PETER (originally Simeon or Simon, pjmir, called also, by a rendering of the Greek Ihτξος into the corresponding word in the Aramaic dialect spoken in Palestine in the days of our Lord, Cephas, xso, John, i. 42), one of the twelve apostles, and author of two epistles in the inspired canon. He was a native of Bethsaida in Galilee, and was the son of a certain Jonas, or John, whence he is named on one occasion in the gospel history Simon Barjona, that is, son of Jona (Matt. xvi. 17). Along with his brother Andrew, he followed the occupation of a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee. It is probable that before they became known to Christ they were both disciples of John the Baptist. That Andrew was so, we are expressly informed by the evangelist John; and as his brother seems to have been much of the same mind with him on religious matters, it is extremely likely that he was so likewise. Their becoming known to Christ was owing to John’s pointing him out on the day after his baptism to Andrew and another disciple (probably the evangelist John), as “the Lamb of God,” on which they immediately followed Christ, and spent some time in receiving his instructions. Shortly after this, Andrew finding Simon, carried him to Christ, who, on receiving him as his disciple, bestowed upon him that surname by which he has since that time been most commonly designated: “When Jesus beheld him he said, thou art Simon the son of Jona; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone (yeετy>ς)l ’ After this interview the two brothers seem to have returned to their usual occupation for a season, as we have an account in Matthew (iv. 18-20), of their being summoned from that occupation by Christ on a subsequent occasion, posterior to his temptation in the wilderness, and to the commencement of his public ministry as a religious teacher. From this time forward they were his devoted and admiring followers. In the course of the evangelical history several anecdotes of Peter are incidentally recorded, for the purpose, doubtless, principally of illustrating the character and teaching of our Lord, but which tend also to throw light upon the history and character of his attached disciple. Such are the accounts furnished by the evangelists of his walking upon the agitated waters of the Sea of Galilee to meet his master (Matthew, xiv. 22, ff.; Mark, vi. 45, ff.); of his bold and intelligent avowals of the undoubted Messiah-ship of Jesus, notwithstanding the difficulties which he, along with the rest of the disciples, felt in reconciling what they saw in him with what they had fondly expected the Christ to be (Matthew, xvi. 13-20); of his rash but affectionate rebuke of his Lord for speaking of suffering and death as in prospect for him, and as forming a necessary part of his mediatorial work (Matthew, xvi. 21-23); of his conduct in first rejecting, with an earnestness bordering on horror, the offer of Christ to wash his feet, and then, when the symbolical nature of that act had been explained to him, his over-ardent zeal that not his feet only, but also his hands and his head, might be washed (John, xiii. 4, ff.); of his bold and somewhat vaunting avowal of attachment to his Master, and his determination never to forsake him, followed by his disgraceful denial of Jesus in the hour of trial (John, xiii. 36, 37; Mark, xiv. 29, &c.); of his deep and poignant contrition for this sin (Matthew, xiv. 72); and of his Lord’s ample forgiveness of his offence, after he had received from him a profession of attachment as strong and as frequently repeated as his former denial of him (John, xxi. 15-18). From these notices it is easy to gather a tolerably correct conception of the predominating features of the apostle’s character up to this period. He seems to have been a man of undoubted piety, of ardent attachment to his Master, and of great zeal for what he deemed his Master’s honour, but at the same time with a mind rather quick than accurate in its apprehensions, and with feelings rather hasty in their impulse than determined and continuous in their exercise. Hence his readiness in avowing his opinions, and his rashness in forming them; and hence also the tendency which beset his honest openness to degenerate into bravado, and his determinations of valour to evaporate into cowardice at appalling forms of danger. His fall, however, and his subsequent restoration, connected as these were with the mysterious events of his Master’s crucifixion and resurrection, and with the new light which had by them been cast around his character and work, produced a powerful change for the better upon the apostle’s mind. From this time forward he comes before us under a new aspect. A sober dignity and firmness of purpose have displaced his former hasty zeal; sagacity and prudence characterize his conduct; and whilst his love to his Master shows no symptom of abatement, it displays itself rather in active labour and much-enduring patience in his service, than in loud protestations or extravagant exhibitions of attachment. In the subsequent Scripture history he is presented to us as the courageous herald of the kingdom of Christ, by whose mouth the first public declaration of salvation through the crucified Jesus was made to the people; by whose advice and counsel the early churches were planted and governed; and by whom the prejudices of Judaism were first fairly surmounted, and the gospel preached in all its universal freeness to the Gentile world.
