bending profession of his faith affords the only prospect of admission within the celestial portals. Thus our Saxon fathers detected in the whole address of Jesus nothing more than a significant admonition to hold his doctrine entire and undefiled.

The Ante-Norman Church of England estimated indeed St. Paul not less highly than St. Peter2. Nay more: to the former Apostle was even assigned, in some respects, a striking superiority over his illustrious fellow-labourer in the gospel-vineyard. Thus a homily upon our Lord's parable of the Talents paints these two Apostles going forth to their great accounts followed by the fruits of their individual ministrations, as evidences of the diligence with which they had improved respectively the deposits intrusted to their management. Upon Romish principles St. Peter surely ought to head a train consisting of the whole Church of Christ. He was the rock, we are told, upon which the sacred fabric was erected. He was the centre of religious unity, the source of ecclesiastical authority. Why not paint him, therefore, unconnected with any particular division, but preceding majestically all those happy members of the great human family, whom a lively faith in Jesus had exempted from the penal

ties of iniquity? The Saxon homilist, however, appears to have viewed St. Peter merely as the Apostle of the circumcision. Behind him, accordingly, in his way to the seat of judgment, are placed only those Jews who had come, through his means, to an effectual knowledge of the truth3. In unison

with such a picture were Saxon explanations of St. Peter's ship. What Romanist would not here discern a mystical representation of the entire Christian world? Our Ante-Norman fathers, however, understood not thus the figure. In their estimation, St. Peter's ship meant no more than Israel's Christian Church+.

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Behind St. Paul, on the other hand, the homilist upon the Talents places " almost all the world." Ancient England, therefore, looked rather for an apostolic head to that illustrious pillar of our holy faith, than to Simon Peter. Our distant ancestors, as being members of that Gentile branch, which rapidly comprised by far the greater portion of our blessed Lord's disciples, considered themselves as destined to follow the great Apostle of the Gentiles, in the awful day of retribution. St. Paul, then, passed for their spiritual father. To Simon Peter was assigned that character, merely with respect to such "lost sheep of

the house of Israel" as had happily been awakened to consult their only real interests, by seeking safety for their souls within the fold of Jesus. It is true, indeed, that our Ante-Norman progenitors considered the great Apostle of the circumcision as charged especially to feed the flock of Christ. But then this charge appears to have been viewed as applying to St. Peter personally. When he had, accordingly, "fought the good fights,” and his parting soul was upon the very point of winging its joyous way to the realms of eternal rest and glory, his lips are represented as thus addressing his gracious Master: " My Jesus! I deliver to thee the sheep which thou committedst to me. They will not want a shepherd while thou art with themh."

The Saxon Church, nevertheless, adopted those traditions respecting St. Peter's history which have obtained extensive credence in the Christian world. Her monuments, accordingly, represent that Apostle as having occupied the see of Antioch during seven years, and afterwards the see of Rome during twenty-five. Nor do they pretermit his apocryphal contest, in the mighty seat of empire with Simon Magus; nor the legendary

f St. Matt. xv. 24.

8 2 Tim. iv. 7. h Wheloc. in Bed. p. 128, ex Hom. Angl. Sax.

embellishments appended to current relations of that alleged encounter. The venerable remains of our early national theology confirm also the received accounts of St. Peter's martyrdom with St. Paul, under the tyrannical rule of Nero. It must not, however, be inferred from these testimonies to the Roman episcopate of Cephas, that Anglo-Saxon authorities esteemed the papal see venerable above all others. On the contrary, they represent St. James the Just as the successor to our blessed Lord in his universal episcopate. The Church of Jerusalem was thus unequivocally recognised, in ancient England, as the mother of all Churches, a distinction obviously her due. She is also placed in a point of view which would give her the fairest title to be designated likewise as the mistress of all Churches.

Had the traditions, however, of our early forefathers, besides assigning the Roman episcopate, to St. Peter, also confirmed those interpretations of Scripture, so commonly connected with his name, obviously, they might still be found insufficient for the purposes of papal advocates. The Apostle's alleged privileges might have been merely personal; hence of a duration commensurate with the term of his continuance in the body. On the

other hand, a supremacy, claiming its origin from descendible powers, conferred upon St. Peter, plainly, might be admitted by those who agreed not in certain expositions of Scripture, by which that supremacy has been supported. What then were the views of our distant ancestry, respecting that ecclesiastical jurisdiction which emanated, as we are assured, from the great Apostle of the circumcision? Direct testimony, in this case, can hardly be expected; because notoriously, the more striking and obnoxious features of papal jurisprudence came not into notice until the pontificate of Gregory VII. a period subsequent to that embraced by the present undertaking. Facts, therefore, rather than express declarations, must guide those who would ascertain the nature of ancient England's relations with the Roman see.

The party attached to that see gained at Whitby the ascendency for which it long had struggled. What were the principles urged in conference there? What were the grounds upon which the royal umpire professed to decide? Was it contended, and eventually determined, that the Pope held an indefeasible right of regulating all Christian Churches? By no means. Each of the contesting parties argued upon its own peculiar traditions and

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