Before we approach the principal subject treated of in this section, it will be proper to say something of a sect or society which in its day took a leading part in the affairs of the world, but which has long since disappeared from history, and whose former existence is now only known to the careful reader. We refer to the Gnostics, who for the most part flourished in the second century. They were divided among themselves into more than fifty different sects. "The principal among them were known under the names of Basilidians, Valentinians, and Marcionites. They abounded in Egypt, Asia, Rome, and were found in considerable numbers in the provinces of the West. Each of these sects could boast of its Bishops and congregations, of its doctors and martyrs, and instead of the four Gospels adopted by the church, they produced a multitude of histories, in which the actions and discourses of Christ and his apostles were adapted to their respective tenets."— (Decline and Fall, chap. xv. vol. I. p. 257.) They supported their opinions by various fictitious and apocryphal writings of Adam, Abraham, Zoroaster, Christ, and the Apostles. They were for the most part composed of Gentiles who denied the divine authority of the Old Testament, and rejected the Mosaic account of the creation, of the origin and fall of man, and claimed that a God was unworthy of adoration, who for a trivial offence of Adam and Eve pronounced sentence of condemnation on all their descendants. They adored Christ as an Æon, or divine emanation, who appeared on the earth to reclaim man from the paths of error and point out to him the ways of truth; but with these opinions they mingled many sublime and obscure tenets derived from oriental philosophy. This divine Æon or emanation they considered was the Son of God, but was inferior to the Father, and they rejected his humanity on the principle that everything corporeal is essentially and intrinsically evil. They agreed with the Christians in their abhorrence of polytheism and idolatry, and both regarded the former as a composition of human fraud and error, and demons as the authors and patrons of the latter.

As we have stated, the Gnostics for the most part sprang up in the second century and disappeared in the fourth and fifth, suppressed by a law of the Emperor Constantine. "The Emperor enacted a law by which they were forbidden to assemble in their own houses of prayer, in private houses, or in, public places, but were compelled to enter the Catholic church.... Hence the greater number of these sectarians were led by fear of consequences to join themselves to the church. Those who adhered to their original sentiments did not at their death leave any disciples to propagate their heresies, for, owing to the restrictions to which they were subjected, they were prevented from preaching their doctrines."— (Sozomen, Ecc. Hist., book ii ch. 32.)

Thus passed from history the Gnostics, "the most polite, the most learned and most wealthy of the Christian name." (Decline and Fall, chap. xv. vol. I. p. 256.) Such was the character of the men who, brought into collision with the orthodox Christians in the second century, became involved in the most violent and bitter struggles in which men were ever engaged. It was to defeat and destroy these men that IrenÆus devoted the labor of a lifetime, that on their ruin he might erect the Catholic church. The undertaking was Herculean, but the means employed were well chosen, vigorously and tenaciously pursued, and its success is one of the most remarkable and exceptional cases in history of the triumph of cunning, falsehood, and fraud. The grand idea was, that Christ, the Son of God, was the founder of the church on earth, and that, at his death, the power to establish others after him he conferred on the Apostles, and upon no one else. As they might confer this power on others as they had received it from Christ, so these last could in turn do the same to those who followed them, and in this way continue the church through all time. This is what IrenÆus calls the "Apostolic succession." A church which could not prove its connection with Christ through this Apostolic chain was no church at all, and it amounted to impiety and vile heresy for such a pretended church to undertake to explain or understand his gospel. Such a church has no relation to Christ, but with demons and evil spirits.

IrenÆus found it much less difficult to show that there was no such succession in the Gnostic churches than he did in proving that it existed in his own. To do this, as we will show in another place, he was forced to introduce on to the stage the names of at least nine persons who, he claimed, had been Bishops of Rome, most of whom were mere myths and never had an existence, and those who had were never in Rome at all.

