over all nations, differing from one another in language, customs, government, and every thing else except religion, it would have been morally impossible to have kept them all united in one body, if there were not one common visible head of supreme authority among them, to which all must submit: so that this head of the church is the centre of unity, by which the church of Christ throughout the whole world, is joined in one body." Sincere Christian, chap. xii.

In reply to this, I maintain, that the church of Christ is never represented in the New Testament as a visible body, having a visible head on earth; and, therefore, all that the bishop says about the necessity of such a head must go for nothing. He is not speaking of any particular or national church, and neither am I, but of the church of Christ; that is, the whole body of believers in Christ, and the sanctified through his blood, of all kindreds, and tongues, and people, and nations. These were never meant to be one visible body on earth; they could never all meet in one place, or be the subjects of one earthly head, in any sense of the word. They are all united to Christ, and to one another in him, who is really the head of his body, the church; and who never devolved the honour of this headship upon any creature. A mere human head could be of no use to such a body; because it could communicate no life, and it could not take an oversight of all or of any of the members; but Christ, by his word and Spirit, gives life to all the members of his body; by the same divine influence, he unites them to himself, and to one another, in an invisible, but indissoluble bond of union; he takes the oversight of every one of them; he feeds his flock like a shepherd; he leads them in the way of righteousness, and guides them with his eye,

To descend from this view of the church of Christ and her divine Head, to the church of Rome, and the pope as her head, is such an example of the Babos, or art of sinking, that I scarcely know how to write it. If the pope were to limit his claim of headship to the church of Rome, it might be conceded, that the head is good enough for the body; but when he claims to be the head of the Catholic or universal church of Christ, the thing is more absurd and impious than human language can express.

The headship which the pope claims over the church, makes him virtually head of the state also, in all countries where popery is the established religion. He claims, and has conceded to him, an allegiance more sacred than subjects yield to their princes; and from the hold which he has of the consciences of the people, by the agency of his priests, their allegiance to their civil rulers is just what the pope pleases to make it. Nay, he is not satisfied with the allegiance of the subjects of all kings and princes where his religion prevails; but he must have the allegiance of sovereign princes themselves; and to these arrogant claims may be ascribed half the wars which desolated Europe for a thousand years.

Lord Clarendon, in his introduction to his work entitled, "Religion and Policy," represents this usurpation of the bishop of Rome, as having been "without doubt the cause of more rapine, and the effusion of more blood, than all the ambition of other princes and usurpers that hath been since the death of our Saviour; and," says he, "the propagation of Christianity hath been more obstructed by that obstinate, hu

morous, and senseless ambition, than by the arms and tyranny of the Turks and infidels. And how can we reasonably hope," continues his lordship, "that those great and powerful princes, who command so much the greater part of the world, will ever embrace the Christian faith, when they know that they are not only thereby to cease to be Mahometans, but to cease to be monarchs, and admit another prince to have an equal, if not superior, command over their own subjects in their own dominions, and must cease to be emperors before they can be admitted to be Christians? When our Saviour himself, whilst he was upon the earth, and instituted that religion by which all men are to be saved, was so tender of, and jealous for, the entire power, prerogative, and privileges of kings and princes, that he would not suffer them either to be invaded or affronted for the advancement of the gospel itself; and, consequently, never intended, that by becoming Christians and followers of him, from being Jews and Gentiles, they should lose any of the pre-eminences they were possessed of; or that their subjects should pay them a less entire obedience and submission than they had formerly done; and when he intended that their conversion should be the most effectual means to reduce all the world to the faith of Christ; as indeed it was like to have been, till the pope's usurpation of a spiritual distinct sovereignty obstructed the progress of it, and drove more from it, than ever it reconciled to it."

The same consideration must have a tendency to induce Mahometan and heathen princes to oppose the propagation of Christianity among their people. If popery were Christianity, they would be sensible at once that they could not embrace it, without becoming subjects of a foreign power, and that none of their subjects could embrace it, without having their allegiance transferred to the pope. If these princes were to see Christianity in its true character, as the friend of order and subordination, they could not oppose the propagation of it, without obstructing the peace and comfort of their subjects, as well as of themselves; but when they see Christianity only in the light of popery, it is not surprising that they hate and oppose it, as the bane of every country into which it has found its way. But for popery, the gospel might long ere now have been preached and believed throughout the whole world, as we hope it will be when popery is destroyed; and as this grand consummation has been obstructed chiefly by the church of Rome, for many centuries, that church, and all her adherents, may be expected to suffer, when the time shall arrive, the dreadful punishment which such wickedness deserves.

