The Gnostics.--Irenaeus makes war on them.--His mode of
warfare.--The Apostolic succession and the object.--No
church in Rome to the time of Adrian.--Peter never in Rome--
nor Paul in Britain, Gaul, or Spain.--Forgeries of Irenaeus.
Before we approach the principal subject treated of in this section, it
will be proper to say something of a sect or society which in its day
took a leading part in the affairs of the world, but which has long
since disappeared from history, and whose former existence is now only
known to the careful reader. We refer to the Gnostics, who for the
most part flourished in the second century. They were divided among
themselves into more than fifty different sects. "The principal among
them were known under the names of Basilidians, Valentinians, and
Marcionites. They abounded in Egypt, Asia, Rome, and were found in
considerable numbers in the provinces of the West. Each of these sects
could boast of its Bishops and congregations, of its doctors and
martyrs, and instead of the four Gospels adopted by the church, they
produced a multitude of histories, in which the actions and discourses
of Christ and his apostles were _adapted_ to their respective tenets."--
(Decline and Fall, chap. xv. vol. I. p. 257.) They supported their
opinions by various fictitious and apocryphal writings of Adam, Abraham,
Zoroaster, Christ, and the Apostles. They were for the most part
composed of Gentiles who denied the divine authority of the Old
Testament, and rejected the Mosaic account of the creation, of the
origin and fall of man, and claimed that a God was unworthy of
adoration, who for a trivial offence of Adam and Eve pronounced sentence
of condemnation on all their descendants. They adored Christ as an
_AEon_, or divine emanation, who appeared on the earth to reclaim man
from the paths of error and point out to him the ways of truth; but with
these opinions they mingled many sublime and obscure tenets derived from
oriental philosophy. This divine _AEon_ or emanation they considered was
the Son of God, but was inferior to the Father, and they rejected his
humanity on the principle that everything corporeal is essentially and
intrinsically evil. They agreed with the Christians in their abhorrence
of polytheism and idolatry, and both regarded the former as a
composition of human fraud and error, and demons as the authors and
patrons of the latter.
As we have stated, the Gnostics for the most part sprang up in the
second century and disappeared in the fourth and fifth, suppressed by a
law of the Emperor Constantine. "The Emperor enacted a law by which they
were forbidden to assemble in their own houses of prayer, in private
houses, or in, public places, but were compelled to enter the Catholic
church.... Hence the greater number of these sectarians were led by fear
of consequences to join themselves to the church. Those who adhered to
their original sentiments did not at their death leave any disciples to
propagate their heresies, for, owing to the restrictions to which they
were subjected, they were prevented from preaching their doctrines."--
(Sozomen, Ecc. Hist., book ii ch. 32.)
Thus passed from history the Gnostics, "the most polite, the most
learned and most wealthy of the Christian name." (Decline and Fall,
chap. xv. vol. I. p. 256.) Such was the character of the men who,
brought into collision with the orthodox Christians in the second
century, became involved in the most violent and bitter struggles in
which men were ever engaged. It was to defeat and destroy these men that
Irenaeus devoted the labor of a lifetime, that on their ruin he might
erect the Catholic church. The undertaking was Herculean, but the means
employed were well chosen, vigorously and tenaciously pursued, and its
success is one of the most remarkable and exceptional cases in history
of the triumph of cunning, falsehood, and fraud. The grand idea was,
that Christ, the Son of God, was the founder of the church on earth, and
that, at his death, the power to establish others after him he conferred
on the Apostles, and upon no one else. As they might confer this power
on others as they had received it from Christ, so these last could in
turn do the same to those who followed them, and in this way continue
the church through all time. This is what Irenaeus calls the "Apostolic
succession." A church which could not prove its connection with Christ
through this Apostolic chain was no church at all, and it amounted to
impiety and vile heresy for such a pretended church to undertake to
explain or understand his gospel. Such a church has no relation to
Christ, but with demons and evil spirits.
Irenaeus found it much less difficult to show that there was no such
succession in the Gnostic churches than he did in proving that it
existed in his own. To do this, as we will show in another place, he was
forced to introduce on to the stage the names of at least nine persons
who, he claimed, had been Bishops of Rome, most of whom were mere myths
and never had an existence, and those who had were never in Rome at all.
