1. First, the power thus instituted comes down from Christ upon Peter and the Apostles, and from them upon their successors. It does not spring from election out of the body, but by an exactly reverse process; the body itself springs from it. On the eve of the Passion, just after the institution of the Priesthood, our Lord said: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you that you should go and should bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain."[38] This is the whole order of the divine appointment, from beginning and throughout. The Apostles develop out of themselves ministry and people. This growth Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost inaugurated, as the power from on high came down upon him and his brethren. The whole history of the Church through the first three centuries is a faithful continuation of this beginning. But here we have to note how every particle of the Scripture record testifies to the spiritual power coming down from above, not rising up from below. The figure of this in the old law was Aaron invested by Moses with the Priesthood in the face of the whole congregation of the children of Israel; the counterpart in the new is Christ ascending to heaven, blessing His brethren as He ascended, and sending down upon them the promise of the Father. Thus the divine polity unfolds itself in a spiritual descent. 2. The second quality is the completeness of this power. The absence of details in the records, far from being an impeachment of this completeness, subserves to its expression, because the power given is summed up in a general head, which embraces all particulars under it. Of this summing up we have in the same Gospel of St. John an instance both in what is said to the Apostles and in what is said to Peter. As to the Apostles, the Incarnation, often called by the Fathers the Dispensation, embraces the whole work of our Lord; not only His coming in our flesh, but His satisfaction for the sins of the world in the flesh assumed. All this was a mission from the Father. Now, in investing His Apostles with power on the evening of the Resurrection, He used this very expression: "As My Father hath sent Me, I also send you." Whatever there was to be done and ordered in the Church from the beginning to the end was, by the force of the similitude with Himself thus used, included in these words. They are truly imperial words, constituting a spiritual empire. So, again, as to St. Peter, our Lord was "the great Pastor of the sheep in the blood of the everlasting testament." As such He had been marked out by prophecy: it was His name of predilection: "I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." Now, this and none other was the term He used when He would convey to Peter, in the concluding words of the last Gospel, supreme authority: "Lovest thou Me more than these? Be shepherd over My sheep." What could be added to this