Chapter IX. The Primacy Of Peter. 107 Our Savior, by the words "thou art Peter," clearly alludes to the new name which He Himself had conferred upon Simon, when He received him into the number of His followers (John i. 42); and He now reveals the reason for the change of name, which was to insinuate the honor He was to confer on him, by appointing him President of the Christian Republic; just as God, in the Old Law, changed Abram's name to Abraham, when He chose him to be the father of a mighty nation. The word Peter, in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, which our Savior spoke, means a rock. The sentence runs thus in that language: "Thou art a rock, and on this rock I will build My Church. " Indeed, all respectable Protestant commentators have now abandoned, and even ridicule, the absurdity of applying the [too] word rock to anyone but to Peter; as the sentence can bear no other construction, unless our Lord's good grammar and common sense are called in question. Jesus, our Lord, founded but one Church, which He was pleased to build on Peter. Therefore, any church that does not recognize Peter as its foundation stone is not the Church of Christ, and therefore cannot stand, for it is not the work of God. This is plain. Would to God that all would see it aright and with eyes free from prejudice. He continues: "And I will give to thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," etc. In ancient times, and particularly among the Hebrew people, keys were an emblem of jurisdiction. To affirm that a man had received the keys of a city was equivalent to the assertion that he had been appointed its governor. In the Book of Revelation our Savior says that He has "the keys of death and of hell,"157 which means that He is endowed with power over death and hell. In fact, even to this day does not the presentation of keys convey among ourselves the idea of authority? If the proprietor of a house, on leaving it for the summer, says to any