Popery condemned by scripture and the fathers - End Time Deception

have not succeeded.
•
SCRIPTURE AND T-IIE FATHERS. 8;>
He may yet do great things
and marvellous by a steady perseverance.
There
is the greater prospect of success, as he occupies
a ground, of which these near-sighted Popes
could not perceive the advantage. From the
whole of this dispute it appears, that they knew^
no other foundation for the
supremacy than the
canons of Nice. Now, it stands upon a much
surer bottom ; and besides, the traditions of
eighteen centuries may be wrested to support the
building.
I will, in the next place, introduce the R. to
who, being a cler-
his learned friend St. Jerome,
gyman employed in the service of Pope Damasus,
ought to know something of the supremacy of
these early times. " Wherever there is a bi-
" shop," says he, in his epistle to Evagrius,
'*
whether at Rome or Eugubium, Constanti-
•'
nople or Rhegium, Alexandria or Tanis, he
" is of the same worth, and of the same priest-
'*
hood ; the advantage of wealth, and the dis-
*'
advantage of poverty, neither make a bishop
*'
higher nor lower ; for they are all successors
" of the apostles.*' St. Jerome, in these words,
places the most eminent and the most obscure
Sees equally on a level.
Notv/iihstanding the numerous quotations
which the R. has produced from St. Cyprian, in
defence of Popish supremacy, no ancient bishop
contended more strenuously against it. He
D
would