This Augustinian interpretation of the petra has since been revived by some Protestant theologians in the cause of anti- Romanism." Augustine, it is true, unquestionably understood by the church the visible Catholic church, descended from the apostles, especially from Peter, through the succession of bishops ; and according to the usage of his time he called the Roman church by eminence the sedes apostoUca.^ But on the ' Tract, in Evang. Joannis, 124, § 5. The original is quoted among others by Dr. Gieseler, i. 2, p. 210 (4th ed.), but with a few unessential omissions. ' Especially by Calov in the Lutheran church, and quite recently by Dr. Words- worth in the Church of England (Commentary on Matt. xvi. IS). But Dr. Alford decidedly protests against it, with most of the modern commentators. ' De utilit. credendi, § 35, he traces the development of the church "ab apos- tolica sede per successiones apostolonmi ; " and Epist. 43, he incidentally speaks of the "Romana ecclesia, in qua semper apostolicas cathedrae viguit principatus." Greenwood, i. 296 sq., thus resolves the apparent contradiction in Augustine: "In common with the age in which he lived, he (St. Augustine) was himself possessed with the idea of a visible representative unity, and considered that unity as equally the subject of divine precept and institution with the church-spiritual itself The spiritual unity might therefore stand upon the faith of Peter, while the outward and visible oneness was inherent in his person ; so that whUe the church derived her esoteric and spiritual character from the faith which Peter had confessed, she re- ceived her external or executive powers from Peter through ' the succession of 308 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. otlier hand, like Cyprian and Jerome, he lays stress npon tLe essential unity of the episcopate, and insists that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were committed not to a single man, but to the whole church, which Peter was only set to repre- sent.' "With this view agrees the independent position of the Korth African church in the time of Augustine toward Rome, as we have already observed it in the case of the appeal of Apiarius, and as it appears in the Pelagian controversy, of which Augustine was the leader. This father, therefore, can at all events be cited only as a witness to the limited authority of the Roman chair. And it should also, in justice, be ob- served, that in his numerous writings he very rarely speaks of that authority at all, and then for the most part incidentally ; showing that he attached far less importance to this matter than the Roman divines.^ The later Latin fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries prefer the reference of the jpetra to Peter and his confession, and transfer his prerogatives to the Roman bishops as his suc- cessors, but produce no new arguments. Among them we mention Maximus of Turin (about 450), who, however, like Ambrose, places Paul on a level