A Treatise on the Episcopate of the Ante-Nicene Church, (with Especial Reference to the Early Position of the Roman See) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854. Excerpt: ... toric precedent, which is the only light in which we are here called on to regard them. But since a pretence of historic authority is actually put forward--and, however inconsistent with the above well ascertained facts, since this pretence is not in all cases without a plausible shew of evidence, it will be well to investigate more closely the particular attitude of the Bishop of Bome in the first three centuries. We shall be able to asertain his position at that era by a twofold method. We may observe his relation to other Christian Bishops in cases in which he is a prominent actor. This forms the positive or direct index to his true character and position. And we shall find a far wider field of evidence in the pursuit of an indirect method. We may inquire into the actual history of circumstances in which he must have played a conspicuous part on the supposition that certain hypotheses respecting him were true. If we find that he never assumed that part--or if his assumption of it was ever treated as an anomaly and resented by all other Churches--we may be sure that those hypotheses are untenable. "If it be objected that such discourses are negative, and therefore of small force; I answer that therefore are they most proper to assert such a negative proposition: for how can we otherwise better shew a thing not to be than by shewing it to have no footstep there where it is supposed to stand? Such arguments indeed in such cases are not merely negative, but rather privative; proving things not to be, because not affirmed there where in reason they ought to be affirmed; standing therefore upon positive suppositions, that holy Scripture, that general tradition, are not imperfect and lame toward their design; that ancient writers were competently intelligent, ...