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The Acts of the Apostles contain recitals of many interesting incidents which befell him whilst engaged in those efforts. Of these, the chief are his imprisonment and trial before the Sanhedrim, for preaching Christ, and his bold avowal of his determination to persist in that work (Acts, iv. 1-22); his miraculously inflicting the punishment of death on the infatuated couple who had dared to try an experiment upon the omniscience of the Holy Ghost (v. 1-11); his visit to Samaria, and rebuke of Simon Magus, who deemed that the miracles of the apostle were the work of some deep magic spell of which he had not yet become possessed, and which consequently he was desirous of purchasing from Peter (viii. 14-24); the vision by which he was taught that the ancient ritual distinctions between clean and unclean had been abolished, and thereby prepared to attend on the summons of Cornelius, to whom he preached the gospel (x. 1-48); his apprehension by Herod Agrippa, and his deliverance by the interposition of an angel, who opened for him the doors of his prison, and set him free (xii. 3-19); and his address to the council at Jerusalem, on the occasion of a request for advice and direction being sent to the church there by the church in Antioch, in which he advocated the exemption of Gentile converts from the ceremonial institutes of the law of Moses (xv. 6-11). In all these incidents we trace the evidences of his mind having undergone an entire change, both as to its views of truth jmd impressions of duty, from what is displayed by the earlier events of his history. On one occasion only do we detect something of his former weakness, and that strangely enough in regard to a matter in which he had been the first of the apostles to perceive, and the first to recommend and follow, a correct course of procedure. The occasion referred to was his withdrawing, through dread of the censures of his Jewish brethren, from the Gentiles at Antioch, after having lived in free and friendly intercourse with them, and his timidly dissembling his convictions as to the religious equality of Jew and Gentile. For this Paul withstood him to the face, and rebuked him sharply, because of the injury which his conduct was calculated to produce to the cause of Christianity. With this single exception, however, his conduct seems to have been in full accordance with the name which his Master had prophetically bestowed on him when he called him Simon the Rock, and with the position which Paul himself assigns to him, at the very time that he recounts his temporary dereliction, as one of the “Pillars of the Church.”^[1. Gal. ii. 9-14. The circumstance of Peter’s having submitted to a rebuke from Paul is so fatal to the pretensions which have been urged in favour of his supremacy over the other apostles, that from a very early age attempts have been made to set aside its force, by the hypothesis that it is not of Peter the apostle, but of another person of the same name, that Paul speaks in the passage referred to; Conf. Euseb. H. E. i. 13. This hypothesis, however, is so plainly contradicted by the words of Paul, who explicitly ascribes apostleship to the Peter of whom he writes, that it is astonishing how it could have been admitted even by the most blinded zealot. See ver. 8, 9. ]

Thus far we are enabled, from the inspired documents, to trace the history of this apostle; but for what remains we must be indebted to evidence of a less explicit and certain character. The testimony of several of the ecclesiastical writers, corroborated by the phraseology employed by the apostle himself in the salutation of his first epistle, makes it highly probable that at some period of his official life he performed an extensive missionary tour throughout those districts, to the converts in which his epistles were addressed. “It appears,” says Origen, “that Peter preached to the Jews in the dispersion, in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia.”^[2. In Genesin, lib. iii. ap.; Euseb. H. E. iii. 1. See also Euseb. iii. 4. ] A less certain tradition reports the apostle as having towards the close of his life visited Rome, become bishop of the church in that city, and suffered martyrdom in the persecution raised against the Christians by Nero. The importance of these points in connection with the claims urged by the Catholics on behalf of the supremacy of the pope, has led to a careful and sifting examination of the accuracy of this tradition; the result of which seems to be, that whilst it is admitted as certain that Peter suffered martyrdom, in all probability by crucifixion,^[3. ' ’ “Petrus passioni Dorninicae adaequatur.” (Tertull. De Ρrcεscrip. 38.) See also Lactant. De Mortibus Persec. c. ii. ] and as probable that this took place at Rome, it has, nevertheless, been made pretty clear that he never was for any length of time resident in that city, and morally certain that he never was bishop of the church there.