invention of an age when the pure light of evangelical religion was greatly obscured; for the apostle was too well acquainted with the truth to believe that he was at liberty to inflict upon himself any unnecessary suffering.  The tradition that he died on the same day of the same month as Paul, but exactly a year afterwards, [160:4] is not destitute of probability.  According to this statement he suffered A.D. 67; and he may have been about a year in Rome before his martyrdom.

In the New Testament it is impossible to find a trace of either the primacy of Peter or the supremacy of the Pope; but the facts already stated throw some light on the history of that great spiritual despotism whose seat of government has been so long established in the city of the Caesars.  It is obvious that at a very early period various circumstances contributed to give prominence to the Church of Rome.  The epistle addressed to it contains a more complete exhibition of Christian doctrine than any other of the apostolical letters; and, in that remarkable communication, Paul expresses an earnest desire to visit a community already celebrated all over the world.  Five or six of his letters, now forming part of the inspired canon, were dictated in the capital of the Empire.  The two epistles of the apostle of the circumcision appear to have emanated from the same metropolis.  There is every reason to believe that the book of the Acts was written at Rome; and it is highly probable that the great city was also the birthplace of the Gospels of Mark and Luke.  Thus, a large portion of the New Testament issued from the seat of Empire.  Rome could also boast that it was for some time the residence of two of the most eminent of the apostles.  Paul was there for at least two years as a prisoner; and Peter may have resided for twelve months within its walls.  Some of the most illustrious of the early converts were members of the Church of Rome; for in the days of the Apostle of the Gentiles there were disciples in “Caesar’s household.” [161:1] And when Nero signalised himself as the first Imperial persecutor of the Christians, the Church of Rome suffered terribly from his insane and savage cruelty.  Even the historian Tacitus acknowledges that the tortures to which its adherents were exposed excited the commiseration of the heathen multitude.  Paul and Peter were cut off in his reign; and the soil of Rome absorbed the blood of these apostolic martyrs. [161:2] It was not strange, therefore, that the Roman Church was soon regarded with peculiar respect by all the disciples throughout the Empire.  As time passed on, it increased rapidly in numbers and in affluence; and circumstances, which properly possessed nothing more than an historic interest, began to be urged as arguments in favour of its claims to pre-eminence.  At first these claims assumed no very definite form; and, at the termination of a century after the days of Paul and Peter, they amounted simply to the recognition