With 2024 around the corner, Elmer Truesdell Merrill’s work, Essays in Early Christian History is becoming Public Domain in the coming year. Unfortunately, it is long out of print in the USA. If you want the whole book, (and why shouldn’t you?), you will have to order it from London. I highly recommend it. Here is chapter 11 – “St. Peter and the Church in Rome”. I think it is fair use to share it so that my supporters have a chance to offer me some personal guidance as I prepare my own work …
MerrillWith that, I should state that I did not copy this myself. It was a gift to me from the late Archimandrite Orthodox priest, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, who longed to share it with me but only had one copy back in the days before there was any such thing as a PDF. Occasionally since then, I run across it in my office, but today, for my own convenience and for those few interested in what sources I have for my opinions on the whereabouts of Peter and the origin of the Papal doctrine, I am uploading it to a part of my web site that isn’t linked to anything else. Then when the work becomes Public Domain in the coming year, I may link it for public access – probably when/if I complete my book, The Church and the Papacy.
I should say a word about this book. It isn’t an attack on the Catholic Church as the cover might suggest. Far from it. It is a very charitable attempt at offering some corrections to ecclesiology gone awry that may lead to unity among the historic churches, including those many consider heterodox.