302 THIKD PERIOD. A.I). 311-590.
places also Peter confessedly resided ; and secondly, whether the primacy involve at the same time a supremacy of jurisdiction over the whole church, or be only an honorary primacy among patriarchs of equal authority and rank. The former was the Roman view ; the latter was the Greek.
An African bishop, Cyprian (f 258), was the first to give to that passage of the 16th of Matthew, innocently as it were, and with no suspicion of the future use and abuse of his view, a papistic interpretation, and to bring out clearly the idea ol a perpetual cathedra Petri. The same Cyprian, however, whether consistently or not, was at the same time equally animated with the consciousness of episcopal equality and independence, afterward actually came out in bold opposition to Pope Stephen in a doctrinal controversy on the validity of heretical baptism, and persisted in this protest to his death.'
§ 61. Opinions of the Fathers.
&. complete collection of the patristic utterances on the primacy of Peter and his successors, though from the Roman point of view, may be found in the work of Rev. Jos. Behixoton and Rev. Jonx Kirk : "The Faith of Catholics confirmed by Scrijiture and attested by the Fathers of the first five centuries of the Church," 3d ed., London, 1846, vol. ii. p. 1-112. Comp. the works quoted sub § 55, and a curious article of Prof. Feed. Piper, on Rome, the eternal city, in the Evang. Jahrbuch for 18G4, p. 17-120, where the opinions of the fathers on the claims of the urhs aterna and its many fortunes are brought out.
We now pursue the development of this idea in the church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. In general they agree in attaching to Peter a certain primacy over the other apostles, and in considering 1 Im the foundation of the church in virtue of his confession of the divinity of Christ ; while they hold Christ to be, in the highest sense, the divine ground and rock of the church. And herein lies a solution of their apparent self-contradiction in referring the jpetra in Matt. xvi. 18, now to the person of Peter, now to his confession, now to Christ. Then, as the bishops in general were regarded as suo'
1 Comp. vol. ii. g 74 (p. 'JO;.').
§ 61. OPINIONS OF THE I'ATHKRS. 3(l3
cessors of the apostles, the fathers saw in the Roman bishops, on the g'l'ound of the ancient tradition of tlie martyrdom of Peter in Eome, the snccessor of Peter and the heir of the primacj, Bnt respecting tlie nature and prerogatives of tins primacy their views were very indefinite and various. It is remarkable tliat tlie reference of the roclx. to Christ, wliicli Augustine especially defended with great earnestness, was acknowledged even by the greatest pope of the middle ages, Gregory YIL, in tlie famous inscription he sent with a crown to the emperor Rudolph : '■'■Petra [i. e., Christ] dedit Petri [i. e., to the apostle], Petrus [the pope] diadema PudolphoP '"
It is worthy of notice, that the post-Nicene, as well as the ante-Nicene fathers, with all their reverence for the Roman see, regarded the heathenish title of Rome, urbs asterna, as blasphemous, with reference to the passage of the woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy. Rev. xvii. 3.^ The prevailing opinion seems to have been, that Rome and the Roman empire would fall before the advent of Antichrist and the second coming of the Lord."
1. The views of the Latin fathers.
The Cyprianic idea was developed primarily in !N'ortli Africa, where it was first clearly pronounced.
Optatus, bishop of Milevi, the otherwise unknown author of an anti-Donatist work about a. d, 384, is, like Cyprian, thoroughly possessed with the idea of the visible unity of the church ; declares it without qualification the highest good, and Bees its plastic expression and its surest safeguard in the immovable cathedi'a Petri, the prince of the apostles, the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who, in spite of his denial of Christ, continued in that relation to the other apostles, that the unity of the church might appear in outward fact as an unchangeable thing, invulnerable to human offence. All these
' Baronius, Anual. ad ann. 1080, vol. xi. p. 704.
* Hieronymus, Adv. Joviii lib. ii. c. 38 (Opera, t. ii. p. 382), where he addresses Rome : " Ad te loquar, qute scriptam ia fronte blasphemiam Christ! confessinue delesti." Prosper : " ^tenia cum dioitur qute temporalis est, utique nomen est blaaphemiaj." Comp. Piper, 1. c. p. 46.
° So Chrysostom ad 2 Thess. ii. T ; Hieronymus, Ep. cxxi. qu. 11 (torn. i. p, 180 8q.) ; Augustine, De civit. Dei, lib. xx. cap. 19.