of something like an honorary precedence.  At that period it was, perhaps, deemed equally imprudent and ungracious to quarrel with its pretensions, more especially as the community by which they were advanced was distributing its bounty all around, and was itself nobly sustaining the brunt of almost every persecution.  In the course of time, the Church of Rome proceeded to challenge a substantial supremacy; and then the facts of its early history were mis-stated and exaggerated in accommodation to the demands of its growing ambition.  It was said at first that “its faith was spoken of throughout the whole world;” it was at length alleged that its creed should be universally adopted.  It was admitted at an early period that, as it had enjoyed the ministrations of Peter and Paul, it should be considered an apostolic church; it was at length asserted that, as an apostle was entitled to deference from ordinary pastors, a church instructed by two of the most eminent apostles had a claim to the obedience of other churches.  In process of time it was discovered that Paul was rather an inconvenient companion for the apostle of the circumcision; and Peter alone then began to be spoken of as the founder and first bishop of the Church of Rome.  Strange to say, a system founded on a fiction has since sustained the shocks of so many centuries.  One of the greatest marvels of this “mystery of iniquity” is its tenacity of life; and did not the sure word of prophecy announce that the time would come when it would be able to boast of its antiquity, and did we not know that paganism can plead a more remote original, we might be perplexed by its longevity.  But “the vision is yet for an appointed time—­at the end it shall speak and not lie.  Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” [162:1]

CHAPTER XI.

THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH, AND ITS CONDITION AT THE TERMINATION OF THE FIRST CENTURY.

Jesus Christ was a Jew, and it might have been expected that the advent of the most illustrious of His race, in the character of the Prophet announced by Moses, would have been hailed with enthusiasm by His countrymen.  But the result was far otherwise.  “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” [163:1] The Jews cried “Away with him, away with him, crucify him;” [163:2] and He suffered the fate of the vilest criminal.  The enmity of the posterity of Abraham to our Lord did not terminate with His death; they long maintained the bad pre-eminence of being the most inveterate of the persecutors of His early followers.  Whilst the awful portents of the Passion, and the marvels of the day of Pentecost were still fresh in public recollection, their chief priests and elders threw the apostles into prison; [163:3] and soon afterwards the pious and intrepid Stephen fell a victim to their malignity.  Their infatuation was extreme; and yet it was not unaccountable.