Saint, Ignatius..... "Let all things be done to the honour of God, give respect to your bishop as you would God should respect you. My soul for theirs which obey their bishop, presbyters, and deacons; God grant that my portion may be the same with theirs." And let my soul have the same share with that blessed Martyr that said so. Amen.
Laud, Archbishop and Martyr.—Conference with Fisher, xvi. 29.
"I am with you always unto the end of the world." Yes most certain it is,—present by His Spirit; or else in bodily presence He continued not with His Apostles, but during His abode on earth. And this promise of His spiritual presence was to their successors; else, why "to the end of the world?" The Apostles did not, could not, live so long. But then to the successors the promise goes no farther, than "I am with you always," which reaches to continual assistance, but not to divine and infallible.
"The Comforter the Holy Ghost shall abide with you for ever." Most true again; for the Holy Ghost did abide with the Apostles, according to Christ's promise thus made, and shall abide with their successors for ever, to comfort and preserve them.
Ibid.—xxv. 15.
Christ promised the Keys to St. Peter. (Matt, xvi.) True; but so did He to all the rest of the Apostles (Matt. xviii. John xx.), and to their successors as much as to his.... St. Augustine is plain, "If this were said only of St. Peter, then the Church hath no power to do it," which God forbid! The Keys, therefore, were given to St. Peter and the rest in a figure of the Church, to whose power and for whose use they were given. But there's not one key in all that bunch, that can let in St. Peter's successor to a "more powerful principality" universal than the successors of the other Apostles had.
