A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

III. This Peter came and preached the Gospel at Rome. Though you can by no means prove this Assertion, so as to make it de fide, or necessarily to be believed of any one man in the world, much less to become meet to enjoy a place among those fundamentals that are tendered unto us to bring us unto Settlement in Religion; yet being a matter very uncertain, and of little importance, I shall not much contend ⟨p. 169⟩with you about it. Witnesses merely humane and fallible you have for it a great many; and exceptions almost without number may be put in against your Testimonies, and those of great weight and moment. Now although that which you affirm might be granted you, without any real advantage unto your Cause, or the enabling of you to draw any lawful inferences to uphold your Papal claim by, yet to let you see on what sorry uncertain presumptions you build your faith and profession, and that in and about things which you make of indispensable necessity unto Salvation; I shall in our passage remind you of some few of them, which I profess seriously unto you, make it not only Questionable unto me whether or no, but also somewhat improbable that ever Peter came to Rome. 1. Though those that follow and give their assents unto this Story are many, yet it was taken up upon the credit and report of one or two Persons, as Eusebius manifests, Lib. 2. cap. 25. Whether Dionysius Corinthius, or Papias, first began the Story, I know not; but I know certainly that both of them manifested themselves in other things, to be a little too credulous. 2. That which many of them built their Credulity upon, is very uncertain, if not certainly false; namely that Peter wrote his first Epistle from Rome, which he calls Babylon in the Subscription of it. But wherefore he should then so call it, no man can tell. The Apocalypse of John who prophesied what Rome should be in after-Ages, and thereon what name should be accommodated unto it for its false worship and Persecution, was not yet written. Nor was there any thing yet spoken of or known among the Disciples, whence they might conjecture Rome to be intended by that Appellation.

III. This Peter came and preached the Gospel at Rome. Though you can by no means prove this Assertion, so as to make it de fide, or necessarily to be believed of any one man in the world, much less to become meet to enjoy a place among those fundamentals that are tendred unto us to bring us unto Settlement in Religion; yet being a matter very uncertain, and of little importance, I shall not much contend