the text, "Thou art Peter," etc. He has found but seventeen Fathers or Doctors of the Church who have applied to St. Peter the word the stone, (la pierre;) he has pointed out more than forty of them, who have understood this expression as applied to the confession of faith made by St. Peter, that is to say, to the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Ultramontanes cannot dispute this, but they pretend that by giving the faith of Peter as the foundation of the Church, the Lord necessarily granted to that Apostle not only an indefectible faith, but also infallibility, and that these gifts have passed to his successors.
Now, all the Fathers of the Church, quoted for the latter interpretation, have meant by the confession of St. Peter, only the belief he had confessed, his objective faith, or the object of that faith, and not the subjective faith or the personal adherence that he had given to it. The belief confessed by St. Peter being the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Fathers quoted have interpreted the text, "Thou art Peter," etc., in this sense, that the divinity of Jesus Christ is the rock upon which the Church rests. All speak in the clearest terms to this effect. Not one of them speaks of any privilege whatever granted to St. Peter personally — and à fortiori, not of any privilege descended to the Bishops of Rome as his successors. Thus, even had St. Peter received any prerogative from Jesus Christ, it would be necessary to prove that this prerogative was not personal; but the Ultramontanes dispose of that difficulty with extreme facility. They simply affirm that the privileges granted to St. Peter belong to his successors; they rest these privileges upon texts which say nothing at all about them; they affirm, on the strength of these falsified texts, that the Bishops of Rome are the only successors of St. Peter, because that Apostle died Bishop of Rome.
What they say upon this last point is the second example that we shall give of their false reasoning. They