In showing how absurdly the popes of Rome pretend to be the successors of Peter, I shall make considerable use, in my next number, of the work of the noble and learned historian above quoted; and I shall make my extracts the more freely and largely, because I believe the work itself is in the possession of few, if any, of my readers on this side of the Tweed. I do not know a work of greater value in relation to this part of the controversy between Protestants and the church of Rome. The edition before me, which, I believe, is the first and only one, was printed at Oxford as lately as 1791, with sufficient attestation of its authenticity. But before I give the result of Lord Clarendon's researches, I shall present the reader with the confused

account which the popish historian, Dupin gives of those whom he conceived to be Peter's successors in the see of Rome.

"Let us begin," says he, "with the successors of St. Peter, in the church of Rome, the first and principal church." It is worth while to attend to this mode of expression. Dupin found, that during the first three centuries, there was not so much as a hint, that the church of Rome was the catholic, or only true church of Christ; and he calls it only the first and principal church, for no reason that can be shown, but that Rome was the first and principal city at that time in the world. In what follows, he gives nothing as certain, with regard to Peter's successors, but only as a commonly received opinion hundreds of years after the period to which he refers.

"According to the common received opinion, to St. Peter succeeded St. Linus, to St. Linus, Anacletus or Cletus, and to him St. Clement. This order is observed by St. Irenæus, Eusebius, and St. Jerome, and in the ancient catalogues of the popes; but Optatus, Rufinus, and St. Augustine, and some other Latin authors, substitute St. Clement immediately to St. Linus, and place Anacletus in the third rank. Some distinguish Cletus from Anacletus. The author of the Apostolical Constitutions says, that St. Linus was ordained by St. Paul, and St. Clement by St. Peter. St. Epiphanius conjectures, that St. Peter at first ordained St. Clement; but he refusing to accept the pontificate, and going out of the way, that St. Linus and St. Cletus did successively govern the church of Rome, and that after the death of St. Peter, St. Clement succeeded to St. Cletus. The best way is to hold the most common and most ancient opinion." Vol. 2. chap. 2.

The plain English of the above is, that nothing is certainly known of the matter, which is a strong presumptive argument, that the knowledge of it is of no importance to the comfort and edification of Christians. The author tells us with great gravity, that after the death of St. Peter, St. Clement succeeded St. Linus; but he cannot tell, and no man in the world can tell, who was Peter's immediate successor, supposing it were admitted that he was bishop of Rome, which it is not. It is of no use to refer to a commonly received opinion, in the time of Eusebius or Augustine, hundreds of years after the thing is supposed to have happened, for they could know no more than we do. Dupin, writing of the succession of bishops in the see of Rome, tells us, that in the third century, after the death of St. Fabianus, the see of Rome was vacant a whole year. The church of Rome has often been called a many-headed monster; but here she appears as a monster without a head, and how she could live a whole year in this state, is not easy to divine.

CHAPTER CIII.

INCORRECT IMPRESSIONS AMONG PAPISTS, CONCERNING THE STATE OF THE CHURCH IN ROME IN PRIMITIVE TIMES. EXTRACT FROM LORD CLARENDON: NOTHING CERTAINLY KNOWN, BUT FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT, OF THE FIRST AGES OF THE CHURCH. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE BISHOP OF ROME THEN EXERCISED JURISDICTION OVER OTHER CHURCHES. USE OF THE WORD POPE. IDOLATRY OF POPE MARCELLINUS. ELECTION OF POPE. CONSTANTINE BECOMES PROFESSEDLY CHRISTIAN, AND GIVES THE POPE A RICH CROWN. REMARKS ON THIS TRANSACTION.

SATURDAY, July 1st, 1820.

