The King of Pride

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES. The Roman Pontiff's, of whom the first was the Apostle Peter.?It is not certain that Peter ever visited Rome. It is certain that he never resided there, as did James at Jerusalem. A Church existed in that city, consisting of individuals who were converted at various times by various persons, previously to Paul's being conveyed thither a prisoner, on his appealing to the judgment of Caesar. We learn this from his Epistle to the Romans, and from the Acts of the Apostles; and from both, the inference is strong, that if he was not the only Apostle who entered the capital of the Roman world, he was certainly the first. His was no passing visit. For two whole years, in his own hired house, all had access to his preaching and to his instructions, whether, as inquirers after truth, they sought his presence to learn fully the doctrines of thatsect that was everywhere spoken against; or, as Christians and members of the Roman Church, they wished for his teaching, or needed his guidance in adjusting the ecclesiastical arrangements of a recently formed Christian community. Nor was this all, for he visited Rome a second time; and as he was specially ordained by the Great Head of the Church to be the Apostle for the Gentiles, a claim of ministerial descent, if made from an Apostle by the Bishop of Rome, should be made from Paul?not Peter. A consciousness of this truth is betrayed in the junction of the two, as the official progenitors of the Roman Pontiff. Though Guicciardini names but the one, Paul is called in to aid Peter in sustaining the most ambitious claims that were ever reduced to systematic domination, or ever even put forth by man. It has been remarked, that the Jews, viewed in relation to prophecy, are a standing miracle. It is equally true of the Roman Po...