An Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses

No doubt, he would seek to establish his assumption upon the very terms of the first promise by contending that The Rock, upon which Christ builds his perpetually existent Church, is Peter conjointly with his alleged line of successors, the Bishops of Rome.

But this is merely to build one assumption upon another assumption—to pile an ecclesiastical Ossa upon an ecclesiastical Pelion Referring to the Greek myth where giants piled Mount Ossa on Mount Pelion to reach the heavens, symbolizing an impossible or arrogant endeavor.—to place (after the manner of the Hindu legend) his spiritual universe upon the horns of a bull, the bull upon the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise itself upon vacuity.

What PROOF has the learned Bossuet that Peter and his alleged successors, the Bishops of Rome, are conjointly the Rock upon which Christ promised that he would build his Church? A man of his attainments must have known full well that the Church of the three first centuries was profoundly ignorant of any such speculation. Some of the old writers deemed the individual Peter to be the Rock; some pronounced the Rock to be Christ himself; and some—which is the most ancient interpretation—asserted the Rock to be Peter’s Confession of Christ in his two-fold character, human and divine: the Messiah born a true man of the Virgin, and yet the essential Son of God.