Christ, at his death, he further maintains, not only conferred on the Apostles the sole right to establish churches, but also imparted to them some divine knowledge or gifts which they on their death intrusted to the church as a special deposit for the benefit of all who yielded obedience to her authority. These precious gifts left with the church IrenÆus compares to money or riches deposited in a bank by a rich man. But we will let him speak for himself: "Since, therefore, we have such proof, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others, which is easy to obtain from the church; since the Apostles, like a rich man depositing his money in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth; so that every man, whosoever, can draw from her the water of eternal life. For she is the entrance to life, and all others are thieves and robbers." (Book iii. chap. 4, sec. I.) Having established the principal proposition by his mere assertion (which is his way of making history of all kinds), IrenÆus next proceeds to show that the Gnostics could not trace any connection with a church founded by the Apostles. "For prior to Valentinianus (he says), those who follow Valentinianus had no existence: nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion; nor, in short, had any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have above enumerated, any being previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity." (Book iii. chap. 4, sec. 3.)

The ancient Father has, so far, established two of his main propositions: first, that a church must derive its origin through the Apostles, or some one of them, to be genuine; and second, that there was no such connection in the churches of the Gnostics; and it only remains to show that the church claiming to be orthodox had. He declines to point out the order of succession in all the churches, but consents to do it in the case of Rome, which, he says, according to tradition, derived from the Apostles, was founded and organized at Rome by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul. (Book iii. chap. 3, sec. 2.) The church at Rome, founded by such great lights as Peter and Paul, IrenÆus continues, should be regarded of the highest authority in the church, for, he says, "it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist everywhere." (Sec. 2.)

As Peter was selected to be head of the church, and Rome the capital of the Christian world, the scheme to establish a church on the ground of an Apostolic succession must fail, unless it can appear that Peter had not only been there at some time, but that he was also the founder of a church at the holy city. A letter said to have been written by Clement, the third Bishop of Rome, is selected as the medium by which it is made to appear that Peter had been in Rome; and IrenÆus took upon himself to show what he was engaged in while there. At the proper place we will show that this Clement is a fiction, brought on the stage as a link in the Apostolic chain forged by the great criminal of the second century.

Now follows a forgery so apparent on its face, that it does not require the skill of an expert to detect it.

"But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to those who, in these last days, have wrestled manfully for the faith; let us take the noble examples of our own age. Through envy, the faithful and most righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted even to the most dreadful deaths. Let us place before your eyes the good Apostles. Peter, by unjust envy, underwent not one or two, but many labors: and thus having borne testimony unto death, he went into the place of glory, which was due to him. Through envy, Paul obtained the reward of patience. Seven times he was in bonds; he was scourged; was stoned. He preached both in the East and in the West, leaving behind him the glorious report of his faith. And thus having taught the whole world of righteousness, and reached the fullest extremity of the West, he suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and departed out of this world, and went to the holy place, having become a most exemplary pattern of patience." (Epistle I. of Clement to Corinthians, sec. 5.) By the side of this extract we will lay a passage of IrenÆus. Speaking of the writers of the Gospels, he says: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church." (Book iii. chap. 1.) Now, we assert with confidence, that the hand which penned the first passage wrote them both. It is not said in so many words, in Clement's letter, that Peter was in Rome, but it is to be inferred, as in the case of John at Eph-esus. IrenÆus seldom states anything which is positively untrue in direct language, but makes falsehood inferential. The passage we have quoted does not contain a single truth, except as it relates to Paul. Paul and Peter were never engaged together in laying the foundation of a church. They quarrelled in Damascus and could never agree. The doctrine of circumcision formed an impassable wall between them, and, as we will show, was never given up by Peter. Besides, it is not true that Peter had anything to do in laying the foundation of the church at Rome.

Christians, during the reign of Claudius in Rome, were too few in number and too poor to form a church, especially such an one as would require the office of a Bishop. Renan, in speaking of the church in the time of Claudius, says it was composed of a "little group—every one smelt of garlic. These ancestors of Roman prelates were poor proletaries, dirty, alike clownish, clothed in filthy gabardines, having the bad breath of people who live badly. Their retreats breathed that odor of wretchedness exhaled by persons meanly clothed and fed, and collected in a small room." (Life of Paul, 96.)

