in his flesh, according to the whole strength of the expression, "in carne suâ?"
Does not this exclude all idea of a universal pastor, taking the place of and representing Christ? Therefore, does it not, in one word, destroy all the assumptions of the modern Papacy, and reduce the true Papacy to a primacy established by the Church?
Further, St. Gregory, in quoting the epistle to the Romans, calls these Romans "disciples" of St. Paul. St. Paul only wrote his epistle to the Christians at Rome, A.D. 58. There were then at Rome very few Christians — not established as a Church, properly so called, and assembling at the house of Aquila, one of their number. They had come to Rome from various countries that had been evangelized by St. Paul, and are thus called by St. Gregory his disciples. They wrote to him, beseeching him to visit and instruct them. Paul replied to them by his letter, in which he promises to evangelize Rome. He went there two years later. There he found some Jews, who only knew the Christians by name, and who, therefore, cannot have already been converted by St. Peter, their special Apostle. Paul formed a church at Rome, and gave it for a bishop one Linus, his disciple, whom Tertullian, St. Irenæus, and Eusebius mention, as we have already seen, as the first Bishop of Rome.
Where, now, is the alleged episcopate of St. Peter at Rome, upon which the Ultramontanes base all their systems? St. Peter evidently came to Rome but a short time before he suffered martyrdom there. It was because of the martyrdom of the first of the Apostles, and not because of his episcopate at Rome, that the councils, like that of Chalcedon and that of Sardica, for example, granted certain special privileges to the Bishops of Rome. Nor does St. Gregory, in his letters to the Patriarchs, endeavour to ascribe to himself, by right
