out insisting upon the fact, that the tendency of authentic history is opposed to the assertion that St. Peter was ever bishop of Antioch, it may be observed, that could his episcopate there be established, the Jacobites, as a specific body ecclesiastic, date from a period more than five hundred years after the death of that apostle. The earliest bishop of Antioch whom they can rightfully consider as a chief pastor, is Severus, surreptitiously intruded upon that patriarchate by the emperor Anastasius; and who, tried by the test of proper ecclesiastical law, would be found to have had but a dubious title to the episcopal dignity at all. Their orders, moreover, have never been cleared of the suspicion thrown upon their genuineness by the statements of the historians Maris and Amrus, that Jacob Al Bardai, being only a simple presbyter, gave ordination, nevertheless, to a multitude both of priests and bishops.[1] But upon controverted topics of this kind it is not our province to enter. The subject of a succession of individuals, each duly qualified for, and legitimately constituted in, the episcopal office from any of the apostles downwards, when examined with even a merely canonical exactness, to say nothing of a scriptural judgment, becomes a labyrinth of difficulties: and it would seem that Divine Providence had so overruled or permitted certain events in the history of all churches which have made such a claim, as to confound the pretensions of those who are disposed to glory in the adven-
- ↑ Antiocheni Jacobitarum patriarchæ, quamvis successionem habent propriorum ex sua hæresi antistitum, ea tamen non adeò certa est, quum Severus Antiochenus et Jacobus Baradæus multas contra communem ecclesiæ disciplinam ordinationes celebrassent, quarum validitas in dubium vocari poterat. Et sanè parùm commodè sensisse de illis Nestorianos testantur Maris et Amrus, qui Jacobum Baradæum simplicem sacerdotem fuisse scribunt; ordinasse tamen episcopos et sacerdotes bis millenos et amplius.—Renaudot, Liturg. Orient. tom. i. p. 365.