Christ, at his death, he further maintains, not only conferred on the
Apostles the sole right to establish churches, but also imparted to them
some divine knowledge or gifts which they on their death intrusted
to the church as a special deposit for the benefit of all who yielded
obedience to her authority. These precious gifts left with the church
Irenaeus compares to money or riches deposited in a bank by a rich man.
But we will let him speak for himself: "Since, therefore, we have such
proof, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others, which is
easy to obtain from the church; since the Apostles, like a rich man
depositing his _money in a bank_, lodged in her hands most copiously all
things pertaining to the truth; so that every man, whosoever, _can draw_
from her the water of eternal life. For she is the entrance to life, and
all others are thieves and robbers." (Book iii. chap. 4, sec. I.) Having
established the principal proposition by his mere assertion (which is
his way of making history of all kinds), Irenaeus next proceeds to show
that the Gnostics could not trace any connection with a church founded
by the Apostles. "For prior to Valentinianus (he says), those who follow
Valentinianus had no existence: nor did those from Marcion exist before
Marcion; nor, in short, had any of those malignant-minded people, whom
I have above enumerated, any being previous to the initiators and
inventors of their perversity." (Book iii. chap. 4, sec. 3.)
The ancient Father has, so far, established two of his main
propositions: first, that a church must derive its origin through the
Apostles, or some one of them, to be genuine; and second, that there was
no such connection in the churches of the Gnostics; and it only remains
to show that the church claiming to be orthodox had. He declines to
point out the order of succession in all the churches, but consents
to do it in the case of Rome, which, he says, according to tradition,
derived from the Apostles, was founded and organized at Rome by the
two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul. (Book iii. chap. 3, sec. 2.) The
church at Rome, founded by such great lights as Peter and Paul, Irenaeus
continues, should be regarded of the highest authority in the church,
for, he says, "it is a matter of necessity that every church should
agree with _this_ church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that
is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has
been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist everywhere."
(Sec. 2.)
As Peter was selected to be head of the church, and Rome the capital of
the Christian world, the scheme to establish a church on the ground of
an Apostolic succession must fail, unless it can appear that Peter had
not only been there at some time, but that he was also the founder of a
church at the holy city. A letter said to have been written by Clement,
the third Bishop of Rome, is selected as the medium by which it is made
to appear that Peter had been in Rome; and Irenaeus took upon himself
to show what he was engaged in while there. At the proper place we will
show that this Clement is a fiction, brought on the stage as a link in
the Apostolic chain forged by the great criminal of the second century.
Now follows a forgery so apparent on its face, that it does not require
the skill of an expert to detect it.
"But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to those who, in
these last days, have wrestled manfully for the faith; let us take
the noble examples of our own age. Through envy, the faithful and most
righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted even to the most
dreadful deaths. Let us place before your eyes the good Apostles. Peter,
by unjust envy, underwent not one or two, but many labors: and thus
having borne testimony unto death, he went into the place of glory,
which was due to him. Through envy, Paul obtained the reward of
patience. Seven times he was in bonds; he was scourged; was stoned.
He preached both in the East and in the West, leaving behind him the
glorious report of his faith. And thus having taught the whole world
of righteousness, and reached the fullest extremity of the West, he
suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and departed out of
this world, and went to the holy place, having become a most exemplary
pattern of patience." (_Epistle I. of Clement to Corinthians_, sec. 5.)
By the side of this extract we will lay a passage of Irenaeus. Speaking
of the writers of the Gospels, he says: "Matthew also issued a written
Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul
were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church."
(Book iii. chap. 1.) Now, we assert with confidence, that the hand which
penned the first passage wrote them both. It is not said in so many
words, in Clement's letter, that Peter was in Rome, but it is to be
inferred, as in the case of John at Eph-esus. Irenaeus seldom states
anything which is positively untrue in direct language, but makes
falsehood inferential. The passage we have quoted does not contain a
single truth, except as it relates to Paul. Paul and Peter were never
engaged together in laying the foundation of a church. They quarrelled
in Damascus and could never agree. The doctrine of circumcision formed
an impassable wall between them, and, as we will show, was never given
up by Peter. Besides, it is not true that Peter had anything to do in
laying the foundation of the church at Rome.
Christians, during the reign of Claudius in Rome, were too few in number
and too poor to form a church, especially such an one as would require
the office of a Bishop. Renan, in speaking of the church in the time of
Claudius, says it was composed of a "little group--every one smelt of
garlic. These ancestors of Roman prelates were poor proletaries, dirty,
alike clownish, clothed in filthy gabardines, having the bad breath of
people who live badly. Their retreats breathed that odor of wretchedness
exhaled by persons meanly clothed and fed, and collected in a small
room." (_Life of Paul_, 96.)