We have no reason to believe that at any time during the life of Peter was the church of Rome, if there was any church there at all, composed of different materials or greater in numbers than at the time referred to. What was there for a Bishop to do in such a crowd, or what was there to keep him from starvation? Christians engaged in riots growing out of the hostility between them and the Jews, were driven from Rome by an edict of the Emperor Claudius, and did not return during his reign, which ceased in A.D. 54, when that of Nero commenced. In A.D. 58 they had not rallied, and at that time Rome was without a church. It was the practice in all cases with Paul to address Christians through the churches, where churches were established; but his Epistle, in A.D. 58, to the Romans, is addressed not to a church, but "to all that be in Rome" In his three years' imprisonment in that city, commencing in the spring of A.D. 61, he makes no mention of a church, nor does he during the second, which lasted from the summer or fall of A.D. 65 to the spring of A.D. 66. There is no proof that the historian can discover, worthy of his notice, that there was a church in Rome of any kind, even down to the time of Adrian, A.D. 117, and even later. We are overrun with traditions on this subject, the creations of the second century, to which the attention of the reader will be called when we treat of the twelve traditional Bishops named by IrenÆus. Adrian, in the seventeenth year of his reign, knew so little about a Christian church, that he supposed the office of a Bishop belonged to the worship of the god Serapis. In a letter written by him from Alexandria, A.D. 134, to his brother-in-law Servianus, he says: "The worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and those are devoted to the god Serapis, who, I find, call themselves Bishop of Christ."

We will dismiss this part of the subject for the present, with the promise to return to it in a subsequent chapter, when it will be demonstrated that there was no Christian church in Rome until after the reign of Antoninus Pius.*

Were Peter and Paul together in Rome at all? Paul went there in the spring of A.D. 61, for the first time, and remained until the spring or summer of A.D. 63. During this time he wrote four epistles, as follows:—to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon, and, if we except the first, he closes them by naming the persons who are with him. He says nothing about Peter, nor does he mention his name, so far as we know, during the three years he was confined in Rome. That Paul should omit to mention Peter, one of the Apostles, in some of his letters, is the very best proof that he was not in Rome at all. After his release in the spring of A.D. 63, after making a visit to the churches in Europe and Asia, he returned to Rome again in the fall of A.D. 65. He had with him a few friends who stood by him to the last. They were Luke, Mark, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia. There could not have been many other Christians in Rome at the time besides those named, because Paul, after naming the above who sent salutations to Timothy, adds, "and all the other brethren," which implies that there were not many of them. Paul does not mention Peter, because he was not there. Timothy, no doubt, was with Paul in the winter of A.D. 65 and A.D. 66, and was put to death in the spring of the latter year, with his friend and fellow-laborer. We never hear of him again. In the spring of A.D. 66, the labors and sorrows of the great Apostle of the Gentiles ceased. He had fought the good fight—he had finished his work—he had kept the faith; and now, by his death, bore testimony to the doctrines he preached. He was among the last of Nero's victims. Nothing that belongs to history is surer than that Peter and Paul never were in Rome together, laying the foundation of a church, or anything else.

Having proved that one-half of what is stated by IrenÆus in the passage which we have quoted is false, according to the usual rule for testing the truth of any statement, we might claim that the remaining half is also untrue. But we ask no such advantage in disproving any of the statements made by this father.

When was Peter in Rome? No writer in the first or second century pretends to give the time when he was in Rome, or when he died.

IrenÆus gives the names of twelve Bishops who succeeded each other, commencing with Linus, but does not give a single date, so that we can tell when or how long any one of them held the office. This want of dates, where it was easy to give them—if what was stated was true—was urged with so much force against what IrenÆus said, that Eusebius, in the fourth century, undertook to fix the time when these traditional Bishops succeeded to, and how long each held the office. He fails to say when Peter first became Bishop, or when he ceased to be the head of the church, but commences giving dates from the time of Linus, his successor. Without intending, he has furnished the data to determine when Peter died, if his dates are correct, which is not even probable. He says: "After Vespasian had reigned about ten years, he was succeeded by his son Titus; in the second year of whose reign, Linus, Bishop of the church of Rome, who held the office about twelve years, transferred it to Anacletus." (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., book iii. ch. 13.) As Linus succeeded Peter, the latter must have died just before his successor took the office. Titus became emperor June 24th, A. D. 79, and as Linus died two years after this, after holding the office twelve years, he became Bishop in A. D. 69; which must have been the year of Peter's death. Nero died in June A. D. 68, and at his death the persecution against Christians ceased altogether. It is not claimed that Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, or Titus ever inflicted persecution of any kind on Christians during the time they held the government of the empire. Eusebius, in attempting to fix a date when the second Bishop took office, answers the objections made to the vagueness of IrenÆus, but robs Peter of the laurels of a martyr.

