masculine to the feminine, from the person to the thing or the truth confessed — a change which disappears in the English and German versions] oiKoSofj.r](T(i} fiou T^v iKK\T]ffiav, Kol TTvXai aSov ov Kvriax'^o'ovtnv avTris. Comp. the commentators, especially Meyer, Lange, Alford, Wordsworth, ad loc, and my Hist, of the Apost. Church, § 90 and 94 (N. Y. ed. p. 350 sqq., and 374 sqq.). A^^^ 4@^ 302 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. places also Peter confessedly resided ; and secondly, whether the primacy involve at the same time a supremacy of jurisdic- tion over the whole church, or be only an honorary primacy among patriarchs of equal authority and rank. The former was the Roman view ; the latter was the Greek. An African bishop, Cyprian (f 258), was the first to give to that passage of the 16th of Matthew, innocently as it were, and with no suspicion of the future use and abuse of his view, a papistic interpretation, and to bring out clearly the idea of a perpetual cathedra Petri. The same Cyprian, however, whether consistently or not, was at the same time equally animated with the consciousness of episcopal equality and in- dependence, afterward actually came out in bold opposition to Pope Stephen in a doctrinal controversy on the validity of heretical baptism, and persisted in this protest to his death.' § 61. Opinions of the Fathers. A comi^lete collection of the patristic utterances on the primacy of Peter and his successors, though from the Roman point of view, may be found in the work of Rev. Jos. Berington and Rev. Jonx Kiek : " The Faith of Catholics confirmed by Scripture and attested by the Fathers of the first five centuries of the Church," 3d ed., London, 1846, vol. ii. p. 1-112. Comp. the works quoted sub § 55, and a curious article of Prof. Fekd. Piper, on Rome, the eternal city, in the Evang. Jahrbuch for 1864, p. 17-120, where the opinions of the fathers on the claims of the xirbs mterna and its many fortimes are brought out. We now pursue the development of tliis idea in the church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. In general they agree in attaching to Peter a certain primacy over the other apostles, and in considering him the foundation of the church in virtue of his confession of the divinity of Christ ; while they hold Christ to be, in the highest sense, the divine ground and rock of the chui-ch. And herein lies a solution of their appa- rent self-contradiction in referring the petra in Matt. xvi. 18, now to the person of Peter, now to his confession, now to Christ. Then, as the bishops in general were regarded as sue- ' Comp. vol. i. § 110. § Gl. OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS. 303 cessors of the apostles, the fathers saw in the Eonian bishops, on the ground of the ancient tradition of the martyrdom of Peter in Rome, the successor of Peter and