We have no reason to believe that at any time during the life of Peter
was the church of Rome, if there was any church there at all, composed
of different materials or greater in numbers than at the time referred
to. What was there for a Bishop to do in such a crowd, or what was there
to keep him from starvation? Christians engaged in riots growing out
of the hostility between them and the Jews, were driven from Rome by
an edict of the Emperor Claudius, and did not return during his reign,
which ceased in A.D. 54, when that of Nero commenced. In A.D. 58 they
had not rallied, and at that time Rome was without a church. It was
the practice in all cases with Paul to address Christians through the
churches, where churches were established; but his Epistle, in A.D. 58,
to the Romans, is addressed not to a church, but "_to all that be in
Rome_" In his three years' imprisonment in that city, commencing in the
spring of A.D. 61, he makes no mention of a church, nor does he during
the second, which lasted from the summer or fall of A.D. 65 to the
spring of A.D. 66. There is no proof that the historian can discover,
worthy of his notice, that there was a church in Rome of any kind, even
down to the time of Adrian, A.D. 117, and even later. We are overrun
with traditions on this subject, the creations of the second century,
to which the attention of the reader will be called when we treat of the
twelve traditional Bishops named by Irenaeus. Adrian, in the seventeenth
year of his reign, knew so little about a Christian church, that he
supposed the office of a Bishop belonged to the worship of the god
Serapis. In a letter written by him from Alexandria, A.D. 134, to his
brother-in-law Servianus, he says: "The worshippers of Serapis are
Christians, and those are devoted to the god Serapis, who, I find, call
themselves Bishop of Christ."
We will dismiss this part of the subject for the present, with the
promise to return to it in a subsequent chapter, when it will be
demonstrated that there was no Christian church in Rome until after the
reign of Antoninus Pius.*
* See Appendix C
Were Peter and Paul together in Rome at all? Paul went there in the
spring of A.D. 61, for the first time, and remained until the spring
or summer of A.D. 63. During this time he wrote four epistles, as
follows:--to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon,
and, if we except the first, he closes them by naming the persons who
are with him. He says nothing about Peter, nor does he mention his name,
so far as we know, during the three years he was confined in Rome. That
Paul should omit to mention Peter, one of the Apostles, in some of his
letters, is the very best proof that he was not in Rome at all. After
his release in the spring of A.D. 63, after making a visit to the
churches in Europe and Asia, he returned to Rome again in the fall of
A.D. 65. He had with him a few friends who stood by him to the last.
They were Luke, Mark, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia. There could not have
been many other Christians in Rome at the time besides those named,
because Paul, after naming the above who sent salutations to Timothy,
adds, "and all the other brethren," which implies that there were not
many of them. Paul does not mention Peter, because he was not there.
Timothy, no doubt, was with Paul in the winter of A.D. 65 and A.D. 66,
and was put to death in the spring of the latter year, with his friend
and fellow-laborer. We never hear of him again. In the spring of A.D.
66, the labors and sorrows of the great Apostle of the Gentiles ceased.
He had fought the good fight--he had finished his work--he had _kept
the faith_; and now, by his death, bore testimony to the doctrines he
preached. He was among the last of Nero's victims. Nothing that
belongs to history is surer than that Peter and Paul never were in Rome
together, laying the foundation of a church, or anything else.
Having proved that one-half of what is stated by Irenaeus in the passage
which we have quoted is false, according to the usual rule for testing
the truth of any statement, we might claim that the remaining half
is also untrue. But we ask no such advantage in disproving any of the
statements made by this father.
_When_ was Peter in Rome? No writer in the first or second century
pretends to give the time when he was in Rome, or when he died.
Irenaeus gives the names of twelve Bishops who succeeded each other,
commencing with Linus, but does not give a single date, so that we can
tell when or how long any one of them held the office. This want of
dates, where it was easy to give them--if what was stated was true--was
urged with so much force against what Irenaeus said, that Eusebius, in
the fourth century, undertook to fix the time when these traditional
Bishops succeeded to, and how long each held the office. He fails to say
when Peter first became Bishop, or when he ceased to be the head of
the church, but commences giving dates from the time of Linus, his
successor. Without intending, he has furnished the data to determine
when Peter died, if his dates are correct, which is _not even probable_.
