The Acts of the Apostles, which the church orders us to receive as of divine inspiration, informs us nothing more. St Luke to whom this work is generally attributed, has transmitted to us, neither the actions, miracles nor death of his heroes. We are reduced to seek our information thereupon from traditions, which the interests of the clergy would wish us to regard, almost as sacred as divine inspirations. According to these respectable traditions, our Apostle shed his blood for the faith in the propagation of which he had laboured; he was, say they, beheaded in the reign of Nero, and in the sixty-sixth year of the Christian era. After what has been said, we ought naturally to regard St. Paul as the true founder of the pontifical see of Rome. Nevertheless certain traditions, useful to the Roman Pontiffs, oblige us to believe that it was St. Peter, who established his throne in the capital of the world; the popes have thought, that their interests required, that they should pass for the authorized successors of this Prince of the Apostles, to whom Christ himself according to the Gospel, granted immense rights and privileges. These traditions then make St. Peter travel to Rome, prior to St. Paul, and only regard the latter as the subaltern associate in the Apostolic labours of the former. Nevertheless some critics have ventured to doubt of the reality of St. Peter's voyage to Italy, and his foundation of the first see in the world, some authors otherwise very orthodox, without regarding the interests of the Pope, or respect for the traditions which favour them, have treated those pretensions as chimeras: as to the heretics, the sworn enemies of the authority of the Roman Pontiff, they have asserted, that the voyage of St. Peter to Rome was a fable invented by the supporters and partizans, with a design to exalt his authority. Both parties found their doubts or assertions upon these grounds. First, That the books which the church considers as inspired, make no mention of the voyage of Simon Peter, although the circumstance of going to plant the faith in the capital of the world, was sufficiently remarkable to claim a notice in preference to all the minor cities, which the Acts inform us that he visited to preach; in fact, the Holy Ghost, or St. Luke his organ, wishing to inform us in this history of the means made use of by God, to propagate the Gospel, could not without injustice, omit such a signal success, nor fail to give the honour of it to St. Peter, in case he had a claim to it.