As regards ancient Church traditions, it is wonderful what futile things they are. Beausobre has, I think, clearly shown that, in large measure, they come from the Apocryphal writings, invented to promote some devilish object or another, particularly the famous Leucius Charinus's. The virginity of Mary is treated by the early fathers on wholly other ground, and quite different stories invented at first to maintain it than the bold ground, taken at last, of Church authority. I have very little or no doubt, she had a family by Joseph. They believed brothers were brothers, for centuries, and first gave Joseph a former wife, and then had Mary brought up in the Temple by the priests. Nor did they believe in her perpetual virginity, properly speaking. But Peter's being at Rome, according to the actual tradition, certainly rests on the "Acts of St. Peter," I suppose of Leucius. Origen quotes from them, what afterward became the belief of the so-called Christian Church. It is a pity Beausobre did not bring together, more soberly, the proofs in order. He affords an excellent clue, and many materials, but in rather a bantering way—just, it is true, for such miserable trumpery, in one sense, but not exactly worthy of dealing with Satan's power, nor so orderly nor plain a conviction as if more solemnly put together. See Beausobre's Histoire, etc., chaps. 2 and 3.