He says: "After Vespasian had reigned about ten years, he was succeeded
by his son Titus; in the second year of whose reign, Linus, Bishop of
the church of Rome, who held the office about twelve years, transferred
it to Anacletus." (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., book iii. ch. 13.) As Linus
succeeded Peter, the latter must have died just before his successor
took the office. Titus became emperor June 24th, A. D. 79, and as Linus
died two years after this, after holding the office twelve years, he
became Bishop in A. D. 69; which must have been the year of Peter's
death. Nero died in June A. D. 68, and at his death the persecution
against Christians ceased altogether. It is not claimed that Galba,
Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, or Titus ever inflicted persecution of
any kind on Christians during the time they held the government of the
empire. Eusebius, in attempting to fix a date when the second Bishop
took office, answers the objections made to the vagueness of Irenaeus,
but robs Peter of the laurels of a martyr.
But it is claimed that Linus was installed Bishop before the death of
Peter, and Irenaeus pretends to give the time. He says: "The blessed
Apostles then having founded and built up the church, committed unto the
hands of Linus the office of the Episcopate." (Book iii. ch. 2, sec.
3.) The blessed Apostles are Peter and Paul. Now we have just shown that
these Apostles were never in Rome together, and that there was no church
to be committed to the charge of Linus or anybody else. As it is an
important part of the story that Peter died a martyr at Rome, this could
only happen to him between A. D. 64 and A. D. 68, for the persecution
under Nero commenced during the former year, and ended with his death in
A. D. 68. We have the most conclusive proof that Peter was not in Rome
in A. D. 64, when the persecutions under Nero commenced, nor afterwards.
He was in Babylon--whether Babylon in Assyria, Babylon in Mesopotamia
or Egypt--he was in Babylon more than two thousand miles away. Peter was
born about the time of Christ, and was sixty-four years of age when the
persecutions under Nero began. He was married, and when he wrote his
first Epistle he was in Babylon and had his family with him, for he
mentions the name of Marcus, and calls him his son. "The church that is
at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus,
my son." (1 Peter v. 13.)
The date of this epistle is fixed by Dr. Lard-ner and other critics at
A. D. 64. Did Peter, at the age of sixty-four, when he heard that Nero
was feeding the wild beasts of the Amphitheatre with the flesh and bones
of Christians, "lured by the smell of blood," start for Rome? If Peter
was in Babylon in A. D. 64, an "Apostolic succession," so far as it
depends on him, must fail, and Rome must surrender the authority by
which she has held the religious world in subjection for the last
seventeen centuries.
But this she will never do, as long as her audacity and cunning are left
to hatch schemes to escape from the dilemma. Inspired by despair, she
now claims that Peter means Rome when he says Babylon, and that the
Marcus spoken of was not the son of Peter, but the nephew of Barnabas
and companion of Paul! Just as well claim anything else, and say Babylon
means Alexandria, and that Marcus was the stepson of Nero. Here two
impressions are made: one that the letter was written at Babylon, and
the other that Peter was attended by his son. Are both false? What did
Peter, or anybody else, expect to gain by giving false impressions? By
an agreement between Peter and Paul, made early and observed strictly,
the labors of the former were limited to the circumcised, and he found
them in large numbers in cities watered by the Euphrates. There and in
Judea, among the Jewish people, was the scene of Peter's labors, and
there he died. He had no business in Rome. As there was no church in
Rome in A. D. 64, it is impossible, if Peter was there at the time, for
him to make the salutation he does in his address to his countrymen. He
could say, "the church that is at Babylon," but not "the church that is
at Rome," for there was none.*
* See Appendix B.
Mark the son of Peter, and Mark the nephew of Barnabas, are two
different persons, whom the genius of Irenaeus seeks to confound. The
epistle to Philemon was written in the latter part of A. D. 63, which
shows that Paul, Timothy, and Mark were then in Rome. They left in
the following spring. During the winter of A. D. 63, Paul wrote the
Colossians that they might expect Mark to visit them, and it would seem
that he had made arrangements with them of some kind in regard to him,
when he arrived among them. "Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas (_touching
whom ye received commandments_: if he come unto you, receive him.") Col.
iv. 10.
