The only authority which can be esteemed worthy of consideration
on this point, is that of Clemens Romanus, who, in the latter
part of the first century, (about the year 70, or as others
say, 96,) in his epistle to the Corinthians, uses these words
respecting Peter:――“Peter, on account of unrighteous hatred,
underwent not one, or two, but many labors, and _having thus
borne his testimony_, departed to the place of glory, which was
his due,”――(ὁυτως μαρτυρησας επορευθη εις τον οφειλομενον τοπον
δοξης.) Now it is by no means certain that the prominent word
(_marturesas_) necessarily means “bearing testimony by death,”
or _martyrdom_ in the modern sense. The primary sense of this
verb is merely “_to witness_,” in which simple meaning alone, it
is used in the New Testament; nor can any passage in the sacred
writings be shown, in which this verb means “to bear witness to
any cause, _by death_.” This was a _technical_ sense, (if I may
so name it,) which the word at last acquired among the Fathers,
when they were speaking of those who bore witness to the truth
of the gospel of Christ by their blood; and it was a meaning
which at last nearly excluded all the true original senses
of the verb, limiting it mainly to the notion of a death by
persecution for the sake of Christ. Thence our English words,
_martyr_ and _martyrdom_. But that Clement by this use of the
word, in this connection, meant to convey the idea of Peter’s
having been killed for the sake of Christ, is an opinion utterly
incapable of proof, and moreover rendered improbable by the
words joined to it in the passage. The sentence is, “Peter
underwent many labors, and having thus borne witness” to the
gospel truth, “went to the place of glory which he deserved.”
Now the adverb “_thus_,” (ὁυτως,) seems to me most distinctly
to show what was the nature of this testimony, and the manner
also in which he bore it. It points out more plainly than any
other words could, the fact that his testimony to the truth of
the gospel was borne in the zealous labors of a devoted life,
and _not_ by the agonies of a bloody death. There is not in
the whole context, nor in all the writings of Clement, any hint
whatever that Peter was _killed_ for the sake of the gospel; and
we are therefore required by every sound rule of interpretation,
to stick to the primary sense of the verb, in this passage.
Lardner most decidedly mis-translates it in the text of his work,
so that any common reader would be grossly deceived as to the
expression in the original of Clement,――“Peter underwent many
labors, _till at last_ being martyred, he went,” &c. The Greek
word, ὁυτως, (_houtos_,) means always, “in this manner,” “thus,”
“so,” and is not a mere expletive, like the English phrase, “and
_so_,” which is a mere form of transition from one part of the
narrative to the other.
In the similar passage of Clemens which refers to _Paul_, there
is something in the connection which may seem to favor the
conclusion that he understood Paul to have been put to death
by the Roman officers. His words are,――“and after having _borne
his testimony_ before governors, he was _thus_ sent out of the
world,” &c. Here the word “thus,” coming after the participle,
may perhaps be considered, in view also of its other connections,
as implying his removal from the world by a violent death, _in
consequence of_ the testimony borne by him before the governors.
This however, will bear some dispute, and will have a fuller
discussion elsewhere.
But in respect to the passage which refers to Peter, the burden
of proof may fairly be said to lie on those who maintain the old
opinion. Here the word is shown to have, in the New Testament,
no such application to _death_ as it has since acquired; and
the question is whether Clemens Romanus, a man himself of the
apostolic age, who lived and perhaps wrote, before the canon was
completed, had already learned to give a new meaning to a verb,
before so simple and unlimited in its applications. No person
can pretend to trace this meaning to within a century of the
Clementine age, nor does Suicer refer to any one who knew of
such use before Clement of Alexandria (See his Thesaurus; Μαρτυρ.
) Clement himself uses it in the same epistle (§ xvii.) in its
unquestionable primary sense, speaking of Abraham as having
received an honorable testimony,――(εμαρτυρηθη;) for who will say
that Abraham was _martyred_, in the modern sense? The fact too
that Clement nowhere else gives the least glimmer of a hint that
Peter died any where but in his bed, fixes the position here
taken, beyond all possibility of attack, except by its being
shown that he uses this verb somewhere else, with the sense of
_death_ unquestionably attached to it.
There is no other _early_ writer who can be said to speak of
the manner of Peter’s death, before Dionysius of Corinth, who
says that “Peter and Paul having taught in Italy together, _bore
their testimony_” (_by death_, if you please,) “about the same
time.” An argument might here also be sustained on the word
εμαρτυρησαν, (_emarturesan_,) but the evidence of Dionysius,
mixed as it is with a demonstrated fable, is not worth a
_verbal_ criticism. The same may be said of Tertullian and the
rest of the later Fathers, as given in the note on pages 228‒233.
