Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1870-05-17
The two Saint Peters.

In history there are two st. Peters. One
is the ambitious, the INSCRIPTIONS, the
cruel and tyrannical creation of the church
at Rome Every unhallowed and worldly
impulse was gradually numbered among
the attributes of the great apostle In the
third century his Roman defamers began to
invest him with an ambitious design Of
suhjectlng all other bishops. In the fifth,
Leo openly demanded for him a universal
prlmacy of authority that was denied both
at Chalcedon and Constantinople. At a
later period he was made Temporal prince,
ruling over the Roman states by force and
fraud. In the eleventh century the haugh-
ty Hildebrand, in the hallOwed name OF
Peter, proclaimed himself the temporal
and spiritual master Of the world. In the
thirteenth, Innocent ILL.,, to enforce the
authority of Rome, filled Europe with
bloodshed, and exterminated the herejics
of Provence. st. Peter was now made the
author of the Inquisition, the champion OF
the Crusades, the oppressor of the humble,
a universal prosecutor. Still later, he was
represented by the horrible vices of a Bor.
gia. At the Reformation he was held up
to mankind as the foe to rising knowledge,
the patron of a dull conservatism. He
was supposed to have inspired the bitter
maleyOence of the Council of Trent, and
to have commenced every crime Of Charles
V. or Phillip II. In the nineteenth cen
fury his name is once more invoked by the
Bishop of Rome in exciting new assault
upon human freedom. Priests and pope,
in their final council, present once more
to mankind their traditional st. Peter
ambitious, cruel, tyrannical-and declare
MS inallibility.
Very different was the true St. Peter of
the Gospels and the Acts He was ever
! ,menting his own fallibiity. In amoment
of terror, at the thought of death, he had
denied his Saviour On him the eye Of af
lection had been turned reproachfully; to
him had been spoken the words of indi.na-
ton, Get thee behind me, Satan" His
fervent love had won forgiveness; he was
the rock on which the church was built
Again he had denied his Master when he
,trove to enforce the Mosaic law on the fol-
! lowers of Christ; again he yielded, CON
science smitten, to the interce sion of
/ James and the fierce denunciation Of St
Paul. At the sacred supper twas not Pc
! ter that leaned on the bosom of the Lord
aud only his age and his rude eloquence
gave him any precedence among the di,-
ciples. Often the first to act or speak, lis
advice was not always followed. To Jane,
the just, to John and Peter, the Lord, after
his resurrection, communicated a divine
knowledge, and Peter seems to have paid
Il willing Difference to the family Of his
Master.
His true greatness, his inspired eminence
,bove mankind, lay in the humility with
which he subdued his own impetuous ma
lure, in the lessons Of gentleness and puri
y which he so freely incucates upon biz
disciples. To him the worship paid to q
uodern pope must have seemed a shocking
,.lolatry. 81 am but man." he cried to
Roman convert who would have ado Ell
i'm. He could scarcely have presided II
n auto de ic, for his language is ever me
'iiul and furbearing. For himself he di
ldimed all superiority, aud would be only
N elder among elders Instead of the vi
ar Of Christ, the lord Of kings, and keep
r Of the sword of persecution, he woul,
ave al men humble themselves to on,
. mother. Love US brethren" he cried
''oe pitiful, be courteous, not rendering eyi
t for evil God resisteth the proud, an,
5iveth grace to the humble" To such
nature the vain strife Of contendng Dish
+ Fps, the pretensiOns of priests to spiritua
= and temporal despotism, the unhallowe
e ,plendOrs Of the medieval church, the hor
: rors of the Inqusition, and the massacre
p If the religious wars the pride Of Hide
brand, the cruel rage Of an Innocent III.
. must have seemed the orgies Of evil spirit
I Had in a sacred robe.-Harpers Haga-ia,