Peter

These men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching directly from Peter and James, from John and Paul, the holy apostles — son receiving from father (though few are like their fathers) — came, by God's will, down even to us, to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds.

And the initiates say that he slew the Egyptian by a word alone, just as later Peter, in the Acts, is recorded as having killed by a word those who had embezzled the price of the land and lied.

And in the Preaching of Peter you would find the Lord called both law and Word.

For they bring forward also that Peter himself and the rest, pillars of the apostolate, were rebuked by Paul because they did not walk with straight foot toward the truth of the Gospel — by that very Paul, mind you, who, still raw in grace, trembling at last lest he had run or were running in vain, was then for the first time conferring with the apostles who went before him.

Now even if Peter and John and James, who were thought to be pillars, were reprehended, the cause is manifest.

The same authority of the apostolic churches will give patronage to the other gospels too, which we likewise have through them and according to them — John's, I mean, and Matthew's — although that which Mark published is affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was.

Through my most reverend and devout brother Peter I greet your love, begging you, as on every occasion so now too, to pray for me, that, being changed from this blameworthy and harmful way, I may at length become worthy of the name of Christ.

But now, through Peter, we address you, at once paying off the debt of greeting, and at the same time furnishing an occasion for a second letter.

" (It is Peter speaking to the Lord.

After the divine resurrection, Christ, addressing him three times, Peter, do you love me?

Indeed, even the chief of the disciples, Peter, the rock of faith, at the very time of the Savior's passion, being for a little while abandoned by a certain providential abandonment—so that he might learn the cheapness and wretchedness of human weakness—fell into the charge of denial;

Is it not written that even Peter, whom you say became the chief of the apostles, had a wife?

"Most High," inasmuch as he is exalted by the right hand of God, as Peter preaches in the Acts;

the Son on earth, whom Peter had acknowledged the Son of God, and the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter what Peter had acknowledged — that Christ is the Son of God.

nor did Peter and John and James, without loss of reason and almost out of their wits — who, if they had seen not the Son's glory to be borne, but the Father, would, I believe, have died on the spot.

Of which times Peter too in the Acts:

The Lord too, in the recess of the mountain, had changed even His garments with light, but had kept His lineaments recognizable to Peter;

They propound, then, to brand some ignorance upon the apostles, that Peter, and those who were with him, were rebuked by Paul.

Did anything lie hid from Peter, called the rock of the Church to be built, who obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of loosing and binding in the heavens and on earth?

So, according to times and persons and causes, they rebuked certain things into which they themselves likewise, according to times and persons and causes, fell — just as if Peter too had rebuked Paul because, while forbidding circumcision, he himself circumcised Timothy.

" It followed that the Psychics should savour this too;

or, "Whatsoever you shall bind or loose on earth shall be bound or loosed in the heavens" — do you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has been derived to you too — that is, to every Church akin to Peter?

"Have we not power to eat and to drink and to lead about women, as also the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?

and he must have been a bold prophet who dared, like Peter of Wakefield, to foretell the speedy downfall of the King.

Thus, in 1207, Peter of Scudimore paid to the exchequer 10 marks for setting homicides free upon pledges, without warrant from the King.

But it may be asserted with substantial truth that Peter the Great laid the foundation of Russian power without much deference to the opinion of Russia, and that modern Prussia was created by Frederick the Great, who certainly drew his ideas of good government from other than Prussian sources.

Lo, we have left all and have followed Thee.

but in the manner we have said before, and with brethren in the same way—as Peter with Andrew, and James with John, the sons of Zebedee—but with brethren of one mind both with one another and with Christ.

Therefore, when the blessed Peter, the chosen, the eminent, the first of the disciples, for whom alone with Himself the Saviour pays the tribute, heard these things, he quickly seized and grasped the saying.

I shall not enter here upon any discussion as to the power of the Pope, that is the Bishop of the Roman Church, nor shall I advance anything but a hypothesis which is accepted by men of the greatest erudition, who lay the greatest stress on the power of the Pope, especially the Spaniards, who with their perspicacity easily see that our Lord Jesus Christ when he said “My kingdom is not of this worl …

, the best and most just of these (the Norman) princes, * * Peter, of Blois, a judicious and even elegant writer, of that age, gives a pathetic description of the venality of justice, and the oppressions of the poor, * * and he scruples not to complain to the king himself of these abuses.

Therefore if Peter has for many years carried on a noisy business on his own land, and his neighbour John makes a new building on his own adjoining land, in the occupation whereof he finds the noise, vibration, or the like, caused by Peter’s business to be a nuisance, Peter cannot justify continuing his operations as against John by showing that before John’s building was occupied, John or his pre …

nor is there any difference between those whom John baptized in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the Tiber.

For if they had entered upon the human baptism of John and were desiring the Lord's, inasmuch as the Lord himself defined one baptism, saying to Peter, who refused to be drenched, He who has once washed has no need to do so again — which surely he would by no means have said to one not baptized;

" Likewise Peter in the Acts of the Apostles:

which being consummated, He did not, I say, stand fast only, but did not even desire help from the Father of the armies of angels, Peter's sword being even rebuked.

" So too against the apostles he asked leave of temptation, not having it save by permission, since the Lord in the Gospel says to Peter, "Behold, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat;

For although soldiers had come to John and received the form of observance, although even a centurion had believed, the Lord afterwards, in disarming Peter, ungirded every soldier.

So too, they say, the apostles observed it, imposing no other yoke of fixed fasts to be undertaken by all in common, and likewise none of Stations, which themselves indeed have their own days, the fourth and the sixth of the week, yet run loosely, neither under the law of a precept nor beyond the latest hour of the day, since prayers also are generally concluded at the ninth hour, on the example o …

Moreover, since in the same memoir of Luke the third hour also of prayer is shown, under which those initiated by the Holy Spirit were held for drunken, and the sixth, at which Peter went up to the upper room, and the ninth, at which they entered the temple—why should we not understand that, while clearly the indifference is preserved that one must pray always and everywhere and at every time, yet …

Peter alone I find to have been married, through his mother-in-law:

Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross.

Peter, forsooth, had laid down that the king indeed must be honoured — yet so that the king be honoured then, when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from divine honours;

For even if you still think heaven shut, remember that the Lord left its keys here to Peter, and through him to the Church — which keys each one, here interrogated and confessing, will carry with him.