates were poor proletaries, dirty, alike clownish, clothed in filthy gabardines, having the bad breath of people who live badly. Their retreats breathed that odor of wretchedness exhaled by persons meanly clothed and fed, and collected in a small room." (Life of Paul, 96.)
We have no reason to believe that at any time during the life of Peter was the church of Rome, if there was any church there at all, composed of different materials or greater in numbers than at the time referred to. What was there for a Bishop to do in such a crowd, or what was there to keep him from starvation? Christians engaged in riots growing out of the hostility between them and the Jews, were driven from Rome by an edict of the Emperor Claudius, and did not return during his reign, which ceased in A.D. 54, when that of Nero commenced. In A.D. 58 they had not rallied, and at that time Rome was without a church. It was the practice in all cases with Paul to address Christians through the churches, where churches were established; but his Epistle, in A.D. 58, to the Romans, is addressed not to a church, but "to all that be in Rome" In his three years' imprisonment in that city, commencing in the spring of A.D. 61, he makes no mention of a church, nor does he during the second, which lasted from the summer or fall of A.D. 65 to the spring of A.D. 66. There is no proof that the historian can discover, worthy of his notice, that there was a church in Rome of any kind, even down to the time of Adrian, A.D. 117, and even later. We are overrun with traditions on this subject, the creations of the second century, to which the attention of the reader will be called when we treat of the twelve traditional Bishops named by Irenæus. Adrian, in the seventeenth year of his reign, knew so little about a Christian church, that he supposed the office of a Bishop belonged to the worship of the god Serapis. In a letter written by him from Alexandria, A.D. 134, to his brother-in-law Servianus, he says: "The worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and those are devoted to the god Serapis, who, I find, call themselves Bishop of Christ."
We will dismiss this part of the subject for the present, with the promise to return to it in a subsequent chapter, when it will be demonstrated that there was no Christian church in Rome until after the reign of Antoninus Pius.*
* See Appendix C
Were Peter and Paul together in Rome at all? Paul went there in the spring of A.D. 61, for the first time, and remained until the spring or summer of A.D. 63. During this time he wrote four epistles, as follows:—to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon, and, if we except the first, he closes them by naming the persons who are with him. He says nothing about Peter, nor does he mention his name, so far as we know, during the three years he was confined in Rome. That Paul should omit to mention Peter, one of the Apostles, in some of his letters, is the very best proof that he was not in Rome at all. After his release in the spring of A.D. 63, after making a visit to the churches in Europe and Asia, he returned to Rome again in the fall of A.D. 65. He had with him a few friends who stood by him to the last. They were Luke, Mark, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia. There could not have been many other Christians in Rome at the time besides those named, because Paul, after naming the above who sent salutations to Timothy, adds, "and all the other brethren," which implies that there were not many of them. Paul does not mention Peter, because he was not there. Timothy, no doubt, was with Paul in the winter of A.D. 65 and A.D. 66, and was put to death in the spring of the latter year, with his friend and fellow-laborer. We never hear of him again. In the spring of A.D. 66, the labors and sorrows of the great Apostle of the Gentiles ceased. He had fought the good fight—he had finished his work—he had kept the faith; and now, by his death, bore testimony to the doctrines he preached. He was among the last of Nero's victims. Nothing that belongs to history is surer than that Peter and Paul never were in Rome together, laying the foundation of a church, or anything else.
Having proved that one-half of what is stated by Irenæus in the passage which we have quoted is false, according to the usual rule for testing the truth of any statement, we might claim that the remaining half is also untrue. But we ask no such advantage in disproving any of the statements made by this father.
When was Peter in Rome? No writer in the first or second century pretends to give the time when he was in Rome, or when he died.
Irenæus gives the names of twelve Bishops who succeeded each other, commencing with Linus, but does not give a single date, so that we can tell when or how long any one of them held the office. This want of dates, where it was easy to give them—if what was stated was true—was urged with so much force against what Irenæus said, that Eusebius, in the fourth century, undertook to fix the time when these traditional Bishops succeeded to, and how long each held the office. He fails to say when Peter first became Bishop, or when he ceased to be the head of the church, but commences giving dates from the time of Linus, his successor. Without intending, he has furnished the data to determine when Peter died, if his dates are correct, which is not even probable. He says: "After Vespasian had reigned about ten years, he was succeeded by his son Titus; in the second year of whose reign, Linus, Bishop of the church of Rome, who held the office about twelve years, transferred it to Anacletus." (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., book iii. ch. 13.) As Linus succeeded Peter, the latter must have died just before his successor took the office. Titus became emperor June 24th, A. D. 79, and as Linus died two years after this, after holding the office twelve years, he became Bishop in A. D. 69; which must have been the year of Peter's death. Nero died in June A. D. 68, and at his death the persecution against Christians ceased altogether. It is not claimed that Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, or Titus ever inflicted persecution of any kind on Christians during the time they held the government of the empire. Eusebius, in attempting to fix a date when the second Bishop took office, answers the objections made to the vagueness of Irenæus, but robs Peter of the laurels of a martyr.
But it is claimed that Linus was installed Bishop before the death of Peter, and Irenæus pretends to give the time. He says: "The blessed Apostles then having founded and built up the church, committed unto the hands of Linus the office of the Episcopate." (Book iii. ch. 2, sec. 3.) The blessed Apostles are Peter and Paul. Now we have just shown that these Apostles were never in Rome together, and that there was no church to be committed to the charge of Linus or anybody else. As it is an important part of the story that Peter died a martyr at Rome, this could only happen to him between A. D. 64 and A. D. 68, for the persecution under Nero commenced during the former year, and ended with his death in A. D. 68. We have the most conclusive proof that Peter was not in Rome in A. D. 64, when the persecutions under Nero commenced, nor afterwards. He was in Babylon—whether Babylon in Assyria, Babylon in Mesopotamia or Egypt—he was in Babylon more than two thousand miles away. Peter was born about the time of Christ, and was sixty-four years of age when the persecutions under Nero began. He was married, and when he wrote his first Epistle he was in Babylon and had his family with him, for he mentions the name of Marcus, and calls him his son. "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus, my son." (1 Peter v. 13.)