Though he be cut off from the church, he is still a minister in the church. In such a situation, to perform any of the sacred functions, would be in him a deadly sin; but these would be equally valid as before. Thus he may not be within the pale of the church himself, and yet be in the church a minister of Jesus Christ. He may openly and solemnly blaspheme God, and abjure the faith of Christ; he may apostatize to Judaism, to Mahometism, or to Paganism-he still retains the character: He may even become a priest of Jupiter, or a priest of Baal, and still continue a priest of Jesus Christ. The character, say the schoolmen, is not cancelled in the damned, but remains with the wicked to their disgrace and greater confusion; so that even in hell they are the ministers of Jesus Christ, and the messengers of the new covenant: Nor is it cancelled in the blessed, but remains in heaven with them, for their greater glory and ornament.

I have been the more particular on this topic, because it is a fundamental article with a pretty numerous class, (and these not all Romanists). I was willing to explain it, as far as it is explicable, from the writings of its defenders, being persuaded that on those who do not discover there a sufficient confutation, reason and argument, scripture and common sense, will make no impression. An author, of whose sentiments I took some notice in my last lecture, has observed,* that as the civilians have their fictions in law, our theologists also have their fictions in divinity. It is but too true, that some of our theological systems are so stuffed with these, that little of plain truth is to be learnt from them. And I think it will be doing no injury to this dogma of the character, to rank it among those fictions in divinity-God forbid I should add, in the not very decent words of that author, (though I really believe he meant no harm by them)—" which infinite wisdom and goodness hath devised for our benefit and advantage." The God of truth needs not the assistance of falsehood, nor is the cause of truth to be promoted by such means. The use of metaphorical expressions, or figurative representations, in scripture, give no propriety to such an application of a term so liable to abuse.

* Hickes, Christian Priesthood, lib. I. ch. ii. § 8.

LECTURE XII.

In the prelections I have already given on the ecclesiastical history, I have traced the progress of the hierarchy as far up as the patriarchate, and shewn by what steps that kind of oligarchy arose in the church. The only article that now remains to be considered, and which completes the edifice of spiritual despotism, is the Papacy. Ye all know the common plea on which the retainers to Rome have, not indeed from the beginning, but for many ages past, founded the right of papal dominion; namely, first, the prerogatives they affirm to have been given by our Lord to the apostle Peter; and, secondly, the succession of their bishops to that apostle, and consequently to those prerogatives. Every judicious and impartial inquirer must quickly discover, that both the premises by which their conclusion is supported are totally without foundation. Neither had Peter the prerogatives which they pretend he had, nor have their bishops the shadow of a title to denominate themselves his successors.

I acknowledged, in a former lecture, that Peter appears to have been honoured by his Master to be the president of the sacred college of his apostles, and the first in announcing the doctrine of the gospel both to the Jews and to the Gentiles. I have also shewn, that this is the highest prerogative of which there is any vestige in the writings of the New Testament; and that there was not any particular species of power which was given to him, that was not also, by their common Lord, communicated to the rest. They are all represented as alike foundations of this New Jerusalem, which, in their Master's name, and as his spiritual kingdom, was to be reared. They all receive from him the same commission for the conversion and instruction of all nations. They are all encouraged by the same promises and the same privileges: Nay, as a convincing proof that Peter, far from claiming a superiority over the other apostles, did, on the contrary, subject himself to their commands, we see (Acts viii. 14.) that "when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that

Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John." Nor did Peter, any more than John, disdain to serve in the capacity of legates from that sacred body. Now, whether is greater, the sender or the sent? Canonists; and other Romish writers, affect much to compare the Pope and his cardinals to Peter and his fellow-apostles. Yet, I suppose, they will acknowledge it would look very oddly in the Pope, and be in fact incompatible with papal dignity, to be sent ambassador from the conclave, though nothing be more common, in the members of that college, than to receive legatine commissions from him. But passing this; whatever were the prerogatives of Peter, they were manifestly personal, not official, in reward of the confession which he was the first to make, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; a confession which may justly be denominated the foundation of the whole Christian edifice. Besides, the apostleship itself, as I showed at some length, was an office in its nature temporary, extraordinary, and incapable of succession. In point of right, therefore, no peculiar privilege can be claimed by any church as derived from this apostle.

