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THE PAPACY.
79

if he had submitted and declared himself in favour of the pretensions of the Bishops of Rome. In fact, in his Treatise upon Church Unity, he positively denies the primacy of St. Peter himself; he makes that Apostle merely to be the type of unity, which resided in the apostolic college as a whole; and by succession in the whole episcopal body, which he calls the see of Peter. It is only by a series of the strangest of distortions that the Roman theologians understand by this last expression the see of Rome. They can not give such a sense to it without completely forgetting the rest of the text from which this is taken. We will give it as an example among a thousand of the want of good faith of the partisans of popery, when they cite from ancient traditions. After mentioning the powers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ promised them to him alone, though they were to be given to all. " In order to show forth unity," he says, "the Lord has wished that unity might draw its origin from one only.[1] The other Apostles certainly were just what Peter was, having the same honor and power as he.[2] All are shepherds, and the flock nourished by all the Apostles together is one, in order that the Church of Christ may appear in its unity."

The see of Peter in St. Cyprian's idea, is the author-

  1. Here is the explanation of the passage, of which we have already spoken, where St. Cyprian calls the Church of Rome "Source of sacerdotal unity."
  2. In some manuscripts, In this place it has been added, "But the primacy has been given to Peter, in order that there might be but one church and one see. Sed primatus Petro datur ut una Ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur." These words could be explained in a sense not Ultramontane, by that which precedes in St. Cyprian upon Peter — his type of unity; but it is useless to waste time in explaining an interpolated text. Thus it was regarded by the learned Baluze, who prepared the edition of the works of St. Cyprian, published subsequently by the Benedictine Don Maran. When that edition was published, one named Masbaret, professor at the Seminary of Angers, obtained authority from the government to reëstablish the passage. It was at that time thought desirable not to oppose Rome, and the passage was inserted by means of a card. See l'Histoire des Capitulaires, in which notice the observations of Chiniac upon the Catalogue of the Works of Stephen Baluze.