Note 124 — Chapter VIII

This Montanist corruption (into which Ambrose on Ps. 38, n. 37, and Pacian in his three letters to Sempronian, state that the Novatians also fell,) induced some fathers, and especially Augustine, (Enarrat. on Ps. 108. n. 1, Tract 118 on John, n. 4, and last Tract n. 7) to teach that the keys were bestowed on Peter so far forth as he represented the person of the Church in right of his Primacy. By which mode of speaking they meant this one thing, that the power of the keys, as being necessary to the Church, and instituted for her good, began indeed in Peter, and was communicated to him in a peculiar manner but by no means dropt, or could possibly drop, with him.