Peter of recovery” and restoration. {12a} Again, the promise, “whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” {12b} conveys no peculiar advantage or pre-eminence to St. Peter; for the very same power is conveyed afterwards by our Lord Himself to the whole number of the Apostles. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins _ye_ remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins _ye_ retain, they are retained.” {12c} In respect to the privilege with which that promise is introduced, “I give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” if these words really have any meaning distinct from the power already mentioned of binding and loosing, they refer prophetically to St. Peter, as the person by whose instrumentality the gates of the Church would be opened to mankind. And accordingly with one key the Apostle, on the day of Pentecost, opened the gate of the Church to the believing Jews and proselytes, when by the sermon which he preached at Jerusalem he converted about three thousand souls; and with the other key he afterwards opened the gate of the Church to Cornelius and his friends, who were the first Gentile converts. {13a} The declaration, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock {13b} I will build my church,” is a text of very ambiguous meaning, and cannot therefore be the ground of infallible assurance. We have no means of clearly ascertaining whether our Lord refers to the person of St. Peter as a foundation for the Church, or to the confession of St. Peter made in the preceding verse. “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God.” A large proportion of the fathers, including Hilary, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, and Augustin, {13c} understood our Saviour’s declaration as referring solely to the confession of Faith made so distinctly and so zealously by the Apostle. The text itself seems evidently to require the interpretation. To speak strictly, Christ Himself is the sole foundation of the Christian Church; and an Apostle could only be so in a secondary sense. In this secondary sense, however, the Church is not founded upon St. Peter only in particular, but on the Apostolic college in general; as St. Paul more than once affirmed. “Ye are built,” he says to the Ephesians, “upon the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” {13d} “Other foundation,” he says to the Corinthians, “can no man lay.” {13e} And again, addressing the Church of Corinth, (when the same inspired writer reckons up the different gradations of Christian ministers,) he does not mention St. Peter first, as nearer the foundation than any other member of the Apostolic college; but speaks of the whole body in the following general terms; “God hath set some in his Church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers.” {13f} The Revelations of St. John describe in like manner the wall of the holy city, as having “twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.” {14a}