The Petrine Claims - 1889 Author:Richard Frederick Littledale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. LACK OF PROOF FOR ST. PETER'S EPISCOPATE AT ROME. Thus the four great sources of historical appeal, to wit, the wording of the ancient Liturgies... more »; the glosses of the early Fathers and Doctors of the Church on the alleged Petrine charter in the Gospels; the Canons of all the most important Synods ever held in the Church before the era of the Reformation, including every one of the true CEcumenical Councils, and the acts of these same Synods, those of Popes, and of eminent Fathers, are all clear in their disproof of claims made for the divine supremacy and infallibility of the occupant of the Roman See, even on the assumption that he is, in virtue of that position, the successor and heir of St. Peter himself—an assumption by no means adequately sustainable. For, in point of fact, we have no right to make any such assumption at all. The contention on the Ultramontane part, it must be incessantly repeated, is twofold : that the Papal claims are of the nature of privilege, and that privilege one divinely revealed. It has been shown already that Roman Canon law hedges every claim of privilege round with the most stringent requirements of documentary and illustrative proof, and within the narrowest limits of interpretation and exercise; and also that the tokens of revelation which it requires in all other cases are the express letter of Holy Scripture, and—in some instances or— the unanimous tradition of the Church Universal. Dreams, visions, miracles, may be, and often are, alleged as ground enough for the canonization of a departed believer, or for the licensing of some popular devotion, but not for the establishment of any doctrine as an integral part of theCatholic faith, much less in proof of such a strictly legal claim as that of privilege, which from its very na...« less