But it is claimed that Linus was installed Bishop before the death of Peter, and IrenÆus pretends to give the time. He says: "The blessed Apostles then having founded and built up the church, committed unto the hands of Linus the office of the Episcopate." (Book iii. ch. 2, sec. 3.) The blessed Apostles are Peter and Paul. Now we have just shown that these Apostles were never in Rome together, and that there was no church to be committed to the charge of Linus or anybody else. As it is an important part of the story that Peter died a martyr at Rome, this could only happen to him between A. D. 64 and A. D. 68, for the persecution under Nero commenced during the former year, and ended with his death in A. D. 68. We have the most conclusive proof that Peter was not in Rome in A. D. 64, when the persecutions under Nero commenced, nor afterwards. He was in Babylon—whether Babylon in Assyria, Babylon in Mesopotamia or Egypt—he was in Babylon more than two thousand miles away. Peter was born about the time of Christ, and was sixty-four years of age when the persecutions under Nero began. He was married, and when he wrote his first Epistle he was in Babylon and had his family with him, for he mentions the name of Marcus, and calls him his son. "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus, my son." (1 Peter v. 13.)

The date of this epistle is fixed by Dr. Lard-ner and other critics at A. D. 64. Did Peter, at the age of sixty-four, when he heard that Nero was feeding the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre with the flesh and bones of Christians, "lured by the smell of blood," start for Rome? If Peter was in Babylon in A. D. 64, an "Apostolic succession," so far as it depends on him, must fail, and Rome must surrender the authority by which she has held the religious world in subjection for the last seventeen centuries.

But this she will never do, as long as her audacity and cunning are left to hatch schemes to escape from the dilemma. Inspired by despair, she now claims that Peter means Rome when he says Babylon, and that the Marcus spoken of was not the son of Peter, but the nephew of Barnabas and companion of Paul! Just as well claim anything else, and say Babylon means Alexandria, and that Marcus was the stepson of Nero. Here two impressions are made: one that the letter was written at Babylon, and the other that Peter was attended by his son. Are both false? What did Peter, or anybody else, expect to gain by giving false impressions? By an agreement between Peter and Paul, made early and observed strictly, the labors of the former were limited to the circumcised, and he found them in large numbers in cities watered by the Euphrates. There and in Judea, among the Jewish people, was the scene of Peter's labors, and there he died. He had no business in Rome. As there was no church in Rome in A. D. 64, it is impossible, if Peter was there at the time, for him to make the salutation he does in his address to his countrymen. He could say, "the church that is at Babylon," but not "the church that is at Rome," for there was none.*

Mark the son of Peter, and Mark the nephew of Barnabas, are two different persons, whom the genius of IrenÆus seeks to confound. The epistle to Philemon was written in the latter part of A. D. 63, which shows that Paul, Timothy, and Mark were then in Rome. They left in the following spring. During the winter of A. D. 63, Paul wrote the Colossians that they might expect Mark to visit them, and it would seem that he had made arrangements with them of some kind in regard to him, when he arrived among them. "Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas (touching whom ye received commandments: if he come unto you, receive him.") Col. iv. 10.