^[4. See Barrow’s Treatise on the Pope’s Supremacy; Works by Hughes, vol. vii. p. 207, ff.; Campbell’s Lectures on Eccl. Hist, lect. xii.; Neander’s Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Christ. Kirche, bd. ii. s. 311-15; Winer’s Biblisches Realwortsrbuch in Petrus, &c. ] By some an attempt has been made to obtain the support of the apostle’s own testimony in favour of his having at one period resided at Rome, by interpreting the words, “the church that is at Babylon” the salutations of which he sends to those to whom he wrote his first epistle, as applying to the church at Pome ; an attempt which Dr Campbell justly stigmatizes as “poor, not to call it ridiculous.” Even if we admit that at the time when this epistle was written it was understood amongst the Christians that Babylon was the prophetical name for Rome, an admission, however, which is entirely unsupported by evidence, it would remain unexplained why the apostle, in such a mere matter-of-fact affair as the communication of the friendly salutations of one church to another, should have employed the obscure and symbolical language of prophecy, when his meaning could have been so much more distinctly conveyed by a simple statement. This would be the more inexplicable, that the style of Peter is remarkably plain and perspicuous throughout the entire epistle. It seems much more consistent, therefore, with rational principles of interpretation, to understand the statement literally of Babylon in Egypt, in which city, as we learn from Josephus, there was a great multitude of Jews {εν⅛α και tran∂ος ην loυδαιuν, Ant. Jud. l xv. c. ii. sect. 2; see also c. iii. sect. 1), and to which, consequently, it is almost certain, that at some period of his life, “the apostle of the circumcision” (Gal. ii. 8) must have paid a visit.

The assertion that St Peter was bishop of Rome is connected with another by which the claims of the papacy are sought to be established, namely, that to him was conceded a right of supremacy over the other apostles. In support of this, an appeal is made to those passages in the gospels, where declarations supposed to imply the bestowal of peculiar honour and distinction on Peter are recorded as having been addressed to him by our Lord. The most important of these are, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church” (Matt. xvi. 18); and, “Unto thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” &c. (Matt, xvi. 19). At first sight these passages would seem to bear out the assumption founded on them; but upon a more careful investigation it will be seen that this is rather in appearance than in reality. The force of both is greatly impaired for the purpose for which Catholics produce them, by the circumstance, that whatever of power or authority they may be supposed to confer upon Peter, must be regarded as shared by him with the other apostles, inasmuch as to them also are ascribed in other passages the same qualities and powers which are promised to Peter in those under consideration. If by the former of these passages we are to understand that the church is built upon Peter, the Apostle Paul informs us that it is not in him alone that it is built, but upon all the apostles (Ephes, ii. 20); and in the book of Revelation we are told, that on the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem (the Christian church), are inscribed [7:17:312]“the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb n (ch. xxi. 14). As for the declaration in the latter of these passages, it was in all its essential parts repeated by our Lord to the other disciples immediately before his passion, as announcing a privilege which, as his apostles, they were to possess in common (Matt, xviii. 18; John, xx. 23). It is, moreover, uncertain in what sense our Lord used the language in question. In both cases his words are metaphorical; and nothing can be more unsafe than to build a theological dogma upon language of which the meaning is not clear, and to which, from the earliest ages, different interpretations have been affixed. And, finally, even granting the correctness of that interpretation which Catholics put upon these verses, it will not bear out the conclusion they would deduce from them, inasmuch as the judicial supremacy of Peter over the other apostles does not necessarily follow from his possessing authority over the church. On the other side it is certain, that there is no instance on record of the apostle’s having ever claimed or exercised this supposed power; but, on the contrary, he is oftener than once represented as submitting to an exercise of power upon the part of others, as when, for instance, he went forth as a messenger from the apostles assembled in Jerusalem to the Christians in Samaria (Acts, viii. 14), and when he received a rebuke from St Paul, as already noticed. Whilst, however, it is pretty well established that Peter enjoyed no judicial supremacy over the other apostles, it would, perhaps, be going too far to affirm that no dignity or primacy whatsoever was conceded to him on the part of his brethren. His superiority in point of age, his distinguished personal