An examination of the word Μαρτυρ, in Suicer’s Thesaurus
Ecclesiasticus, will show the critical, that even in later times,
this word did not necessarily imply “one who bore his testimony
to the truth at the sacrifice of life.” Even Chrysostom, in
whose time the peculiar limitation of the term might be supposed
to be very well established, uses the word in such applications
as to show that its original force was not wholly lost. By
Athanasius too, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego are styled
_martyrs_. Gregory Nazianzen also speaks of “living martyrs.”
(ζωντες μαρτυρες.) Theophylact calls the apostle John a _martyr_,
though he declares him to have passed through the hands of his
persecutors unhurt, and to have died by the course of nature.
Clemens Alexandrinus has similar uses of the term; and the
Apostolical Constitutions, of doubtful date, but much later than
the first century, also give it in such applications. Suicer
distinctly specifies several classes of persons, not martyrs
in the modern sense, to whom the Greek word is nevertheless
applied in the writings of even the later Fathers; as “those
who testified the truth of the gospel of Christ, at the peril
of life merely, without the loss of it,”――“those who obeyed the
requirements of the gospel, by restraining passion,” &c. In some
of these instances however, it is palpable that the application
of the word to such persons is secondary, and made in rather
a poetical way, with a reference to the more common meaning
of loss of life for the sake of Christ, since there is always
implied a _testimony_ at the risk or loss of something; still
the power of these instances to render doubtful the meaning
of the term, is unquestionable. (See Suicer’s Thesaurus
Ecclesiasticus, Μαρτυρ, III. 2, 5, 6.)
Perhaps it is hardly worth while to dismiss these fables
altogether, without first alluding to the rather ancient one,
first given by Clemens Alexandrinus. (Stromata, 7. p. 736.) and
copied verbatim by Eusebius, (Church History, III. 30.) Both the
reverend Fathers however, introduce the story as a tradition,
a mere _on dit_, prefacing it with the expressive phrase,
“They say,” &c. (Φασι.) “The blessed Peter seeing his wife
led to death, was pleased with the honor of her being thus
called by God to return home, and thus addressed her in words
of exhortation and consolation, calling her by name,――‘O woman!
remember the Lord.’” The story comes up from the hands of
tradition rather too late however, to be entitled to any credit
whatever, being recorded by Clemens Alexandrinus, full 200 years
after Christ. It was probably invented in the times when it was
thought worth while to cherish the spirit of voluntary martyrdom,
among even the female sex; for which purpose instances were
sought out or invented respecting those of the apostolic days.
That Peter had a wife is perfectly true; and it is also probable
that she accompanied him about on his travels, as would appear
from a passage in Paul’s writings; (1 Corinthians ix. 5;) but
beyond this, nothing is known of her life or death. Similar
fables might be endlessly multiplied from papistical sources;
more especially from the Clementine novels, and the apostolical
romances of Abdias Babylonius; but the object of the present
work is true history, and it would require a whole volume like
this to give all the details of Christian mythology.
In justification of the certainty with which sentence is
pronounced against the whole story of Peter’s ever having gone
to Rome, it is only necessary to refer to the decisive argument
on pages 228‒233, in which the whole array of ancient evidence
on the point, is given by Dr. Murdock. If the support of great
names is needed, those of Scaliger, Salmasius, Spanheim, and
Bower, all mighty minds in criticism, are enough to justify
the boldness of the opinion, that Peter never went west of the
Hellespont, and probably never embarked on the Mediterranean.
In conclusion of the whole refutation of this long-established
error, the matter cannot be more fairly presented, than in the
words with which the critical and learned Bower opens his Lives
of the Popes:
“To avoid being imposed upon, we ought to treat tradition as we
do a notorious and known liar, to whom we give no credit unless
what he says is confirmed to us by some person of undoubted
veracity. If it is affirmed by him alone, we can at most
but suspend our belief, not rejecting it as false, because
a liar may sometimes speak truth; but we cannot, upon his
bare authority, admit it as true. Now that St. Peter was at
Rome, that he was bishop of Rome, we are told by tradition
alone, which, at the same time tells us of so many strange
circumstances attending his coming to that metropolis, his
staying in it, his withdrawing from it, &c., that in the opinion
of every unprejudiced man, the whole must savor strongly of
romance. Thus we are told that St. Peter went to Rome chiefly
to oppose Simon, the celebrated magician; that at their first
interview, at which Nero himself was present, he flew up into
the air, in the sight of the emperor and the whole city; but
that the devil, who had thus raised him, struck with dread and
terror at the name of Jesus, whom the apostle invoked, let him
fall to the ground, by which fall he broke his legs. Should you
question the truth of this tradition at Rome, they would show
you the prints of St. Peter’s knees in the stone, on which he
kneeled on this occasion, and another stone still dyed with the
blood of the magician. (This account seems to have been borrowed
from Suetonius, who speaks of a person that, in the public
sports, undertook to fly, in the presence of the emperor Nero;
but on his first attempt, fell to the ground; by which fall
his blood sprung out with such violence that it reached the
emperor’s canopy.)