Unless Mark changed his mind afterwards, he went from Rome to Colosse in Phrygia. The next reliable information we have of Paul after the spring of A. D. 63, except at Nicopolis in A. D. 64, he is back in Rome in the fall of A. D. 65, and in prison; and the first knowledge we have of Mark, he is in some part of Asia Minor. Timothy and Mark were together, and Paul writes to the former from his prison, to come to Rome and to bring the latter with him, and to get there before the winter sets in; which request was complied with. To suppose that Mark had been to Rome in the mean time would be most unreasonable, and against all the probabilities in the case. There was nothing to take him there until Paul called him back. If Peter was in Rome when he wrote his first epistle, in A. D. 64, Mark the nephew of Barnabas was not with him. If Mark saw Peter at all in A. D. 64, it was not in Rome. Nor did he see him that year in Babylon in Egypt, or Babylon in Mesopotamia or Chaldea.

The latter Babylon was long known for its vices and wickedness, and was called a sink of iniquity; and as Rome had become corrupt and steeped in crime of all kinds, it is claimed that Peter uses the word Babylon in a typical sense when he was writing from Rome! If this is so, he did not write from Babylon in Egypt or Mesopotamia, as some have contended, for they were each small and inconsiderable places of no importance, and there could be no object in using either as a type to represent the corruptions of Rome. If Mark saw Peter in Babylon, it was in Chaldea. Measured by degrees of longitude, Rome and this Babylon are more than two thousand miles apart. Why would Mark make a visit to Peter involving a journey of four thousand miles, br half that distance? He never did. He could not. He went among the Colossians under some arrangement made by Paul, and no doubt remained with them until he was wanted at Rome. When Peter calls Mark his son, he means just what he says. Mark the companion of Paul, and Mark the son of Peter, are two different men.

What should take Peter to Rome or keep him there when burning and torturing Christians was one of the amusements of Nero? Had Peter's character for courage so much improved that he went there when all the Christians had gone, to defy Nero, and invite his destruction? There is something in the character of Peter that makes it improbable, if not impossible, that he should be in Rome in a time of danger. He was a man of strong impulses, but a constitutional coward. He followed Christ to the scene of the crucifixion, "but he followed him afar off." (Matt. xxvi. 58.) He had pride, and a proper sense of manliness, and when he was betrayed through a want of courage into the commission of a mean act, he had spirit and sense enough to be ashamed of it. He denied Christ, but it cost him bitter tears of repentance. Either his cowardice or his jealousy stood in the way of his coming to the aid of Paul, whenever Paul was in danger of his life. When the Jews were about to tear him to pieces in Jerusalem, and he had to be rescued by the Roman soldiers, Peter was nowhere about, and we do not even hear of him, In his trials before the Roman Governors, when he had no one to stand by him but a few faithful companions, the presence of Peter, at such a time, would have done much to aid and console the great champion of a common cause. But in all these places there was danger, and where danger was was no place for Peter.

He lacked moral, as he did physical courage. At Damascus he did not hesitate to sit at the same table with the uncircumcised, when there was no one present to object; but when those came from Jerusalem who could not tolerate the liberal ideas of Paul on circumcision, he cowardly sneaked away. Paul took fire at the appearance of so much meanness, and boldly reproved him. Is this the kind of man who would enter the lion's den, and brave the wrath of Nero at a time when the tyrant was flooding the streets of Rome with the blood of Christians?

Justin Martyr was born about the year A. D. 100, and was a native of Neapolis in Syria. (Apology, sec. I.) At the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius he fixed his abode in Rome, and afterwards wrote numerous works, principally devoted to the defence of Christians. (Cave's Life of Martyr, vol. 2, chap. 6.) No one had better opportunities of knowing about Peter, and the church at Rome, than he had, and no one who wrote as much as he did which concerned Christianity, would have been more likely to mention him, if what IrenÆus says of him had been true. He is so oblivious of Peter that he seems to have been unconscious of his existence. No writer in the first years of the second century, who is entitled to credit, speaks of him, and he first begins to figure in the pages of IrenÆus when the disputes with the Gnostics were at their height. The Clementines were composed later in the century, when Pauline Christianity was giving way to the new school, and the dogma of an Apostolic succession had taken possession of the church. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, who lived and wrote during the reign of Marcus Antoninus and his son Commodus, about A. D. 180, according to Eusebius, also states that Paul and Peter were at Rome together engaged in laying the foundation of a church. (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., lib. ii. ch. 25.) But this writer has got out of the Pauline period, and even goes beyond IrenÆus, for he states, according to the same authority, that Peter and Paul laid the foundation of the church at Corinth.

