the Christian missionaries but boldly to put their hand out to the work of their destruction. And such was the attachment of the people to their rites and sacrifices, and such was the jealousy of the priests of the idol temples, that both priests and people treated the Christian missionaries as their greatest enemies, and everywhere sought to have them put to death.

§ 50. Cathedra Petri. St. Peter removes the supreme seat of government of the Church from Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, and permanently fixes it in Rome.

'Jerusalem,' says the inspired Psalmist, 'is built up as a city that is at unity with herself, for there are set the seats in judgment, and thither the tribes, even the tribes of the Lord, have gone up' (Ps. cxxi.). Moses also provides in the law (Deut. xvii. 8): If thou find that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment, and thou see that the words of the judges within thy gates do vary, arise and go up to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt do whatsoever they shall say that preside in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and what they shall teach thee. And thou shalt follow their sentence, neither shalt thou decline to the right hand nor to the left.' Even the single people of the Jews, it thus appears, could not be raised to the dignity of becoming the Church of God, in a way which was no more than preparatory to something better to come, without its being necessary for their welfare that they should have a supreme court, both of government and of judgment, by whose decree not only all questions were to be set at rest, but whose acts of government were to be final and without appeal. How much less, then, could all the nations of the earth be raised to the greater promised dignity of becoming the Church of God Incarnate, without a similar supreme seat, both of government and of judgment, being in the same proportion even more necessary to their welfare, inasmuch as its acts of government would be of far greater magnitude, and the causes which would have to be brought before it would be so far more varied and more intricate !

Jesus Christ, in giving the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter, and in saying to him, 'THOU ART PETER, AND ON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH; whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,' gave, as the cecumenical council of Constantinople declares, these supreme powers of government and of judgment into Peter's hands. Hence the well-known dictum of St. Ambrose: Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia,' Where Peter is, there is the Church.'

The question, then, would be, where was Peter permanently to fix himself, so that it might be made known beyond all doubt to all the different nations of the world to what place they were to resort, in order that, when occasion required, they might bring their questions before the supreme tribunal which Jesus Christ had set up in Peter. And further,

inasmuch as Peter himself was but a mortal man, and, like all other men, with but a limited term of years to live, while the supreme court of government and of judgment was a standing and inherent necessity of the life of the Church as long as it should continue upon earth, a second all-important question would be, how were all the nations who embraced the faith of the Church to know who the person was to whom the supreme powers vested in St. Peter had been transmitted, in order that they might be able to listen with a well-founded knowledge and assurance to the voice of Peter, living and speaking in his successor?

St. Peter himself has left us quite sufficient proof that he understood the importance of both these questions to the well-being of the Church; and, indeed, almost as much as this may be gathered from what he says in his second epistle: 'And I will do my endeavour, that after my decease also you may often have whereby you may keep a memory of these things' (2 Peter i. 15).

For the first of these questions St. Peter provided by the final removal of his chair from the city of Antioch, where he had at first fixed it, to Rome; and for the second, by appointing that his successors for ever in the episcopal chair of the city of Rome should also succeed to the supreme powers of government and of judgment, which were committed to him

under the figurative language of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. It was thus that Divine Providence wisely disposed that Rome, the mistress of the former world, to whose courts the conquered nations of the world had already for centuries been habituated to resort, should

continue to be equally their centre of resort, when they came to take upon themselves the light yoke of Jesus Christ, and the honourable citizenship of the kingdom of heaven, in the place of being ground down by the iron despotism of their former military masters in the ancient Rome. Christian Rome, the seat of St. Peter's empire over the nations, succeeding to the military dominion of pagan Rome, and the nations of the earth throwing themselves of their own free will at the feet of the long line of St. Peter's successors, in the place of being trodden under foot against their will by the military commanders of ancient Rome, is a sight which can draw forth from the spectator who looks upon it with the faith of the Church but one exclamation: This is the work of God, and it is marvellous in our eyes' (Ps. cxvii.).

