took place in a. d. 69. On the other hand, Onuphrius extends the Roman episcopate of Peter from a. d. 50 to 75, but nevertheless describes his martyrdom as taking place in the year 69. If this be history, what is fable?
The episcopate of St. Peter at either city is irreconcilable with the very nature of the apostleship itself. That office involved the duty of preaching the gospel to all nations, and, by the pen of inspiration, to all times. The apostles were the qualified and commissioned deponents to the world at large of the facts of our Saviour's life, death, and resurrection. Of these great events they gave the testimony of "eye-witnesses;" and upon them, as foundation-facts, they were to announce to Jews and Gentiles, the civilized and the barbarous, the bond and the free alike, those great truths and offers of mercy, which Omnipotence corroborated by signs and wonders, and distributions of the Holy Ghost. One, therefore, who, like St. Peter, had been invested with this glorious legation, could not, in the fulfilment of its obligations, sink down into the station of a bishop of a local church. The two offices were not compatible. As pastor of a particular communion, he would cease to hold the world as his charge, or the universal church as his fold: in a word, the bishop of Antioch, or of Rome itself, would no longer have been the apostle.
The first of the constituted chief pastors or bishops of Antioch, was Evodius or Euodius. He was a bishop of the pure apostolical school. But little, or absolutely nothing, is certainly known of his life or death. The Greeks have a tradition that to him St. Paul makes reference in Phil. iv. 2, 3; but the name there recorded is evidently that of a female. He is also said to have been the writer of an epistle or discourse, entitled, "Light," not a single sentence of which has survived.
C