And if from the question of right we come to the matter of fact-the special relation of the See of Rome to this eminent ambassador of Christ, the partisans of papal ambition have never been able to support their affirmations by any thing that deserves the name of evidence. It has been questioned whether Peter ever was at Rome.

The only ground

on which the Papist builds his assertion that he was in that city, and founded the church in it, is tradition; and such a tradition as must appear very suspicious to reasonable Christians, being accompanied with a number of legendary stories, which are totally unworthy of regard.

In opposition to such traditionary legends it has been urged, that mention is nowhere made in scripture that this apostle was ever there, notwithstanding that there were so many favourable occasions of taking notice of it, if it had been fact, that one is at a loss to conceive how it could have been avoided. No hint is there of such a thing in the Acts of the Apostles, though a great part of that book is employed in recording the labours of this apostle for the advancement of

the gospel, and mention is made of different places, Jerusalem, Samaria, Lydda, Joppa, and Cæsarea, where he exerted himself in this service. In the first of these, he assisted at the consultation which the apostles, elders, and brethren, held in regard to circumcision, and the ceremonies of the law; though this happened a good deal later than the time when the Romanists suppose his charge at Rome to have commenced. When Paul afterwards came himself to Rome, mention is made of the Christians he found there; but not a syllable that Peter either then was, or had been formerly among them. Paul, in his long epistle to the Romans, or the church of Christ at Rome, does not once mention the person whom these men pretend to have been their bishop. This silence is the more remarkable, that, towards the close of the epistle, he seems solicitous not to omit taking particular notice of every one by name, who, residing there, could be denominated, in any respect, a fellow-labourer in the common cause. Nay more, in the beginning of that epistle he expresses the earnest desire he had to visit them, that he might impart to them some spiritual gifts, that they might be established. This, if we consider the purpose for which Peter and John were sent by the apostles to the Samaritans converted by Philip, as recorded in the 8th chapter of the Acts, will appear at least a strong presumption that no apostle had been yet at Rome. · Paul afterwards wrote from Rome, where he was twice a prisoner, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to Philemon, to Timothy, without taking notice of Peter in any of the six letters, or sending any salutations from him, notwithstanding the attention, in this respect, he pays to others. When he said to Timothy, "At my first answer," to wit, before the emperor at Rome, "no man stood with me, but all men forsook me," there would surely have been an exception in favour of Peter, if any such person had been there. Would he have said, in writing to the Colossians from the same place, that Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Marcus, and Justus, were his only fellow-labourers unto the kingdom of God who had been a comfort to him, if Peter had been in Rome? Or, lastly, when he told his beloved son Timothy, that the time

of his departure was at hand, and sent him salutations from all the brethren, naming Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia, would he have omitted Peter, if, agreeably to that very tradition formerly alluded to, he had been not only in that capital at the time, but a fellow-prisoner in the same jail?

The only pretence of scriptural evidence advanced by the Romanists, is indeed a very poor one, not to call it ridiculous. Peter, say they, in his first epistle, presents the salutations of the church at Babylon; by which they would have it, that he must certainly have meant Rome. If they think he spoke prophetically, they do not, by this interpretation, pay a great compliment to the throne of the hierarchy. The propriety of the application, in this view, we do not mean to controvert. But our adversaries on this question must be sensible, that their explanation is merely conjectural. And is not the conjecture which others make at least as plausible, that by Babylon is here meant Jerusalem, which the apostle so denominates on account of its apostacy, by the rejection and murder of the Messiah, and on account of its impending fate, so similar to that denounced against Babylon? But why, say others, should we, without necessity, recur to a figurative sense, when the words are capable of being literally interpreted? To do so, would seem the more unreasonable in this case, as the epistle is written in a simple, and not an allegorical style. Why must the apostle be supposed not to mean the ancient Babylon in Chaldea, which was still in being, and was then, I may say, the head-quarters of the Jews in the East; a place famous for the residence of many of their most celebrated doctors, and for giving birth to some of their most learned performances on the law? That the apostle of the circumcision should go to preach the gospel in Babylon, the capital of the Jews in dispersion, will be thought to have a degree of probability which it would require positive evidence to surmount. Yet I have heard nothing on the opposite side but supposition, founded on vague and obscure traditions. But, setting aside the imperial seat of the Chaldeans, there was at that time a Babylon in Egypt, a city of considerable note. What should make it be thought improbable that this epistle was written there? That either of these was