Now, whether our Lord did or did not grant the monarchy of the Church to Peter; respecting which monarchy, by the way, neither claim nor trace can be found in any part of the New Testament: the true question, I apprehend, touches, not Peter, but the Pope. In other words, it matters little to the point before us, whether Peter was or was not divinely appointed the monarch of the Church: unless it can also be proved, that the Pope is the lawfully and divinely constituted successor to all Peter’s alleged regalities.
Where, then, is the scriptural demonstration of the Pope’s hereditary successorship to the asserted special privileges and authority of St. Peter? In other words, where have we any proof from the Bible: that The Roman Pontiff, as the oath in the Tridentine Profession of Faith determines, is, at once, the Successor of the blessed Peter Prince of the Apostles, and the Vicar of Jesus Christ?
Truly, the Bible, though we painfully search it through from beginning to end, SAYS NOT ONE WORD about the matter.
III. But, where the Bible is so provokingly silent, peradventure the earliest Fathers, in delivering their testimony, may be somewhat more communicative.
To establish the Pope’s claim of rightful successorship to St. Peter, we must obviously establish the FACT that St. Peter was the first diocesan Bishop of Rome. For, since, so far as foundership is concerned, St. Peter founded many Churches: the mere circumstance, even if the circumstance were ever so well established, of his having founded the Roman Church, would no more constitute the Roman Bishop heir to his regalities, than the same circumstance would convey the same privilege to the Bishop of any other Church similarly founded by St. Peter. Whence it is quite clear: that, in no method, save that of The regular succession of one diocesan Bishop to another diocesan Bishop in the same episcopal See, each Bishop inheriting the duly transmitted authority of his predecessor, can any intelligible case be made out for the Pope’s alleged successorship to Peter in the pretended office of Christ’s supreme Vicar.
Accordingly, as the Romish Clergy well know and confess, this precise matter is the very hinge, upon which turns the whole of the present question.
Was, OR WAS NOT, THE APOSTLE PETER THE FIRST DIOCESAN BISHOP OF THE ROMAN CHURCH?
We have here before us a simple question of FACT: and doubtless, like every other simple question of FACT, it must be determined by historical testimony.
1. Negatively, then, we may safely say, that the alleged fact of Peter’s diocesan Roman Episcopate is altogether incapable of substantiation through the medium of evidence.
Not a single writer of the three first centuries gives the slightest intimation, that Peter was the first diocesan Bishop of Rome.