the Church at Rome.[1] He could not say more explicitly, that Clement did not in this matter act of his own authority, by virtue of any power he individually possessed. Nothing in the letter itself gives a suspicion of such authority. It thus commences: "The Church of God which is at Rome, to the Church of God which is at Corinth." The writer speaks of the Ecclesiastical Ministry, in relation to several Priests whom the Corinthians had rejected most unjustly; he looks upon this Ministry as wholly derived from the Apostolic Succession, attributing neither to himself nor to others any Primacy in it.
There is every reason to believe that St. Clement draughted this letter to the Corinthians. From the first centuries it has been considered as his work. It was not as Bishop of Rome, but as a disciple of the Apostles, that he wrote it. Without having been charged with the government of the Roman Church he had been made Bishop by St. Peter, and had been the companion of St. Paul in many of his Apostolic visitations. It may be, that he had worked with St. Paul for the conversion of the Corinthians. It was natural, therefore, that he should be commissioned to draw up the letter of the Church of Rome to a Church of which he had been one of the founders. And so, Clement speaks to them in the name of the Apostles, and above all of St. Paul, who had begotten them to the faith. Even had he written to them as Bishop of Rome, it would not be possible to infer any thing from this in favour of his universal authority. St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenæus of Lyons, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, have written letters to divers churches, not excepting that of Rome, without thereby pretending to any other authority than that they possessed as bishops, to do God's work in all places.
- ↑ Ibid. chap. xxxviii.
