Page:Guettée papacy.djvu/83

Rh if he had submitted and declared himself in favour of the pretensions of the Bishops of Rome. In fact, in his Treatise upon Church Unity, he positively denies the primacy of St. Peter himself; he makes that Apostle merely to be the type of unity, which resided in the apostolic college as a whole; and by succession in the whole episcopal body, which he calls the see of Peter. It is only by a series of the strangest of distortions that the Roman theologians understand by this last expression the see of Rome. They can not give such a sense to it without completely forgetting the rest of the text from which this is taken. We will give it as an example among a thousand of the want of good faith of the partisans of popery, when they cite from ancient traditions. After mentioning the powers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ promised them to him alone, though they were to be given to all. " In order to show forth unity," he says, "the Lord has wished that unity might draw its origin from one only. The certainly, having the  honor  as he. All are shepherds, and the flock nourished by all the Apostles together is one, in order that the Church of Christ may appear in its unity."

The see of Peter in St. Cyprian's idea, is the author-