SUPPOSING it were granted that Peter was the first bishop of the church in Rome, the pope would gain nothing by it, unless he were to become such a bishop as Christian bishops were in those days. Amidst the immense population of that great city, the Christians who composed the church were a poor and despised company, ever exposed to the violence of their heathen neighbours and superiors; and their bishop or pastor, whoever he was, would be looked upon in no higher light than the ring-leader of the sect, and the principal object of hatred, by all the votaries of the idols of Rome. It is absurd to speak of a bishop, in these circumstances, having a see, and a chair, and a throne. These symbols of majesty, the pope pretends to have derived from the first bishop of Rome; and doubtless there is as much justice in the pretence, as there is in the impositions practised at Loretto, where a gaudy image, dressed up in silk, and gold, and precious stones, is given out as a true representation of Mary, the wife of Joseph of Nazareth. Let the pope put himself upon a footing of equality with his pretended predecessor. Let him go about preaching remission of sins, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Let him renounce the vanities of this world, as Peter did; and let him forbear meddling with the civil affairs of worldly kingdoms, which Peter claimed no right to do. In short, let him become a minister of the gospel,, and, if any church shall call him to it, a bishop, in the New Testament sense of the word; and, though I will not even then concede to him that he is Peter's successor, I will do him the greater honour of calling him one to whom the apostle would not have been ashamed to say, "The elders who are among you I exhort, being also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: feed the flock that is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock and when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." 1 Pet. v. 1-4.

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When Papists think of the see of Peter, they form in their minds an image of a peaceable and prosperous state of society, such as we may see in our own day, in what are called Christian countries, where bishops reign as kings, and where the people, if they be virtuously and peaceably disposed, may reign with them, in the enjoyment of all the happiness which the world can afford. When they think of the chair of Peter, they consider him as having occupied a seat of eminence, in a tranquil and unmolested seminary, like a professor of divinity in one of our colleges. The chair, by degrees, is elevated to VOL. I.-90.

the dignity of a throne; and then Peter is considered as having been exactly what the pope is now; or rather what he was five hundred years ago, when he reigned over the kingdoms, and even over the kings of the earth. But such notions are as absurd as the Metamorphoses of Ovid; and they have no more to do with truth than the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

When the church in Rome, in the days of primitive purity, on the martyrdom of one bishop, were looking about for another, the question would not be, who is the most cunning politician? or, who has the greatest number of crowned heads on his side? but, who is most ready and most willing to have his head cut off, or to be thrown alive to be devoured by wild beasts, for his confession of the name of Jesus? Such was the state of the church in Rome, for the first three centuries, that her bishops could claim scarcely any pre-eminence but that of suffering; and they had not, even in this respect, a pre-eminence over other bishops; though, in virtue of their more conspicuous place in the church, they would be more exposed than their private brethren.

I have made these general remarks, in order to introduce Lord Clarendon's account of what is known, or rather of what is not known, of Peter, and of those who are reported to have been his nearest successors: "If we look," says he, vol. i. p. 12. "upon the fountain of all ecclesiastical story, from the time of the apostles even to that of Constantine, which was about 320 years, in which there were three and thirty popes, we may reasonably say, that no rivulet conveyed any thing of moment from that pure fountain-of moment to us, more than what the scripture itself tells us of the very history. There is not only no authority that obliges, but no reason that persuades us, to believe any thing positively in the transactions of the church or of churchmen; nor does it appear from whence we have the very lives of the apostles, and other holy men, which are derived to us; and which we have much more reason to suspect, because, as there was no collection of them in writing, till after Constantine's time, so what was afterwards put in writing hath been oftentimes altered, many things having been reformed and left out, according to the discretion and gravity of the age; and that body of the lives of the saints, which hath now most reputation amongst the Catholics, was compiled but in our own age, by the Jesuit Ribadineyra, who was chaplain to Philip II. in England, when he married Queen Mary, and of whose skill in collecting history we may make some judgment, by what he hath left us of England; which, relating only to the transactions of twenty years, is so full of mistakes and errors, with reference to persons, times, and actions, that no Englishman, who is best versed in the accounts of that time, can receive any information. But, as I said before, his collection of the saints hath most reputation in all Catholic countries, of any other, and is translated into all languages, though it contains not half the particulars, even of St. Paul himself, as former and more ancient editions do; and yet it contains very much more than any learned and wise Catholic will seriously profess to believe. "There is no consent in the very succession; very little pretence to jurisdiction over any other persons where themselves resided; and no mention of the manner of their election, and how they came to be chosen, till after three hundred years."-His lordship then gives an