The next noticeable thing that Peter is made to do at Rome, is the sending out of his disciples from Rome to act as missionaries and bishops in the various wide divisions of the Roman empire, westward from the capital, which were yet wholly unoccupied by the preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In his supposed character of keeper of the great flock of Christ, having now fully established the Roman see, he turned his eyes to those distant regions, and considering their religious wants and utter spiritual destitution, sent into them several disciples whom he is supposed to have qualified for such labors by his own minute personal instructions. Thus, as rays from the sun, and as streams from the fountain, did the Christian faith go forth through these from the see of Peter, and spread far and wide throughout the world. So say the imaginative papist historians, whose fancy not resting satisfied with merely naming the regions to which these new missionaries were now sent, goes on with a catalogue of the persons, and of the places where they became finally established in their bishoprics. But it would be honoring such fables too much, to record the long string of names which are in the papist annals, given to designate the missionaries thus sent out, and the particular places to which they were sent. It is enough to notice that the sum of the whole story is, that preachers of the gospel were thus sent not only into the western regions alluded to, but into many cities of Italy and Sicily. In Gaul, Spain and Germany, many are said to have been certainly established; and to extend the fable as far as possible, it is even hinted that Britain received the gospel through the preaching of some of these missionaries of Peter; but this distant circumstance is stated rather as a conjecture, while the rest are minutely and seriously given, in all the grave details of persons and places.