Rock of Salvation, the enduring basis on
which the living temple of God was to be reared! Tertullian and Cyprian,
in the third century the two most eminent fathers of the West,
countenanced the exposition; [358:2] and though both these writers were
lamentably deficient in critical sagacity, men of inferior standing were
slow to impugn the verdict of such champions of the faith. Thus it was
that a false gloss of Scripture was already enthralling the mind of
Christendom; and Stephen boldly renewed the attempt at domination
commenced by his predecessor Victor. His opponents deserved far greater
credit for the sturdy independence with which they upheld their
individual rights than for the scriptural skill with which they unmasked
the sophistry of a delusive theory; for all their reasonings were
enervated and vitiated by their stupid admission of the claims of the
chair of Peter as the rock on which the Church was supposed to rest.
[358:3] This second effort of Rome to establish her ascendancy was,
indeed, a failure; but the misinterpretation of Holy Writ, by which it
was encouraged, was not effectively corrected and exposed; and thus the
great Western prelate was left at liberty, at another more favourable
opportunity, to wrest the Scriptures for the destruction of the Church.

From the middle of the third century, the authority of the Roman bishops
advanced apace. The magnanimity with which so many of them then
encountered martyrdom elicited general admiration; and the divisions
caused by the schism of Novatian supplied them with a specious apology
for enlarging their jurisdiction. The argument from the necessity of
unity, which was urged so successfully for the creation of a bishop
upwards of a hundred years before, could now be adduced with equal
plausibility for the erection of a metropolitan; and, from this date,
these prelates undoubtedly exercised archiepiscopal power. Seventy years
afterwards, or at the Council of Nice, [359:1] the ecclesiastical rule
of the Primate of Rome was recognised by the bishops of the ten
suburbicarian provinces, including no small portion of Italy. [359:2]

For the last forty years of the third century the Church was free from
persecution, and, during this long period of repose, the great Western
see enjoyed an unwonted measure of outward prosperity. Its religious
services were now conducted with increasing splendour, and distressed
brethren in very distant countries shared the fruits of i