The learned jurist again proves the vanity of his assertion that he has gone to "the fountain-heads." The work from which the passage he cites is taken is not from Tertullian's" Essay against Marcion," but his admirable work entitled De Præscriptionibus adversus Hæreticos, a work our author would do well to read and digest. Tertullian uses against heretics the argument from prescription. He confounds them by showing that Catholics were in possession before them, and had been in possession from beginning. Heretics, like our friend Derby, are new comers, and can show no titles. They have no ancestry, and cannot make out their descent from the Apostles or from Apostolic churches, and therefore are not to be listened to. Consult any of these churches nearest at hand and it will condemn you. His purpose was not to assert the equality of other churches with the Church of Rome, or to deny the Church of Rome to be the mother and mistress of all the churches, but to direct the heretic to the Apostolic tradition preserved by the churches founded by Apostles, and in the one that happens to be nearest him, as sufficient to confound him. We infer this from the fact that he actually asserts the supremacy of Rome. "Latuit aliquid Petrum," he asks, "ædificandæ Ecclesiæ Petram dictum (Matt. xvi. 18, 19), claves regni cælorum consecutum et solvendi et alligandi in cælis, et in terris potestatem ?"*

"The ancient fathers taught the people to reform their doctrine not only by the Church of Rome, but also by other notable Apostolic churches." The statement would have been more conformable to what he proves, if Mr. Derby had said that St. Irenæus and Tertullian confound heretics by appealing to tradition as preserved in any of the churches founded by Apostles, and especially the Church of Rome. This is all that he can pretend to have proved, and this is nothing to his purpose, or against the claims or the faith of the Catholic Church at the present time. None of the "notable" Apostolic churches, when St. Irenæus and Tertullian wrote, had fallen from the faith or ceased to be in communion with Rome. The Apostolic tradition was still living, fresh and vigorous, and the

* De Præscrip. c. xxii. Ed. Migne.

same in them all, as it is even now in all the churches, by whomsoever founded, in communion with the Apostolic See. What was to confound the heretic was the doctrine delivered by the Apostles and deposited with the churches they founded, and that in the time of Tertullian, was sufficient, as found in any of them, for that purpose.

"Again, the blessed martyr, Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, under the emperor Decius, A. D. 249, in his treatise of Cyprianus de simplicitate Prælatorum,' says, 'All the Apostles were of like power among themselves, and the rest were the same that Peter was' and adds, there is but one bishopric and a piece thereof is holden by each particular bishop.' What paramount power does this saint of the church accord to the church of Rome? "—p. 17.

St. Cyprian did not suffer martyrdom in the Decian persecution of 249. His martyrdom did not take place till 258. The work of St. Cyprian, from which the first passage is cited, or something like it, is his excellent tract de Unitate Ecclesiæ, rarely called de Simplicitate Præla torum. It is mutilated and, as given, entirely perverts the meaning of the author. It is found near the conclusion of a passage in which St. Cyprian asserts in the most clear and explicit manner the Primacy of Peter and

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his chair. "Et quamvis," he says, Apostolis omnibus

post resurrectionem suam parem potestatem tribuat et dicat; sicut missit me pater, et ego mitto vos; Accipite Spiritum sanctum : si cujus remiseritis peccata, remittentur illi; si cujus tenueritis, tenebuntur: tamen, ut unitatem manifestaret, unam Cathedram constituit, unitatis ejusdem originem, ab uno incipientem, sua auctoritate disposuit. Hoc erant utique et cæteri Apostoli quod fuit Petrus, pari consortio præditi et honoris et potestatis, sed exordium ab unitate profisciscitur, et primatus Petro datur, ut una Christi Ecclesia et una Cathedra monstretur."* The equality of the Apostles with one another, and their equal participation in honor and power with Peter, must therefore be understood so as not to exclude the Primacy given to Peter, which is the origin of unity, the centre whence the unity of the Church starts, and is manifested. We must reconcile the equality asserted with the Primacy, not the Primacy with the equality, because the Primacy is what the

* De Unitate Ecclesiæ, c. 4.

Saint is establishing as the origin, the beginning, the centre of unity. This can easily be done. All the Apostles were equal as bishops, all were equal as Apostles, equally endowed with both the Episcopal and Apostolic honor and power, but not therefore did they share equally the honor and power of the Primacy. That was given, as the Saint had just asserted and proved, to Peter alone. The rest of the Apostles were equal in Apostolic dignity and power to Peter, for they were Apostles as well as Peter, and they received their Apostolate not from Peter, but immediately from Jesus Christ himself. In this way we must understand St. Cyprian, unless we would make him contradict himself, or make him deny the Primacy of Peter, which he asserts, and asserts as something which exists, notwithstanding, quamvis, the other Apostles were in a certain sense equals, and what Peter was.

Our readers may see in this citation from St. Cyprian, by Mr. Derby, a fair specimen of the way in which Anglicans and other Protestants usually deal with the Fathers. The words taken alone sustain them, taken as they stand in the father with their context they contradict them. It is from some of these controversialists, no doubt, that Mr. Derby has obtained the citation, for we will not do him the injustice to believe that he himself is capable of making so dishonest a quotation, or that if he had himself read and understood St. Cyprian, he could have tried to persuade his son that this great saint does not recognize the Primacy of Peter and the supremacy of the See of Rome.