According to the Calendar of the Roman Church, which is an indisputable historical testimony, St. Peter came to establish his chair in Rome in the course of the year 44, in the third year of the reign of Claudius Cæsar. The erection of an episcopal see in every city was an event the memory of which it was the practice of Christendom to perpetuate by an anniversary festival in the city where the Bishop had been installed. For upwards of eighteen hundred years the city of Rome has continued to celebrate a festival in honour of St. Peter's having erected his episcopal chair within its walls.

St. Peter having erected and finally lodged his chair in Rome, and having formed a congregation of Christians comprising both Jews and Gentiles, did not, as it would appear, permanently reside in Rome. The evidence rather shows that he continued the labours of his apostleship in various parts of the empire. It was to this body of believers, however, whom St. Peter's preaching had gathered together, that St. Paul addressed the letter which is now in the canon of the New Testament, and which he wrote from Corinth at least three years before his own arrival in Rome. The question that raged between Jew and Gentile as to their relative position in the Church forms a very large portion of this Epistle of St. Paul; and we may fairly infer, from the length at which St. Paul argues it, that the faith of the Church must have made very considerable progress among the Roman citizens, in order for St. Paul to judge it necessary to enter into such full explanations to the Jews as to the justice of the terms on which the Gentiles were admitted to share in the blessings hitherto regarded by them as the exclusive privilege of their own particular race.

§ 51. How the Blessed Virgin Mary edified the Church by her holy death, and how she was especially honoured by her Divine Son after death.

St. John Damascene, a Greek father of the eighth century, has put the Church's tradition relative to the holy death of the Blessed Mother of God upon record in the following words:

'We have learned from ancient tradition, that at the time of the death

R

of the Blessed Virgin, all the holy Apostles, who were travelling over the world engaged in preaching the doctrines of salvation to the Gentiles, were lifted up into the air in a moment of time, and were brought together in Jerusalem. While they were there, a vision of angels ap

THE CALM AND PEACEFUL DEATH OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN

peared to them, and the psalmody of the hosts of heaven was heard; and thus in the midst of the Divine glory the blessed Lady gave forth her soul into the hands of God. Her body, which God afterwards raised up in a most wonderful manner, was carried amidst the chants of the Apostles and the angels, and deposited in a tomb at Gethsemane, where the chant of the angels continued for three entire days.

'But on the third day, when the chant of the angels had ceased, for the sake of Thomas, who, having been the only one absent, and who, having arrived on the third day, desired to venerate the body of her who had been the Mother of God, those of the Apostles who were still present opened the tomb, but were unable to find the sacred body any where. They found, indeed, all the coverings in which the body had been laid, but nothing more; and having remarked the ineffably sweet odour that proceeded from the tomb, they closed it and departed. Meditating in deep astonishment upon the miracle that had taken place, they could come to no other conclusion than that He, whom it had

pleased to take flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and notwithstanding that He was God the Eternal Word and the Lord of Glory, to become man and to be born, preserving after His birth the virginity of His Mother, had also been pleased to secure the same immaculate body of His Mother after her departure from this life from corruption, and to honour it with a translation before the day of the general resurrection common to all men.

THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN INTO HEAVEN.

'There were also present at that time with the Apostles the holy Timothy, the first Bishop of the Ephesians, and Dionysius the Areopagite, as he himself assures us in the passage of his letter to Timothy, in which he makes mention of the blessed Hierotheus, who was also present, using the following words: "Such was the unanimous feeling among the inspired rulers of the Church; for, as you know, when we, in company with many other of the saints among the brethren, had met together to behold the body of her from whom was derived the beginning of our salvation, and who had conceived God (James, the brother of the Lord, and Peter, the supreme head of the clergy, were both present), after we had seen the sacred body, it was unanimously determined that we should join in singing praise to the infinite goodness of God, according to the best of the ability of each one who was present." Thus far St. John Damascene.