he confessed Christ as Son of the living God, and because it was said to him, Upon this rock of solid faith I will build my Church."
In the same place St. Epiphanius teaches that the words "feed my sheep" were not said by the Lord to commit to Peter the government of the Church, but to reïnstate him in his apostolic dignity, which he had forfeited by denying Christ. "The Lord," he says, "called Peter again after his denial; and to efface the three denials, he calls upon him thrice to confess him."
Elsewhere[1] he makes St. Paul the equal of St. Peter at Rome, saying of them, "Peter and Paul, the first of all the Apostles, were equally Bishops of Rome." And he thus speaks of St. James of Jerusalem:
"He (James) first received the see, (of Jerusalem;) it is to him first that the Lord intrusted his throne upon earth."[2]
It is clear that he did not believe that it was Peter who had inherited the throne of the Lord in this world. He believed then that the primacy granted to St. Peter was a mere priority, as Pope Leo[3] explains it in the following passage: "The disposition of the truth remains; and the blessed Peter has persevered in that strength of the rock which he had received, and has never abandoned the reins of the Church which had been confided to him; he received ordination before the others, in order that when he is called rock (Pierre) and foundation, ... we might know, by the mystery of these titles, what union exists between him and Christ."
This text proves that St. Leo saw in St. Peter nothing more than a priority of ordination. He believed that it was by his ordination uniting him to Christ that he was the rock (Pierre) and the foundation of the Church.