“The Romans, as we are told, highly incensed against him for
thus maiming and bringing to disgrace one to whom they paid
divine honors, vowed his destruction; whereupon the apostle
thought it advisable to retire for a while from the city, and
had already reached the gate, when to his great surprise, he
met our Savior coming in, as he went out, who, upon St. Peter’s
asking him where he was going, returned this answer: ‘_I am
going to Rome, to be crucified anew_;’ which, as St. Peter
understood it, was upbraiding him with his flight; whereupon he
turned back, and was soon after seized by the provoked Romans,
and, by an order from the emperor, crucified.”
Nor do the fables about Peter, by the inveterate papists, cease with
his death. In regard to the place of his tomb, a new story was needed,
and it is accordingly given with the usual particularity. It is said
that he was buried at Rome in the Vatican plain, in the district beyond
the Tiber, in which he was said to have first preached among the Jews,
and where stood the great circus of Nero, in which the apostle is said
to have been crucified. Over this bloody spot, a church was afterwards
raised, by Constantine the Great, who chose for its site part of the
ground that had been occupied by the circus, and the spaces where the
temples of Mars and Apollo had stood. The church, though of no great
architectural beauty, was a building of great magnitude, being three
hundred feet long, and more than one hundred and fifty feet wide.
This building stood nearly twelve hundred years, when becoming ruinous
in spite of all repairs, it was removed to give place to the present
cathedral church of St. PETER, now the most immense and magnificent
building in the world,――not too much praised in the graphic verse in
which the pilgrim-poet sets it beyond all comparison with the greatest
piles of ancient or modern art:
“But lo! the dome! the vast and wondrous dome,
To which Diana’s marvel was a cell;――
Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb.――
I have beheld the Ephesians’ miracle,
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell
The hyena and the jackall in their shade.
I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell
Their glittering mass in the sun, and have surveyed
Its sanctuary, while the usurping Moslem prayed.
“But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee.
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true!
Since Zion’s desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be
Of earthly structures in his honor piled,
Of a sublimer aspect?”――
Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,――beneath the very
center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness
above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it,
than of the God whose altar it covers,――in the vaulted crypt which
lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are
constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily
rising. This is _called_ the tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile
is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws
his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind
and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But
what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the
bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life
and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be
drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been
given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain,
blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been
called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement
of the kingdom of his Master,――the inculcation of a pure spiritual
faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the
circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the
mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who
now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of
millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors were
pointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,――the erection
of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so
that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years
before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might
now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above
the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique
rituals,――spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived
and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that
plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the
ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for
the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal
of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic,
simple-minded devotion,――what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory,
what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move
within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble,
faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory
or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of
millions,――but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross
on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of
salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!――(a spectacle as
strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows,
similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led
him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised
to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew,
or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over
souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to
overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which
the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which
are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an
idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more
spiritual,――and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which
the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced
simple and practical!
These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the
disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the
honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How
mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous
worship,――from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that
ever rose over the earth! How earnestly would he long for the high
temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity
of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the
manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and
fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved
soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the
sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired
the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered
the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would
see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which
he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as
Lord and Savior, millions on millions,――and vast numbers too, even in
the lands of a reformed faith,――would be found still clinging to the
vain support of forms, and names, and observances,――and but a few, a
precious few, who had learned what _that_ means――“I will have mercy
and not sacrifice”――works and not words,――deeds and not creeds,――high,
simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered
reverence,――chanceled worship,――or soul-wearying rituals. Would not
the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection,
and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him
up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm
repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors
of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such
an evangelization?――“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not
the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with
the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish
pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still
following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left
on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these
cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of
his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have
been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light
shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through
the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in
their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise.
Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with
whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slack concerning his
promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself
at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”
What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor
fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low,
laborious business,――living with hardly a hope above the beasts that
perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who,
with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave
all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he
obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory
for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual
developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first
have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows,
through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody
cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost
hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all,
lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,――lying, and utterly faithless in the
promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so
lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous
martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in
attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting
Galilean,――henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes,
bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a
triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself
could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of
Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great
college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly
unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual
faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so
wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the
rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural
genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter
there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the
whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of
sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of
expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of
a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession
of new faculties,――intellectual as well as moral. This was the spirit
which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of
drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a
glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.
Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them
into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches
and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their
heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost
outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new
creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof?
There is a glory that shall outlast all
“The cloud-capped towers,――the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,――the great globe itself,――
Yea all which it inherit;”
――a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day;
for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, and _they that
turn many to righteousness_ as the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in
this the apostle rejoices not;――not that adoring millions lift his name
in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest
piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,――not even that over
all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with
time,――till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him
the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents
and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;――he “rejoices not that the
spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,――but that HIS NAME IS
WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”