And, if I do not deceive myself, the direct drift of all this is to answer the question, whether the doctrine of Peter's Primacy, and its virtue, as the constituent of unity and Catholicity, is contained in the most solemn standard of faith, the creed. For although there are unimpeachable testimonies to prove that the creeds were not published and explained to Catechumens, in order to convey to them a full and complete Christian instruction; and though it be proved further to have been the purpose of the Church's ancient teachers to omit many points in the creeds which were to be set before the initiated at a more suitable season afterwards, it may nevertheless be said that the most commonly received articles of the creed may be regarded as so many most fruitful germs, from which the remaining doctrines would spontaneously spring. And so, to keep within our present point, what is more plain than that the sum of doctrine concerning Peter's Primacy, contained in the Bible, illustrated by the Fathers, and defined by Councils, is involved in that article of the creed in which we profess that the Church is one and Catholic? No doubt there nowhere occurs in the creeds, _expressed in so many words_, mention of Peter, or of the Primacy bestowed on him, or of hierarchical subordination; yet it is most distinctly stated that the Church is one and Catholic. What meaning, then, were the faithful to give to those epithets? What were they to intend in the words, I believe one Catholic Church? What but the meaning of the words themselves, which they received from the Church's teachers together with the creeds? But they could not form the conception of one Church and that Catholic, without thinking likewise of one Catholic _principle_ of the Church; nor could they assign the dignity of that one Catholic principle to any other but Peter, whom alone they had invariably been taught to have been set over all. For what S.[138] Bernard wrote in mediaeval times, "For this purpose the solicitude of all Churches rests on that one Apostolic See, that all may be united under it and in it, and it may be careful in behalf of all to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," must be considered nothing but a repetition of the faith which resounded through the whole world, from the very beginning of the Christian religion. Unless, therefore, any can be found who prefer asserting _either_ that true believers _never_ understood what they believed, in professing the Church to be one and Catholic, _or_ that they understood this _otherwise_ than it had been universally and constantly explained by the Church's teachers; it must be admitted, that faith in Peter's Primacy, and in the power bestowed upon it for the purpose of making the visible kingdom of Christ one and Catholic, is coeval with that profession of the creeds which sets forth the Church as one and as Catholic.[139] FOOTNOTES: