so thoroughly exposed that no controversialist of discrimination thinks of reviving it as an argument against the succession of the Bishops of Rome. Now and then it may be related to an ignorant crowd by an anti‐popery mountebank of our cities during times of religious excitement, but it is never heard from the lips of an educated Protestant. We are inclined to think, however, that the class of minds that seeks to throw doubt upon S. Peter’s residence at Rome in order to subvert the Primacy of the Apostolic See would not hesitate, in view of the evidence from early ecclesiastical writers, to introduce again this Papess Joan to their unlearned readers. Turning, then, to the proofs of the subject of our paper, we take as the motto for our investigation of this and all kindred ecclesiastical questions the golden words of Tertullian: “Id esse verum, quodcunque primum; id esse adulterum quodcunque posterius.”(4) Or that petition of a great Anglican divine: “Grant, O Lord! that, in reading thy Holy Word, I may never prefer my private sentiments before those of the church in the purely ancient times of Christianity.”(5) The earliest testimony is borne by S. Ignatius. He was closely connected with the apostles, both as a hearer of their teachings and sharer of the extraordinary mysteries of their faith.(6) S. John was his Christian Gamaliel, at whose feet he was taught the doctrines of Christianity, which prepared him not only to wear the mitre of Antioch, the most cultivated metropolis of the East, but also to receive the brighter crown of a martyr’s agonizing death. Full of years, the follower of the beloved disciple was hurried to Rome, to seal with his blood the truth of the religion of Christ. On his journey to the pagan capital, he was permitted to tarry for a season at Smyrna, to visit, for the last time, S. Polycarp, the aged bishop of that city. Here, in view of the dreadful death that awaited him in the Roman amphitheatre, and in communion with the revered fellow‐laborer of his life, he wrote his four epistles. From the one to the Romans we quote the following evidence: “I do not command you as S. Peter and S. Paul did; they were apostles of Jesus Christ, and I am a mere nothing” (the least).(7) “What can be more clear,” says the Anglican expositor of the Creed, Bishop Pearson, “from these words than that this most holy martyr was of opinion that Peter, no less than Paul, preached and suffered at Rome?” Eusebius relates, upon the authority of Papias and S. Clement of Alexandria, that “S. Mark wrote his gospel at the request of S. Peter’s hearers in Rome,” and he further adds that “S. Peter mentions S. Mark in his first epistle, written from Rome, which he figuratively calls Babylon.”(8) S. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, in his epistle addressed to the Romans, affirms that S. Peter and S. Paul preached the Gospel in Corinth and in Rome, and suffered martyrdom about the same time in the latter city.(9)