Renowned Anglican Commentator Henry Alford (1810-1871) on the Petrine Implications of Matthew 16:18 ("Rock")

From: The New Testament for English Readers, four volumes, London: Rivingtons, 1868; reprinted by Baker Publishing Group, 1983 (see more on Alford here and here).

The name Peter (not now first given, but prophetically bestowed by our Lord on His first interview with Simon, John 1:43) or Cephas, signifying a rock, the termination being only altered from Petra to Petros to suit the masculine appellation, denotes the personal position of this Apostle in the building of the Church of Christ. He was the first of those foundation-stones (Rev. 21:14) on which the living temple of God was built: this building itself beginning on the day of Pentecost by the laying of three thousand living stones on this very foundation. That this is the simple and only interpretation of the words of our Lord, the whole usage of the New Testament shews: in which not doctrines nor confessions, but men, are uniformly the pillars and stones of the spiritual building. See 1 Pet. 2:4-6: 1 Tim. 3:15 (where the pillar is not Timotheus, but the congregation of the faithful) and note: Gal. 2:9: Eph. 2:20: Rev. 3:12. And it is on Peter, as by divine revelation making this confession, as thus under the influence of the Holy Ghost, as standing out before the Apostles in the strength of this faith, as himself founded on the one foundation, Jesus Christ, 1 Cor. 3:11 -- that the Jewish portion of the Church was built, Acts 2-5, and the Gentile, Acts 10-11. . . .

The application of the promise to St. Peter has been elaborately impugned by Dr. Wordsworth. His zeal to appropriate the rock to Christ has somewhat overshot itself. In arguing that the term can apply to none but God, he will find it difficult surely to deny all reference to a rock in the name Peter. To me, it is equally difficult, nay, impossible, to deny all reference, in "upon this rock," to the preceding word Peter. Let us keep to the plain straightforward sense of Scripture, however that sense may have been misused by Rome.

(Vol. 1, p. 319)