excellence, his reputation and success as a teacher of Christianity, and the prominent part which he had ever taken in his Master’s affairs, both before his death and after his ascension, furnished sufficient grounds for his being raised to a position of respect and of moral influence in the church and amongst his brother apostles. To this some countenance is given by the circumstances that he is called “the first,” hjŭi- roς, by Matthew (ch. x. 2), and that apparently not merely as a numerical, but as an honorary distinction; that when the apostles are mentioned as a body, it is frequently by the phrase, “Peter and the eleven,” or, “Peter and the rest of the apostles,” or something similar; and that when Paul went up to Jerusalem by divine revelation, it was to Peter particularly that the visit was paid. These circumstances, taken in connection with the prevalent voice of Christian antiquity, would seem to authorize the opinion that Peter occupied some such position as that of ιrgoεσ-ruς, or president in the apostolical college, but without any power or authority of a personal kind over his brother apostles.^[5. Campbell’s Ecel. Hist, lect. v. and xii. Barrow’s Treatise, ui sup. Works, vol. vii. p. 144, ff. &c. ]

The extant writings of the apostle Peter are confined to two brief epistles, of which the former has been universally admitted as genuine, whilst the latter has by many been rejected as spurious. The grounds of this rejection, however, are extremely insecure, as they depend chiefly upon nice distinctions and analogies of style between the two epistles, which are seldom drawn with such unerring accuracy as to induce us to attach very much weight to them.^[6. Home’s Introduction, vol. iv. p. 434, ff.; Sherlock’s Dissertation on the Second Epistle of Peter. ] The persons to whom these epistles were addressed were converted Jews scattered over the districts enumerated by the apostle in the commencement of the first of them. The epistles themselves are characterized by great vigour of conception, warmth of feeling, and force of eloquence. The style is glowing and rapid, approaching at times to vehemence; and the sentiments are of the most elevated description. The exhortation to holiness with which the second chapter of the first epistle concludes, is perhaps unequalled in the New Testament for the appropriateness of its sentiments, the beauty of its appeals, and the concentred energy and rapid flow of the style; nor would it be easy to find any passage, either in sacred or profane literature, that should surpass in vividness of description and power of expression the prophetic view of the end of the world with which, towards the conclusion of the second epistle, he enforces his exhortation to holy conversation and godliness. In both epistles we trace the characteristic ardour and the elevated piety of their author, and of both we may justly say, in the language of the excellent Leighton, that they are eminently adapted “to establish Christians in believing, to direct them in doing, and to comfort them in suffering, often setting before them the matchless example of the Lord Jesus, and the greatness of their engagement to follow him.” (n. n. n. n.) Peter of Blois, a learned man of the twelfth century, was born about the year 1120, at the city of Blois, in France, from which he derived his name. His parents being opulent, gave him a learned education. In his youth, when he studied in the university of Paris, he was excessively fond of poetry; and when he had advanced a little further in life, he became no less fond of rhetoric, to the study of which he applied with the greatest ardour. From Paris he removed to Bologna in Italy, to study the civil and the canon law, in the knowledge of which he very much excelled. From his writings it appears that he cultivated medicine, and several branches of the mathematics, with no little care and success. But the study of theology formed the chief delight and business of his life, and in it he not only spent the greatest part of his time, but made the greatest progress. Unfortunately, however, the theology he studied was of that scholastic kind, which consisted in vain attempts to explain and prove the many absurd opinions which then prevailed, by the subtilties of the Aristotelian logic. In attempting to explain the doctrine of the real presence, as held by the Latin church, he was the first who employed the famous term transubstantiation, which was soon afterwards adopted by the church, and has ever since been retained. Being appointed preceptor to William II. king of Sicily, in 1167, he obtained the custody of the privy seal; and, next to the Archbishop of Palermo, who was the prime minister, he had the greatest influence in all affairs. His power, however, was not of long duration; for the archbishop being banished in 1168, Peter soon afterwards left the court of Sicily, and returned into France. But in a short time he found another royal patron, having been invited into England by Henry II. who employed him as his private secretary, made him Archdeacon