y amounted simply to the recognition of
something like an honorary precedence. At that period it was, perhaps,
deemed equally imprudent and ungracious to quarrel with its pretensions,
more especially as the community by which they were advanced was
distributing its bounty all around, and was itself nobly sustaining the
brunt of almost every persecution. In the course of time, the Church of
Rome proceeded to challenge a substantial supremacy; and then the facts
of its early history were mis-stated and exaggerated in accommodation to
the demands of its growing ambition. It was said at first that "its
faith was spoken of throughout the whole world;" it was at length
alleged that its creed should be universally adopted. It was admitted at
an early period that, as it had enjoyed the ministrations of Peter and
Paul, it should be considered an apostolic church; it was at length
asserted that, as an apostle was entitled to deference from ordinary
pastors, a church instructed by two of the most eminent apostles had a
claim to the obedience of other churches. In process of time it was
discovered that Paul was rather an inconvenient companion for the
apostle of the circumcision; and Peter alone then began to be spoken of
as the founder and first bishop of the Church of Rome. Strange to say, a
system founded on a fiction has since sustained the shocks of so many
centuries. One of the greatest marvels of this "mystery of iniquity" is
its tenacity of life; and did not the sure word of prophecy announce
that the time would come when it would be able to boast of its
antiquity, and did we not know that paganism can plead a more remote
original, we might be perplexed by its longevity. But "the vision is yet
for an appointed time--at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it
tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry."
[162:1]

CHAPTER XI.

THE PERSECUTIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH, AND ITS CONDITION AT THE
TERMINATION OF THE FIRST CENTURY.

Jesus Christ was a Jew, and it might have been expected that the advent
of the most illustrious of His race, in the character of the Prophet
announced by Moses, would have been hailed with enthusiasm by His
countrymen. But the result was far otherwise. "He came unto his own, and
his own received him not." [163:1] The Jews cried "Away with him, away
with him, crucify him;" [163:2] and He suffered the fate of the vilest
criminal. The enmity of the posterity of Abr