PETER, The Apostle, Sylvester Hassell (Quoting Pressense During all this early time the influence of the apostle Peter predominates. The part thus taken by him has been urged as a proof of his primacy. But on closer examination it will be seen that he does but exercise his native gifts, purified and ennobled by the Divine Spirit. Peter was the son of a fisherman named Jonas, of the village of Bethsaida, in Galilee (Matt. 16:17; John 1:44).
He was among the disciples of John the Baptist, and was thus prepared to respond favorably to the call of Jesus Christ. He soon received his vocation as an Apostle. His disposition was quick and ardent, but his zeal was blended with presumption and pride. Living in constant contact with the Master as one of the three disciples who enjoyed his closest intimacy, he conceived for him a strong affection.
His impetuous nature was, however, far from being at once brought under control. He had noble impulses, like that which prompted his grand testimony to the Savior: “Thou art the Christ of God” (Matt. 16:16). But he was also actuated by many an earthly motive, which drew down upon him the Master’s sharp reproach. Once, under the influence of Jewish prejudice, he repelled with indignation the idea of the humiliating death of Christ. At another time he was eager to appear more courageous than all the other disciples, and, again yielding to his natural impetuosity, he drew his sword to defend him whose “kingdom is not of this world.”
It was needful that the yet incoherent elements of his moral nature should be thrown into the crucible of trial. His shameful fall resulted in a decisive moral crisis, which commenced in that moment when, pierced to the heart by the look of Christ, he went out of the court of the high priest and wept bitterly.
He appears entirely changed in the last interview he has with the Savior on the shores of Lake Tiberias. Jesus Christ restores him after his three-fold denial, by calling forth a threefold confession of his love (John 21:15).
Nothing but determined prejudice could construe the tender solicitude of the Master for this disciple into an official declaration of his primacy. We are here in the region of feeling alone, not on the standing ground of right and legal institutions.
Nor has the primacy of Peter any more legal foundation in the famous passage, “Thou art Peter.” Jesus Christ admirably characterized by this image the ardent and generous nature of his disciple, and that courage of the pioneer which marked him out as the first laborer in the foundation of the primitive church. The son of Jonas was its most active, and, as it were, its first stone (laid on Christ, the chief cornerstone).
He was also the rock against which the first tempest from without spent its fury. Beyond this, the narrative of Saint Luke lends no countenance to any hierarchical notions. The church passed through an experience of three hundred years before any organized body of professed Christians attached the Romish sense to Matt. 16:18.
Everything is natural and spontaneous in the conduct of St. Peter. He is not official president of a sort of Apostolic college. He acts only with the concurrence of his brethren, whether in the choice of a new Apostle (Acts 1:15), or at Pentecost (Acts 2:14), or before the Sanhedrim.
Peter had been the most deeply humbled of the disciples, therefore he was the first to be exalted. John’s part being at this time inconspicuous, no other Apostle is named with Peter, because he fills the whole scene with his irrepressible zeal and indefatigable activity.’—Pressense.”
Even if Peter had been made by Christ the primate of the Apostles, there is not a shadow of Bible proof that Peter either had the right or attempted to confer such primacy upon a successor, still less upon the bishop of Rome, where there is no Bible proof of Peter’s ever having been. The Catholic traditions about Peter’s presence in Rome are irreconcilable contradictions.
Peter was married; the popes forbid clerical marriage. Peter had no silver or gold; the popes have their millions. In the council at Jerusalem Peter assumed no special authority, much less infallibility. Peter was publicly rebuked for his inconsistency by Paul, a younger Apostle, at Antioch; the popes are the lords of Catholicism. Peter in his epistles shows the deepest humility, and “prophetically warns against filthy avarice and lordly ambition, the besetting sins of the papacy.” Peter emphatically teaches “the general priesthood and royalty of believers, obedience to God rather than man, condemnation of mental reservation in Ananias and Sapphira, and of simony in Simon Magus, opposition to the yoke of legal bondage, salvation in no other name but that of Jesus Christ.” (Hassell’s History ppg 228, 230)