a whit behind him;’ that he would have ‘withstood him to his face,’ and blamed him publicly?  Is it probable that mere believers, common members of the church, should have ventured to dispute with him, to require an explanation of his conduct, or that he should have thought it necessary to satisfy them by giving one?[6] Is it likely that he would have been sent by the other apostles, or have received their orders, when it would have been his part, had he been their chief, to command and to send them?”

[Footnote 6:  The popes, his pretended successors, have not been so obliging; they have been always solicitous to make their authority felt.]

I needed no more evidence to be thoroughly convinced that all which is taught by the Romish church of the supremacy of St. Peter, and of the sovereignty of the popes, his pretended successors, was a fable destitute of the slightest foundation; at all events, a doctrine no more to be found in the Gospel than that of purgatory.

If I were surprised at this, I was no less so when I observed, that in the whole New Testament there was not one word which gave reason to imagine that St. Peter had ever preached, or had even ever been, at Rome, where the Roman Catholics assert, and believe as an article of faith, that he was the first pope.  The Acts of the Apostles maintains the most profound silence on this subject, and affords no ground whatever for the supposition.  All the Epistles leave it equally in darkness.  Those of St. Paul to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, the second to Timothy, and the Epistle to Philemon, all written from Rome at different periods, and that to the Hebrews, written from Italy, make no mention of Peter’s being there.  In the last four, the apostle speaks of his companions in suffering, in labour, and in the work of the Lord, but says not a word of Peter as being with him.  Undoubtedly he would have mentioned him, as he mentions Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Demas, Prudens, Livius, Claudia, &c. had he been at Rome; but neither his name, nor any allusion to his abode in the capital of the world, is to be discovered in any part of St. Paul’s Epistles.  In my opinion, there is no proof of his ever having been there, much less of his having held the bishopric.  Finally, his own two Epistles furnish no evidence for such a supposition:  the first, and in all probability, the second also, is written from Babylon, 1 Peter, 5:13, and addressed, not to the Romans, but “to the strangers (that is to say, the converted Jews) scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” 1 Peter, 1:1, countries where, it would appear, that he exercised his ministry, after having for some years preached to the church at Antioch.