Theophilus of Antioch, Melito of Sardis, Apollinarius of Hierapolis, all writers about the same time, A. D. 180, like IrenÆus, take sides against the Gnostics, and show that they were committed to the new school. From this time IrenÆus is quoted as the authority for the fact that Peter and Paul had founded the church at Rome, and we are asked to give special weight to what he says, as he was the companion of Polycarp, who had seen and conversed with John.

Speaking of Paul, Clement is made to say, "He preached both in the East and in the West—taught the whole world righteousness, and reached the farthest extremity of the West, and suffered martyrdom, by the command of the Governors." This passage has long been a stumbling-block among learned critics. It is the only authority on which is founded the story, that after Paul was discharged from prison in A. D. 63, he went into Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Caius, the Presbyter, in the beginning of the third century, says: "Writings not included in the canon of Scripture expressly mention the journey from Rome into Spain." Hippolytus, in the same century, says that Paul went as far as Illyricum, preaching the gospel. Athanasius, in the fourth century, says that St. Paul did not hesitate to go to Rome and Spain. Jerome, in the same century, says that "St. Paul, after his release from his trial before Nero, preached the Gospels in the Western parts." (Quoted from Chevallier's Apostolical Epistles, note, p. 487.)

These is no authority for Paul's travels in the Western provinces, except the passage from Clement, and as IrenÆus is the founder of the story, it is not improved by the repetition of subsequent writers. The whole is a transparent falsehood. From the time of Paul's career, commencing with his adventure near Damascus to the time of his imprisonment in Rome, in the spring of A. D. 61, we have an account of his travels, and know where he was each year during this time. He never in this time went west of Rome. In the spring of A. D. 63, in company with Mark, Titus, Timothy and others, he left Rome and went in all probability to Colosse, where, in pursuance of some agreement he made with the people of that place, he left Mark. How long he remained is uncertain, but the next time we hear of him he is in Crete, where no doubt he spent the winter of A. D. 63 and A. D. 64, In the mean time he made some converts, whom he left in charge of Titus, and in the spring went west into Macedonia. Some time in the summer or fall of A. D. 64 we find him in Nicopolis, where he informed Titus he meant to spend the winter. The following spring or summer he went to Rome and was soon imprisoned. If he was at Colosse or Crete in A. D. 63, and Nicopolis in A. D. 64, he could not have gone to Britain, Gaul, and Spain between the spring of A. D. 63 and the summer of A. D. 65, for it would not be possible.

But it is conclusive that Paul did not go into the provinces of the West after his release from prison; that there is no mention of his travels in the West, except what is said in this passage from the letter of Clement—a thing impossible, when we consider that he never went anywhere but he made his mark, and left his footprints behind him. Even Paul himself, in his subsequent letters, makes no allusion to any such travels, which is accountable upon no other hypothesis than that he never made them. But what was gained in fabricating this passage?

The idea of IrenÆus, that there could be no church unless its origin could be traced to some one of the Apostles, who were special bankers of divine favors, never left him. He furnished Rome with Peter, and Asia with John, and now he is required to furnish one for the churches in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Here were churches in these countries in his day, and who had authority to establish them? It would not do to claim that either of the Twelve had been in the West, for even falsehood has its' boundaries. Paul will do. He is the great Apostle of the Gentiles. Besides, according to the Acts, he had submitted to ordination at the hands of the Apostles. The explanation of the reasons which dictated this spurious passage in Clement's letter is consistent with the acts of IrenÆus, and the whole current of his thoughts throughout his life. But this story, invented by him, has been repeated by others, until it settled down—as history! It is clear from the proof here shown, that IrenÆus has no claim to our belief as a writer, and that the statements he makes in regard to Peter in Rome and Paul in the West are mere inventions of his own to assist him in his disputes with the Gnostics, in which he was engaged for the best part of his life.