Unless Mark changed his mind afterwards, he went from Rome to Colosse in
Phrygia. The next reliable information we have of Paul after the spring
of A. D. 63, except at Nicopolis in A. D. 64, he is back in Rome in
the fall of A. D. 65, and in prison; and the first knowledge we have of
Mark, he is in some part of Asia Minor. Timothy and Mark were together,
and Paul writes to the former from his prison, to come to Rome and to
bring the latter with him, and to get there before the winter sets in;
which request was complied with. To suppose that Mark had been to
Rome in the mean time would be most unreasonable, and against all the
probabilities in the case. There was nothing to take him there until
Paul called him back. If Peter was in Rome when he wrote his first
epistle, in A. D. 64, Mark the nephew of Barnabas was not with him. If
Mark saw Peter at all in A. D. 64, it was not in Rome. Nor did he see
him that year in Babylon in Egypt, or Babylon in Mesopotamia or Chaldea.
The latter Babylon was long known for its vices and wickedness, and was
called a sink of iniquity; and as Rome had become corrupt and steeped in
crime of all kinds, it is claimed that Peter uses the word Babylon in a
typical sense when he was writing from Rome! If this is so, he did not
write from Babylon in Egypt or Mesopotamia, as some have contended, for
they were each small and inconsiderable places of no importance, and
there could be no object in using either as a type to represent the
corruptions of Rome. If Mark saw Peter in Babylon, it was in Chaldea.
Measured by degrees of longitude, Rome and this Babylon are more than
two thousand miles apart. Why would Mark make a visit to Peter involving
a journey of four thousand miles, br half that distance? He never did.
He could not. He went among the Colossians under some arrangement made
by Paul, and no doubt remained with them until he was wanted at Rome.
When Peter calls Mark his son, he means just what he says. Mark the
companion of Paul, and Mark the son of Peter, are two different men.
What should take Peter to Rome or keep him there when burning and
torturing Christians was one of the amusements of Nero? Had Peter's
character for courage so much improved that he went there when all the
Christians had gone, to defy Nero, and invite his destruction? There
is something in the character of Peter that makes it improbable, if not
impossible, that he should be in Rome in a time of danger. He was a man
of strong impulses, but a constitutional coward. He followed Christ to
the scene of the crucifixion, "but he followed him afar off." (Matt.
xxvi. 58.) He had pride, and a proper sense of manliness, and when he
was betrayed through a want of courage into the commission of a mean
act, he had spirit and sense enough to be ashamed of it. He denied
Christ, but it cost him bitter tears of repentance. Either his cowardice
or his jealousy stood in the way of his coming to the aid of Paul,
whenever Paul was in danger of his life. When the Jews were about to
tear him to pieces in Jerusalem, and he had to be rescued by the Roman
soldiers, Peter was nowhere about, and we do not even hear of him, In
his trials before the Roman Governors, when he had no one to stand by
him but a few faithful companions, the presence of Peter, at such a
time, would have done much to aid and console the great champion of a
common cause. But in all these places there was danger, and where danger
was was no place for Peter.
He lacked moral, as he did physical courage. At Damascus he did not
hesitate to sit at the same table with the uncircumcised, when there was
no one present to object; but when those came from Jerusalem who could
not tolerate the liberal ideas of Paul on circumcision, he cowardly
sneaked away. Paul took fire at the appearance of so much meanness, and
boldly reproved him. Is this the kind of man who would enter the lion's
den, and brave the wrath of Nero at a time when the tyrant was flooding
the streets of Rome with the blood of Christians?
Justin Martyr was born about the year A. D. 100, and was a native of
Neapolis in Syria. (Apology, sec. I.) At the beginning of the reign of
Antoninus Pius he fixed his abode in Rome, and afterwards wrote numerous
works, principally devoted to the defence of Christians. (Cave's _Life
of Martyr_, vol. 2, chap. 6.) No one had better opportunities of knowing
about Peter, and the church at Rome, than he had, and no one who wrote
as much as he did which concerned Christianity, would have been more
likely to mention him, if what Irenaeus says of him had been true. He
is so oblivious of Peter that he seems to have been unconscious of his
existence. No writer in the first years of the second century, who is
entitled to credit, speaks of him, and he first begins to figure in
the pages of Irenaeus when the disputes with the Gnostics were at their
height. The Clementines were composed later in the century, when Pauline
Christianity was giving way to the new school, and the dogma of an
Apostolic succession had taken possession of the church. Dionysius,
Bishop of Corinth, who lived and wrote during the reign of Marcus
Antoninus and his son Commodus, about A. D. 180, according to Eusebius,
also states that Paul and Peter were at Rome together engaged in laying
the foundation of a church. (Eusebius, Ecc. Hist., lib. ii. ch. 25.)
