A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, 129—“Three unproved assumptions: 1. that Peter was primate; 2. that Peter was bishop of Rome; 3. that Peter was primate _and_ bishop of Rome. The last is not unimportant; because Clement, for instance, might have succeeded to the bishopric of Rome without the primacy; as Queen Victoria came to the crown of England, but not to that of Hanover. Or, to come nearer home, Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States and husband of Mrs. Grant. Mr. Hayes succeeded him, but not in both capacities!” On the question whether Peter founded the Roman Church, see Meyer, Com. on Romans, transl., vol. 1:23—“Paul followed the principle of not interfering with another apostle’s field of labor. Hence Peter could not have been laboring at Rome, at the time when Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans from Ephesus; _cf._ _Acts 19:21; Rom. 15:20; 2 Cor. 10:16._” Meyer thinks Peter was martyred at Rome, but that he did not found the Roman church, the origin of which is unknown. “The Epistle to the Romans,” he says, “since Peter cannot have labored at Rome before it was written, is a fact destructive of the historical basis of the Papacy” (p. 28). See also Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 3:560. Fourthly,—There is no evidence that he really did so appoint the bishops of Rome as his successors. Denney, Studies in Theology, 191—“The church was first the company of those united to Christ and living in Christ; then it became a society based on creed; finally a society based on clergy.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 130—“The Holy Spirit is the real ‘Vicar of Christ.’ Would any one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark eclipse now covers two thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is: The rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of the Vicar of Christ.” See also R. V. Littledale, The Petrine Claims.