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Rh servants of Christ are not found in human archives, but to their agency is thus visibly attributable the foundation of that subsequently great communion.

It has been said, nevertheless, that private men of this description would not be qualified to proceed further than the mere publication of the gospel; and that, however numerous the people gathered together by their ministry, the presence of the prince of the apostles would still be necessary for their regular organization as a church; and therefore St. Peter must have been the first primate of Antioch. Supposing the premisses were true, yet the inference would by no means be necessary; while the historical fact is decidedly against it. It was not an apostle who was sent from Jerusalem to visit the infant cause at Antioch, but Barnabas, "a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." (Acts xi. 22—24.) And when an apostle did visit them, it was not St. Peter, but St. Paul and Barnabas, who for "a whole year assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people." In the course of the following year, we find among the number of believers some who had been distinguished by the charismata of the Holy Ghost,—"prophets and teachers, who ministered unto the Lord," (Acts xiii. 1,)—and the church itself in a high degree of spiritual efficiency. This was in the year 45. Caligula was already dead, and the reign of Claudius had advanced; but St. Peter had not as yet been at Antioch. Hence his having been the founder or the primate of that church, is altogether imaginary.

Eusebius, who in his Chronicon (anno 43) has given to St. Peter the foundation of the cause at Antioch, followed, perhaps, that mass of fables, "the Book of Recognitions;" whereas, in his Ecclesiastical History, he strictly