But this writer has got out of the Pauline period, and even goes beyond
Irenaeus, for he states, according to the same authority, that Peter and
Paul laid the foundation of the church at Corinth.
Theophilus of Antioch, Melito of Sardis, Apollinarius of Hierapolis,
all writers about the same time, A. D. 180, like Irenaeus, take sides
against the Gnostics, and show that they were committed to the new
school. From this time Irenaeus is quoted as the authority for the fact
that Peter and Paul had founded the church at Rome, and we are asked
to give special weight to what he says, as he was the companion of
Polycarp, who had seen and conversed with John.
Speaking of Paul, Clement is made to say, "He preached both in the East
and in the West--taught the whole world righteousness, and reached the
farthest extremity of the West, and suffered martyrdom, by the command
of the Governors." This passage has long been a stumbling-block among
learned critics. It is the only authority on which is founded the story,
that after Paul was discharged from prison in A. D. 63, he went into
Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Caius, the Presbyter, in the beginning of the
third century, says: "Writings not included in the canon of Scripture
expressly mention the journey from Rome into Spain." Hippolytus, in the
same century, says that Paul went as far as Illyricum, preaching the
gospel. Athanasius, in the fourth century, says that St. Paul did not
hesitate to go to Rome and Spain. Jerome, in the same century, says that
"St. Paul, after his release from his trial before Nero, preached the
Gospels in the Western parts." (Quoted from Chevallier's _Apostolical
Epistles_, note, p. 487.)
These is no authority for Paul's travels in the Western provinces,
except the passage from Clement, and as Irenaeus is the founder of the
story, it is not improved by the repetition of subsequent writers.
The whole is a transparent falsehood. From the time of Paul's career,
commencing with his adventure near Damascus to the time of his
imprisonment in Rome, in the spring of A. D. 61, we have an account of
his travels, and know where he was each year during this time. He never
in this time went west of Rome. In the spring of A. D. 63, in company
with Mark, Titus, Timothy and others, he left Rome and went in all
probability to Colosse, where, in pursuance of some agreement he made
with the people of that place, he left Mark. How long he remained is
uncertain, but the next time we hear of him he is in Crete, where no
doubt he spent the winter of A. D. 63 and A. D. 64, In the mean time he
made some converts, whom he left in charge of Titus, and in the spring
went west into Macedonia. Some time in the summer or fall of A. D. 64
we find him in Nicopolis, where he informed Titus he meant to spend
the winter. The following spring or summer he went to Rome and was soon
imprisoned. If he was at Colosse or Crete in A. D. 63, and Nicopolis in
A. D. 64, he could not have gone to Britain, Gaul, and Spain between
the spring of A. D. 63 and the summer of A. D. 65, for it would not be
possible.
But it is conclusive that Paul did not go into the provinces of the West
after his release from prison; that there is no mention of his travels
in the West, except what is said in this passage from the letter
of Clement--a thing impossible, when we consider that he never went
anywhere but he made his mark, and left his footprints behind him. Even
Paul himself, in his subsequent letters, makes no allusion to any such
travels, which is accountable upon no other hypothesis than that he
never made them. But what was gained in fabricating this passage?
The idea of Irenaeus, that there could be no church unless its origin
could be traced to some one of the Apostles, who were special bankers
of divine favors, never left him. He furnished Rome with Peter, and Asia
with John, and now he is required to furnish one for the churches in
Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Here were churches in these countries in his
day, and who had authority to establish them? It would not do to claim
that either of the Twelve had been in the West, for even falsehood has
its' boundaries. Paul will do. He is the great Apostle of the Gentiles.
Besides, according to the Acts, he had submitted to ordination at the
hands of the Apostles. The explanation of the reasons which dictated
this spurious passage in Clement's letter is consistent with the acts of
Irenaeus, and the whole current of his thoughts throughout his life.
But this story, invented by him, has been repeated by others, until it
settled down--as history! It is clear from the proof here shown, that
Irenaeus has no claim to our belief as a writer, and that the statements
he makes in regard to Peter in Rome and Paul in the West are mere
inventions of his own to assist him in his disputes with the Gnostics,
in which he was engaged for the best part of his life.