We do not wish to go beyond the three hundred years immediately following the death of the apostle, and shall therefore omit here the clear and unmistakable statements of Optatus, Jerome, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others, closing with the account given by Eusebius of Caesarea, (bishop A.D. 315-340,) who is justly regarded as the father of ecclesiastical history, and of the greatest weight in historical matters. His accuracy and research are universally acknowledged, and his authority alone is generally regarded as conclusive. [Footnote 104] He says that Simon Magus went to Rome, and that "against this bane of mankind, the most merciful and kind Providence conducted to Rome Peter, the most courageous and the greatest among the apostles, who on account of his virtue was leader of all." [Footnote 105] He adds in his chronicle: "Having first founded the Church of Antioch, he goes to Rome, where, preaching the gospel, he continues twenty-five years bishop of the same city."
[Footnote 104: "In questions of critical investigation regarding the early church, no writer bears with him greater authority than that of the learned Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea. Removed only by two hundred years from the apostolic times, and being attached to the imperial court, and having at his command all the literary treasures of the Caesarean library, he ever displays a profound knowledge of the earlier Christian writers, and at the same time a truly refined critical acumen in discriminating between their genuine productions and those falsely assigned to them." —Dublin Review, June,1858, art. vii.]
[Footnote 105: Hist. Eccl. lib. ii. c. xiv.]
We have here a continuous series of witnesses, from those who had seen and conversed with the Apostle St. Peter to the date of the first work on ecclesiastical history now extant, all of whom clearly testify to the fact that he visited Rome, took special charge of the Roman Church, and there died a martyr, as our Lord had foretold he would die. After the apostolic writers, who, from the proximity of the events to their own time, could not be mistaken, the most important witnesses are Irenaeus and Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian. The two former had visited Rome, and are competent witnesses of the tradition of the Roman Church, the most important of all in this matter; the two latter can testify to the same tradition, both because missionaries from Rome planted the faith in Africa, and because the constant intercourse, as well in ecclesiastical as in civil affairs, between the capital of the empire and Carthage, must necessarily have brought about a community of traditions between the two churches. The whole ancient church thus bears witness to what some Protestants now vainly affect to deny. Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa, Gaul, Palestine, repeat what Clement, ordained by Peter, tells. The second century takes up the fact from those who had seen the apostles; the third learns it from the second, and the father of ecclesiastical history relates it as a matter beyond doubt, found by him in those ancient records, for the greater part since lost, the gist of which he has fortunately preserved to posterity. Scarcely any matter of fact—and this is a mere matter of fact—connected with the early age of the church, leaving out those recorded in the sacred pages, is better attested.
To these written records we must add the expressive testimony of the catacombs. It is impossible to visit them without feeling that the Roman Christians looked on the apostles Peter and Paul as the founders of their local church. Eusebius was struck by the "monuments marked with the names of Peter and Paul," which he saw in the cemeteries at Rome, and these have been discovered, in modern times, by the indefatigable industry of Christian antiquarians; they are a living testimony to the fact that St. Peter, as well as St. Paul, labored in Rome. The illustrious Cardinal Borgia has traced the tradition in regard to the presence of St. Peter's body in the Vatican from the beginning of the third century, [Footnote 106] when, as we have seen, Cajus, a priest of Rome, in a work against heretics, [Footnote 107] spoke of the trophy of Peter in the Vatican, down to the days of Pope Urban VIII. And thus the most splendid monument Christianity has erected to the worship of the living God is also an authentic record of the fact that the chief of the apostles selected the city of Rome, in a special manner, as the scene of his labors, and there consummated his glorious career in the service of his Master. No wonder learned Protestants are ashamed to join with their more ignorant brethren. One learned German writer of this century says: "There is, perhaps, no event in ancient (church) history so clearly placed beyond doubt by the consenting testimony of ancient Christian writers as that of Peter having been at Rome." [Footnote 108] Another more forcibly, if possible, remarks: "Nothing but the polemics of faction have induced some Protestants, especially Spanheim, in imitation of some mediaeval opponents of the popes, to deny that Peter ever was at Rome." [Footnote 109]
[Footnote 106: In the work Vaticana Confessio B. Petri.]
[Footnote 107: The Montanists.]
[Footnote 108: Berthold, Historisch-Krit. Inlet. in A. und N. T. apud Perrone.]
[Footnote 109: Gieseler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengesch. Ibid.]
A caviller may, indeed, say that all these witnesses prove, at most, that Peter was at Rome, not that he was bishop of Rome. And this is the point made by Bishop Browne, in the work to which we have referred.
"It is not to be doubted," he says, "that a tradition did exist in early times that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. But if that tradition be submitted, like others of the same kind, to the test of historical investigation, it will be found to rest on a very slender foundation. In the first place, Scripture is silent about his having been at Rome—a remarkable silence, if his having been bishop there was a fact of such vital importance to the church as Roman divines have made it to be. Then, the first tradition of his having been at Rome at all does not appear for more than a century after his death. It is nearly two centuries after that event that we meet with anything like the opinion that the Roman bishops were his successors. It is three centuries before we find him spoken of as bishop of Rome. But when we reach three centuries and a half, we are told that he not only was bishop of Rome, but that he resided five and twenty years at Rome; a statement utterly irreconcilable with the history of the New Testament." [Footnote 110]
[Footnote 110: Loc. cit.]
There is, indeed, no good reason to doubt that St. Peter was at Rome; that he assisted St. Paul to order and establish the church there; that, in conjunction with Paul, he ordained one or more of its earliest bishops, and that there he suffered death for the sake of Christ. But there is no reason to believe that he was ever, in any proper or local sense, bishop of Rome." [Footnote 111]
[Footnote 111: Ibid.]