of Bath, and gave him some other benefices. Having spent a few years at court, however, he conceived a disgust at that way of life, of which in one of his letters he has drawn a very unpleasing picture, and retired into the family of Richard, archbishop of Canterbury, who had made him his chancellor about the year 1176. In this station he continued until the death of the archbishop in 1183, enjoying the highest degree of favour with that prelate, though he used much freedom in reproving him for his remissness in the government of the church. He continued in the same station in the family of Archbishop Baldwin, who succeeded Richard, acting both as his secretary and as his chancellor. In 1187, he was also sent by the latter prelate upon an embassy to Rome, to plead his cause before Urban III. in the famous controversy between him and the monks of Canterbury respecting the church of Hackington. After the departure of his friend and patron Baldwin for the Holy Land in the year 1190, our author was in his old age involved in various troubles, the causes [7:17:313]of which are not distinctly known; and he died about the end of the twelfth century. He appears from his works, which may be justly reckoned amongst the most valuable monuments of the age in which he flourished, to have been a man of great integrity and sincere piety, as well as of a lively, inventive genius, and uncommon erudition. His printed works consist of a hundred and thirty-four letters, which he collected together at the desire of Henry II.; of sixty-five sermons, delivered on various occasions; and of seventeen tracts on different subjects.

Peter I, czar or tsar, and afterwards emperor, of Russia, was the founder of the Russian empire. That country was indeed well known, and of great antiquity; but it had no extent of power, of political influence, or of general commerce in Europe, until the time of Peter. He was born in 1672, and proclaimed czar when only ten years of age, in exclusion of John his eldest brother, who, being of a sickly constitution, was at the same time equally deficient in understanding. The Princess Sophia, his sister by the half-blood, raised an insurrection in favour of John; but, to put an end to the civil war, it was at last agreed that the two brothers should jointly share the imperial dignity. Peter had been very ill brought up, not only through the general defects of education in Russia, but likewise through the arts of the Princess Sophia, who surrounded him with every thing calculated to stifle his natural desire of knowledge and to deprave his mind. But notwithstanding this, his inclination for military exercises discovered itself in his tenderest years. He formed a company of fifty men, commanded by foreign officers, and clothed and exercised after the German manner. He himself entered into the lowest post, that of a drummer, and never rose otherwise than as a soldier of fortune. His design in this was to teach his nobility, that merit, and not birth, formed the only solid title to military employments. He reinforced his company with several others, until at last he had got together a considerable body of soldiers. As he had then no war on his hands, he exercised them in all sorts of mock engagements, and by this means secured to himself a body of well-disciplined troops. The sight of a Dutch vessel, which he had met with upon a lake belonging to one of his pleasure-houses, made such an impression on his mind, that he conceived the almost impracticable design of forming a navy. His first care was to get some Hollanders to build small vessels at Moscow; and he passed two successive summers on board of English or Dutch ships, which sailed out from Archangel, that he might instruct himself in every branch of nautical affairs. In the year 1696, the Czar John died, and Peter now became sole master of the empire. In 1698 he sent an embassy to Holland, and having gone incognito in the retinue, he visited England as well as Holland, to inform himself fully respecting the art of ship-building. At Amsterdam he worked in the yard as a private ship-carpenter, under the name of Peter Michaelof; but he has been often heard to say, that if he had never gone to England, he would still have remained ignorant of the art of ship-building. In 1700 he had got together a body of regular troops, amounting to thirty thousand infantry; and now the vast project he had formed displayed itself in all its parts. He opened his dominions, which till then had been closed, having first sent the principal nobility of his empire into foreign countries to improve themselves in knowledge and in learning. He invited to Russia all the foreigners he could meet with, who were capable of instructing his subjects in any respect, and offered them great encouragement to settle in his dominions. This raised many discontents; and the despotical authority which he exerted on all such occasions was scarcely sufficient to suppress them. In 1700, being strengthened by the alliance of Augustus king of Poland, he made war on Charles XII. king of Sweden.

