Year: 1872

was st. Peter ever at Rome?


A public meeting was held in Rome in
February last, to discuss the validity of
the Papal assumption that St. Peter was
in that city in the year of our Lord AZ !;
that he held the pontificate of Rome
twenty-five years, and In the year of Sc,
under the reign of Nero, died there, a
martyr to the faith.


Nothing that has happened, not even
the establishment of Bible Society in
Rome, better illustrates the marvellous
change which the political events of the
past year have wrought in the metropo-
lis of Christendom. The Pope showed
his sense Of its significance by prohibit
ing his clergy from continuing the dis
cussion, in which he originally authoriz-
ed them to participate. and by order
ing a solemn Iridium to be celebrated
in st. Peters, with the view of making
amends to the injured apostle for the
pubic expression "of such outrageous
doubts" in the city where he had planted
his church.


The question of st. Peters residence at
Rome had often been raised before, and
howeverably It'll had been treated by the re-
speetive disputants in the recent discus
sions, it is hardly possible that they
could have added much to the strength
of either position. The Importance, how
ever, of their debate at this time, and in
the city of Rome, is not to be measured
by the novelty or familiarity of the ar
guments employed. 1t is probably the
first time that the Catholic public ever
dared to lend its ears to the considera.
ton of such doubts. The secular arm,
which in the earlier days of the papacy
prevented such Controversies from reach
ing its lay subjects, is now stayed the
thunders of the Vatican, if they do not
sleep, are comparatively innocuous and
there are very few or no secular princes
left who are able and willing to serve as
Papal inquisitors. Hundreds and thous-
ands of Catholics will be led by this dis
cussion to look INTO a question so vital to
the church in which they have been rear
ed, and to read and weigh class of ar
guments to which their minds would
have been quite inaccessible even one
short year ago.


But the whole fabric of the Papacy rests
upon an unqualified faith in the dogma
here again put in controversy; for, if St.
Peter was never in Rome, or was not
there under such conditions of notoriety
as must necessarily have attached to his
ecclesiastical sovereignty, with all its
present pontifical prerogatives, then the
apostolic chain by which the papacy
claims to descend from Christ, and
through which its present spiritual au-
thority is derived, lacks the first link,
and every succeeding link, like the first,
must be spurious.


! Next to the inspiration of the Bible,
there is probably no question in contro-
versy among men involving a wider
range of consequences than this which
has suddenly come to disturb the repose
of the venerable incumbent of the Vati-
can. Have all the nations of the earth
for the last eighteen centuries been the
victims of a gigantic fraud 1? Has the
Roman Catholic world for that period
been ruled, and is it still ruled, by sue
cesion of conscious or unconscious i'm.
posters ? Is the whole theory of Papal
supremacy forgery or fraud Has
all the blood split in its defence, or in
the wars and prosecutions of its prov
ocations, been wasted ? These are ques
tions the agitation of which is no longer
to be confined to the seclusion of the
cloister or to be "veiled under the OBJ
scurity of a learned language They
present living, practical, vital issues, ant
involve consequences under the mere
conception of which the Imagination
staggers. BY the decision which is nov
to be given them, it is not improbable
that the world will bide.-August Gal
aey.


JOHN l. FILKINs AGAIN.-Deputy
Sheriff Graft has just returned from
Cincinnati prison, and furnishes little
information relative to the notorious ex.
press robber and would-be-assassin, John