terms.  The power of the keys is the preaching of the forgiveness of sins to penitent sinners, and the withholding of grace from those who do not repent.  If that is admitted to be the meaning, we need turn only one leaf in our Bible, and read what is stated in Matt. 18, 18.  There the Lord confers the same authority on all the disciples which He is said in Matt. 16, 19 to have conferred on Peter exclusively.  On this latter occasion Peter, if the Catholics have the right view of the keys, ought to have interposed an objection and said to the Lord, What you give to the others is my property.  Evidently Peter did not connect the same meaning with the words of Christ about the keys as the Catholics.  Christ spoke of this matter once more, and in terms still plainer, at the meeting on Easter Eve, and again addressed all the disciples.  Again Peter made no complaint. (John 20.)

It should be noted , moreover, that in this entire text in Matthew the Lord speaks in the future tense:  “I will build,” “I will give.”  The words do not really confer a grant, but are at best a promise.  It is necessary now that the Catholics find a complement to this text in Matthew, a text which relates that Christ actually carried out later what He promised to Peter in Matt. 16, 18. 19.  The Lord seems to have forgotten the fulfilment of His promise, and the matter seems to have slipped Peter’s mind, too; for we are not told that he reminded the Lord of His promise, though he asked him on another occasion what would be the reward of his discipleship. (Matt. 19, 27 ff.)

Luther has, furthermore, appealed to the Catholics to prove from the Scriptures that Peter ever exercised such an authority as they claim for him.  If Peter had been created the prince of the apostles or the visible head of the Church, we should expect to find evidence in our Bible that Peter acted as a privileged person and was so regarded by the other apostles.  But we may read through the entire book of Acts and all the apostolic epistles:  they tell us very minutely how the Church was planted in many lands, how it grew and spread, but there is not even a faint hint that Peter was regarded as the primate, or Pope, in his day.  When a certain question of doctrine was to be decided in which the congregations of Paul were interested, Paul did not lay the matter before Peter to obtain his judgment on it, but referred it to a council of the Church.  At this council many spoke, and it was not Peter’s, but James’s speech which finally decided the matter. (Acts 15.) When Philip had organized congregations in Samaria, the church at Jerusalem sent Peter and John to visit them.  Peter did not assume control of these churches by his own right, nor had Philip in the first place directed the Samaritans to Peter as their head. (Acts 8, 14 ff.) We have thirteen letters of Paul, three of John, besides the Revelation, one of James, and one of Jude.  The state of the Church, its affairs and development, are the subject-matter of all these writings, but not one of them reveals the popedom of Peter.  Yea, Peter himself has written two epistles and appears utterly ignorant of the fact that the Lord had created him His vicegerent and the visible head of the Church.