His ill success at first did not discourage him; for he used to say, “I know that my armies must be overcome for a great while; but even this will at last teach them to conquer.” He afterwards gained considerable advantages, and founded St Petersburg in 1703. In 1709 he gained a complete victory over the Swedes at Pultowa. In 1712 he was surrounded by the Tuιks on the banks of the Pruth, and seemed inevitably lost, had not the Czarina Catherine bribed the grand vizier, and the czar’s prudence completed his deliverance. In 1716 he made a tour through Germany and Holland, and visited the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. It would be endless to enumerate all the various establishments for which the Russians are indebted to him. He formed an army according to the tactics of the most experienced nations; he fitted out fleets in all the four seas which border upon Russia; he caused many strong fortresses to be raised according to the best plans, and made convenient harbours; he introduced arts and sciences into his dominions, and freed religion from many superstitious abuses; he made laws, built cities, cut canals, and executed many other works; he was generous in rewarding, and impartial in punishing; faithful, laborious, and humble, yet not free from a certain roughness of temper natural to his countrymen. He had indeed cured himself of excess in drinking; but he has been branded with several other vices, particularly cruelty. He published the unfortunate history of his son Prince Alexis, towards whom some blame his severity, whilst others think it no greater than was absolutely necessary. He perlect-ly knew the respect due to persons of merit; and not only heaped honours upon them during their life, but paid to their memory marks of esteem after their death. He died of the strangury in 1725, and is said to have left the world with the magnanimity of a hero and the piety of a Christian.

Peter the Wild Boy- This extraordinary creature at one time occasioned a great deal of speculation amongst the learned; but we do not know that any satisfactory causes have been assigned for the striking difference observed between him and other human beings.

The following account of him is extracted from the parish register of North Church, in the county of Hertford. “Peter, commonly known by the name of Peter the Wild Boy, lies buried in this church-yard, opposite to the porch. In the year 1725 he was found in the woods near Hamelen, a fortified town in the electorate of Hanover, when his majesty George I. with his attendants, was hunting in the forest of Hertswold. He was supposed to be then about twelve years of age, and had subsisted in those woods upon the bark of trees, leaves, berries, &c. for some considerable length of time. How long he had continued in that wild state is altogether uncertain; but that he had formerly been under the care of some person, was evident from the remains of a shirt collar about his neck at the time when he was found. As Hamelen was a town where criminals were confined to work upon the fortifications, it was then conjectured at Hanover that Peter might be the issue of one of those criminals, who had either wandered into the woods and could not find his way back again, or, being discovered to be an idiot, was inhumanly turned out by his parents, and left to perish, or shift for himself. In the following year, 1726, he was brought over to England, by the order of Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, and put under the care of Dr Arbuthnot, with proper masters to attend him. But notwithstanding there appeared to be no natural defect in his organs of speech, after all the pains that had been taken with him he could never be brought distinctly to articulate a single syllable, and proved totally incapable of receiving any instruction. He was afterwards intrusted to the care of Mrs Titchbourn, one of the queen’s bedchamber [7:17:314]women, with a handsome pension annexed to the charge. Mrs Titchbourn usually spending a few weeks every summer at the house of Mr James Fenn, a yeoman farmer at Axter’s End, in this parish, Peter was left to the care of the said Mr Fenn, who was allowed thirty-five pounds a year for his support and maintenance. After the death of James Fenn he was transferred to the care of his brother Thomas Fenn, at another farm-house in this parish, called Broadway, where he lived with the several successive tenants of that farm, and with the same provision allowed by government, to the time of his death, 22d of February 1785, when he was supposed to be about seventy-two years of age.”

Peter's Pence, the name applied to an annual tribute of one penny, paid at Rome by every family at the festival of St Peter. Ina the Saxon king, when he went in pilgrimage to Rome about the year 740, paid this contribution to the pope, partly as alms and partly in recompense of a house erected in Rome for English pilgrims; and the same continued to be paid generally until the time of Henry VIII., when it was enacted, that henceforth no person should pay any pensions, Peter’s pence, or other impositions, for the use of the bishop or see of Rome.