Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/283



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