But St. Cyprian, Mr. Derby tells us, adds, "there is but one bishopric, and a piece thereof is held by particular bishops." The passage to which he probably refers is, "Episcopatus unus est, cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur,' " which we translate, The Episcopate is one, and a part thereof is held by individuals in solido. That is, the Saint asserts the unity of the Episcopate, and the solidarity of bishops, which follows necessarily from his doctrine of the unity of the Church beginning from the Primacy of Peter. In solido or in solidum, Mr. Derby hardly need be informed, is a law phrase that desig

* Ibid. c. v.

nates those obligations in which all are bound for each, and each for each and for all. It is from this phrase that is derived, through the French, the term solidarity, used so frequently by Kossuth in his speeches, and which, we believe, we were ourselves the first to give in an English dress, and to use as an English word. The passage, as given by Mr. Derby, makes nonsense, or at least no sense to his purpose. If there is but one bishopric, there can be but one bishop; and if those he calls particular bishops hold each only a piece of it, then each particular bishop is only the piece of a bishop, and we run the risk of having no integral bishop at all. Did the learned jurist stop to ask what was the real meaning of the passage he lends to St. Cyprian? But in any case, what has the assertion that "there is only one bishopric and a piece thereof is held by particular bishops," to do with the author's doctrine of the equality and independence of bishops against the Primacy of Peter, or of Peter's See?

It is not our present purpose to prove the claims or the faith of the Church of Rome against Mr. Derby; we cannot do him that honor. We are only dissecting his reasons for rejecting them; otherwise we would bring from St. Cyprian alone ample testimony to prove that this saint accepted them both. Mr. Derby's allusion to St. Cyprian has set us to studying the writings of that great saint and martyr more attentively than we had before done, and we have been surprised at the barefaced impudence of Protestants, even knowing them as well as we do, in pretending to find in him a witness against the Papacy. He is as decidedly Papal in his doctrine as Bellarmine, and as for his practice, we know not enough of it to say that it was not Catholic. On the question of baptism by heretics it is evident he erred, if the Letters on that subject ascribed to him, are genuine; of which, however, St. Augustine doubted, and we too may be permitted to doubt. The Donatists had an interest in ascribing them to him, and we have no reason to suppose them incapable of doing so falsely. But we must return to Mr. Derby.

"The blessed Jerome, Hieronymus, born A. D. 331, in his Litera ad Evagrium,' speaking of the usage and order of the Church of Rome, says, 'Why allegest thou to me the usage of one city?' Again, he says, 'not only the bishops of one city, (that is, Rome,) but

the bishops of all the world err.' Surely, then, the bishop of Rome had no infinite or universal power. The Church was then governed by councils, and heretics were put down by general councils, and heretics were then numerous. St. Augustine enumerates more than eighty varieties, and at one time the Arians, favored by an emperor, were supposed to be in the ascendant. The first general council was called by Constantine, the emperor, at Nice. Three hundred and eighteen bishops attended to put down the Arian heresy. It is intimated both by St. Jerome and St. Augustine that Liberius, bishop or pope of Rome, took part with the Arians. St. Jerome states this in his treatise,* and Cardinal Casanus, a Romish writer, in the first half of the fifteenth century, a favored friend of Pope Eugenius IV., and legate under several pontiffs, represents St. Augustine to have said that 'Pope Liberius gave his hand and consent to the Arians.'t But the great Council of Nice put down the Arians, and with them condemned virtually Liberius, the heretic pope, and the other bishops who favored them. An eminent Roman Catholic writer is here our authority. When councils thus condemn the Roman bishop, or pope, where was his infallibility, and how was it manifested to the world? Further, by the sixth canon of the first Council of Nice, the whole of Christendom was divided into four patriarchships, whereof the first was Rome, the second Alexandria, the third Antioch, the fourth Jerusalem; each was limited, and Rome was confined to Italy and the West. Neither had power over the other, and down to a much later period, the idea of a universal Bishop was scouted by the bishops of Rome as well as others. Gregory I., a bishop of Rome, and a saint of the Romish Church, says, He is antichrist that shall claim to be called universal bishop, or chief of the priests.' The emperor Gratian did the same, and allowed the bishop of Rome to be called no more than bishop of the first seat.”—pp. 17-19.

What in the world is one to say to this long string of assertions without proof, without principle, and bearing upon no point but a foregone conclusion? We really cannot follow Mr. Derby in all his pretended authorities. He evidently knows nothing of the fathers but what he has picked up from the hasty perusal of some anti-Catholic writers, and in no instance in which we have attempted to verify his quotations have we found them trustworthy. We have either not been able to verify them at all or have found them unfair, dishonest, and mere perversions of the real

* Hieron. de Eccles. Scriptor. In his book de Concord. L. II. c. 5. Epistolæ 34, L. IV.