The later Latin fathers add their testimony, and even the devout Augustin (sermons 15, 16, de sanct, &c.) is quoted in support of it. Baronius gives all these evidences, (Annales, 45, § 1,) and goes on to earn the cardinal’s hat, which finally rewarded his zealous efforts, by maintaining the unity and universality of this apostolic foundation, and the absolute supremacy consequently appertaining to the succession of Peter in the Roman see. _Peter’s chair._――This fable (page 225) is from Baronius, who wrote about 1580; but alas! modern accidental discoveries make dreadful havoc with papistical antiquities, and have done as much to correct the mistake in this matter, as in Justin’s blunder about Simon Magus. I had transcribed Baronius’s story into the text as above without knowing of the fact, till a glance at the investigations of the sagacious Bower gave me the information which I here extract from him. “They had, as they thought, till the year 1662, a pregnant proof, not only of St. Peter’s erecting their chair, but of his sitting in it himself; for till that year, the very chair, on which they believed, or would make others believe, he had sat, was shown and exposed to public adoration on the 18th of January, the festival of the said chair. But while it was cleaning, in order to be set up in some conspicuous place of the Vatican, the twelve labors of Hercules unluckily appeared engraved on it. ‘Our worship, however,’ says Giacomo Bartolini, who was present at this discovery, and relates it, ‘was not misplaced, since it was not to the wood we paid it, but to the prince of the apostles, St. Peter.’ An author of no mean character, unwilling to give up the holy chair, even after this discovery, as having a place and a peculiar solemnity among the other saints, has attempted to explain the labors of Hercules in a mystical sense, as emblems representing the future exploits of the popes. (Luchesini catedra restituita a S. Pietro.) But the ridiculous and distorted conceits of that writer are not worthy our notice, though by Clement X. they were judged not unworthy of a reward.” (Bower’s Lives of the Popes, Vol. I. p. 7, 4to. ed. 1749.)