gathering of an assembly of believing listeners, who acknowledged their faith in Jesus by profession and by the sacraments. The organization of this religious assembly might indeed be made more perfect at one time than at another; as for instance, a new church, which during an apostle’s stay with it and preaching to it, had been abundantly well governed by the simple guidance of his wise, fatherly care, would, on his departure, need some more regular, permanent provision for its government, lest among those who were all religious co-equals, there should arise disputes which would require a regularly constituted authority to allay them. The apostle might, therefore, in such advanced requirements of the church, ordain elders, and so on; but such an appendix could not, with the slightest regard to common sense or the rules of honest interpretation of language, be said to constitute the founding of a church. The very phrase of ordaining elders in a church, palpably implies and requires the previous distinct, complete existence of the church. In fact the entity of a church implies nothing more than a regular assembly of believers, with an authorized ministry; and if Peter had been preaching several months to the Jews of the trans-Tiberine suburb, or to the Romans of the Viminal mount, there must have been in one or both of those places, a _church_, to all intents, purposes, definitions and etymologies of a church. So that for him, almost a year after, to proceed to _found_ a church in Rome, was the most idle work of supererogation in the world. And all the pompous statements of papist writers about any such formality, and all the quotations that might be brought out of the fathers in its support, from Clement downwards, could not relieve the assertion of one particle of its palpable, self-evident absurdity. But the fable proceeds in the account of this important movement, dating the apostolic reign of Peter from this very occasion, as above fixed, and running over various imaginary acts of his, during the tedious seven years for which the story ties him down to this one spot. Among many other unfounded matters, is specified the assertion, that from this city during the first year of his episcopate, he wrote his first epistle, which he addressed to the believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,――the countries which are enumerated as visited by him in his fictitious tour. This opinion is grounded on the circumstance of its being dated from Babylon, which several later fathers understood as a term spiritually applied to Rome; but in the proper place this notion will be fully discussed, and the true origin of the epistle more satisfactorily given. Another important event in the history of the scriptures,――the writing of the gospel of Mark,――is also commonly connected with this part of Peter’s life, by the papist historians; but this event, with an account of the nature of this supposed connection,