[28] Mansi, Concil. Tom. 8, 208.
[29] S. Cyprian, de Unitate.
[30] Eph. iv. 4. 8. 11; i. 22; v. 23.
[31] That such was the belief of the most ancient fathers, Ignatius, Irenæus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others, see a most curious admission of the Lutheran Mosheim, in his dissertation, De Gallorum appellationibus, &c. s. 13. And his way of extricating himself is at least as curious as the admission. His words are, "Cyprian and the rest cannot have known the corollaries which follow from their precepts about the Church. For no one is so dull as not to see that between a certain unity of the universal Church, terminating in the Roman pontiff, and such a community as we have described out of Irenæus and Cyprian, there is scarcely so much room as between hall and chamber, or between hand and fingers. If the innocence of the first ages stood in the way of their anticipating the snares which ignorantly and unintentionally they were laying against sacred liberty, those succeeding at least were more sharp-sighted, and it was not long in becoming clear to the pontiffs what force in establishing their own power and authority such tenets possessed." So the ancient fathers were not intelligent enough to see that the hand was joined to the fingers. But the other alternative was still harder to Mosheim, that Lutheranism was fundamentally heretical and schismatical.
[32] Napoleon.
CHAPTER VIII.
SUMMARY OF PROOF GIVEN FOR S. PETER'S PRIMACY.
It would now seem to be made clear to all that the controversy on S. Peter's Primacy relates generally to the question of inequality in the Apostolic college, and specially to the question, whether Christ, the Founder of the Church, set any one of the Apostles, and whom of them in particular, over the rest. For as, on the one hand, there would have been no room for the superior dignity of the Primacy, had all the Apostles been completely equal, and undistinguished in honour and authority from each other; so, on the other hand, it is the nature of the Primacy to be incapable of even being contemplated, save as fixed on some certain definite subject.
But to determine the two questions, whether the Apostles stood, or did not stand, on a complete equality, and whether one of them was superior to the rest in honour and dignity, it seemed requisite to examine chiefly four points.