[137] John xx. 30, xxi. 25, xvi. 12. [138] Renaudot, Dissertatio de Liturgiarum Orientalium Origine et Auctoritate, p. li. [139] St. Cœlestini, Ep. 21, Coustant, p. 493. The part quoted is supposed to have been added to St. Cœlestine's letter (which refers to the death of St. Augustine as having just happened) a little later, but was always joined with it afterwards from the beginning of the sixth century. [140] Franzelin, De Traditione, Thesis vii. p. 49. [141] Translated from Franzelin, Tractatus da Traditione Divina et Scriptura, pp. 50-53, down to "The Teaching Office." [142] As, _e.g._, Rom. xvi. 17; 1 Cor. vii. 17, xi. 23, xiv. 33, xv. 12; 2 Cor. i. 18; Gal. i. 18; Phil. iv. 9; Colos. ii. 6, 7; 1 Thess. iv. 2; 2 Thess. ii. 14; 2 Tim. ii. 2; Heb. ii. 3, referred to by Franzelin, but especially Ephes. iv. 11-16, which is of itself sufficient to decide the whole question. [143] St. Irenæus, iii. 24. [144] See Franzelin, De Traditione, p. 134. CHAPTER VII. THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO CONSTANTINE. _The Independence of the Ante-Nicene Church shown in her Mode of Positive Teaching and in her Mode of Resisting Error._ The Church is the Body of Christ as it moves through the centuries from His first to His second coming. We have been tracing the course through the first three of these centuries. Let us recur for a moment to the beginning, when we behold our Lord, at the head of His Apostles, passing through the towns and villages of Galilee, preaching that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, imparting, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the principles of that divine kingdom, healing every infirmity and disease; then sending out His Apostles, and afterwards His disciples, by two and two, as His heralds and messengers. This was the prelude, the type and germ, of what was to come. Then, after His Passion and Resurrection, we see the first stadium in the mission of the Apostles. They speak in His name; they manifest His power; His Person is in the midst of them; His Spirit upon them. The Apostle who once denied Him stands at their head, and speaks with authority, declaring the mission intrusted to him. Forthwith three thousand, who speedily become five thousand, accede to the voice of his preaching. In twelve years Judæa and Palestine and Antioch have had the new doctrine planted among them, and then it is set up in Rome, the sceptred head of heathendom. The forty years of that first mission are crowned by the destruction of the deicide city, after that, by the hands of the Apostles and the fellow-labourers whom they have chosen, the suckers of the Vine have been laid in all the chief places of the Roman world. A kingdom had been preached and a kingdom had been founded; and its basis had been laid in authority—that of a crucified Head, transmitted to His Apostles.