I was confirmed in this opinion, when I read in the Gospel of St. John, that Jesus, speaking to all had made them nearly the same promise:  “Whose so ever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose so ever sins ye retain, they are retained,” (John, 20:23;) and also by what St. Paul says to the Ephesians, “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.”  Ephes. 2:20, 21.

I was still more strengthened, when I found in the Revelation, that St. John says, “the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”  Rev. 21:14.

By these passages, and many others which I think it unnecessary to quote, I discerned that Jesus Christ is the true foundation, the corner stone on which the Christian church rests:  that all the apostles and prophets are indeed mentioned as its foundation, but only because all their doctrines refer to Him; and I was convinced that St. Peter was in no degree more distinguished or more elevated than his fellow-labourers.  Although I did not then understand, at least not so fully as I do now, the evangelical meaning of the 18th and 19th verses of chapter 16 of St. Matthew, yet I was persuaded that the papacy or sovereignty of St. Peter could not reasonably be deduced from them Finally my conviction that St. Peter was not above the other apostles, was completed by observing what he says himself in his first epistle, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder” 1 Pet. 5:1; by what St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles,” 2 Cor. 11:5; by noticing that St. Paul, according to his own account, “withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed;” Gal. 2:11; and that he severely and publicly reprehended him, because “he constrained the Gentiles to be circumcised;” by seeing how the common disciples of the church of Jerusalem made no scruple of reproving Peter, because “he went in unto men uncircumcised, and did eat with them,” Acts, 11:3; how they required from him an explanation of his conduct, and how the apostle hastened to justify himself, by relating to them exactly how the thing had happened.  Finally, by observing that “when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John.”  Acts, 8:14.

“There can be no doubt,” thought I, as I perused and re-perused all these testimonies, “that Peter was in every respect equal to the other apostles; that he had no superiority nor jurisdiction over them.  Had he been, had he thought himself, or had others thought him, the prince of the apostles and sovereign pastor of the church, would he have called himself an elder like unto the other elders?  Is it possible that St. Paul would have declared himself to be ’not