the presbyterium." He can therefore be cited as a witness, at most, for a primacy of honor, not for a supremacy of jurisdiction. Beyond this even the strongest passage of his writings, in a letter to his friend. Pope Dama- sus (a. d. 376), does not go : " Away with the ambition of the Roman head ; I speak with the successor of the fisherman and disciple of the cross. Following no other head than Christ, I am joined in the communion of faith with thy holiness, that is, with the chair of Peter. On that rock I know the church to be built," ^ Subsequently this father, who himself had an eye on the papal chair, fell out with the Poman clergy, and retired ' Comp. Epist. 146, ed. TaU. i. 1076 (or Ep. 101 ed. Bened., al. 85) ad Evange- lum : " TJbicunque fuerit episcopus, sive Eomse, slve Eugubii, sive Constantinopoli, sive Rhegii, give Alexandrise, sive Tanis [an intentional collocation of the most powerful and most obscure bishoprics], ejusdem est meriti, ejusdem est et sacerdotii. Potentia divitiarum et paupertatis humilitas vel sublimiorem vel inferiorem episco- pum non facit. Caeterum omnes apostolonmi successores sunt." * Comp. § 52, above. J. Craigie Robertson, Hist, of the Christian Church to 590 (Lond. 1854), p. 286, note, finds a remarkable negative evidence against the papal claims in St. Jerome's Ep. 125, " where submission to one head is enforced on monks by the instinctive habits of beasts, bees, and cranes, the contentions of Esau and Jacob, of Romulus and Remus, the oneness of an emperor in his domin- ions, of a judge in his province, of a master in his house, of a pilot in a ship, of a general in an army, of a bishop, the archpresbyter, and the archdeacon in a chm-ch ; but there is no mention of the one universal bishop." ' Ep. XV. (alias 57) ad Damasum papam (ed. Tall. i. 37 sq.) : "Facessat invi- <lia : Romani culminis recedat ambitio, cum successore piscatoris et discipulo crucis loquor. Ego nullum primiun, nisi Christum sequens, Beatitudini tuE8, id est cathedrae- Petri, communione consocior. Super illam petram aedificatam ecclesiam scio. Quicunque extra hanc domum agnum comederit, profanus est. Si quis in Noe area non fuerit, peribit regnante diluvio." VOL. II. — 20 306 THIRD PERIOD. A.D, 311-590. to the ascetic and literary solitude of Betlilelieiu, where he served the church by his JDen far better than he would have done as the successor of Damasus. AtrousTiNE (f 430), the greatest theological authority of the Latin church, at first referred the woi'ds, "6^;^ this rock I vnll huild my cliilrch^'' to the person of Peter, but afterward ex- pressly retracted this interpretation, and considered the jpetva to be Christ, on the ground of a distinction between j?6^^/'<:« (eVl TavTT) Trj Trerpa) and Petrus {av el JTerpo?) ; a distinction which Jerome also makes, though with the intimation that it is not properly applicable to the Hebrew and