As a real institution the Church was marked out by the gifts bestowed on it at the outset by the Divine Founder; out of the plenitude of the power He possessed “in heaven and on earth” He created in her a real, and no mere phantom office, comprising ghostly superiors, viz. the “_ministerium ecclesiasticum_”; hence a twofold society arose consisting of those whose duty it is to guide and those who are guided. The latter receive from the former, i.e. from the hierarchy of priests, bishops and Pope, viz. the successor of Peter, the doctrine handed down by Christ, and preserved intact and infallible, together with Holy Scripture and its true reading. Those who have the oversight over the rest admit the faithful into the sacred company by means of visible rites, and, thanks to the obedience they receive as God’s representatives, there results “a body” of faithful united with Christ, the One True Head. It was to this hierarchy that, according to the Catholic theologians, the solemn words of Christ were spoken: “He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me” (Luke x. 16). “Go ye and teach all nations baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost … and lo I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Matt. xxviii. 19 f.). The “Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven” are entrusted to them and they are told: “Amen I say unto you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven” (Matt. xviii. 18). They may “command” as Paul did, who journeyed from place to place and “commanded them to keep the precepts of the apostles and the ancients” (Acts xv. 41). Peter, moreover, and his successors, received the right and duty to feed “the sheep” as well as the “lambs” (John xxi. 16), besides the especial custody of the keys (Matt. xvi. 19); on him and on his God-given constancy the Church of Christ was built (Matt. xvi. 18). The Holy Ghost “placed” the bishops “to rule the Church of God” (Acts xx. 28). Whoever “will not hear the Church” is shut out from salvation and is to be regarded “as the heathen and publican” (Matt. xviii. 17). Nowhere in these passages, so it was pointed out, is there ever a word about the secular power having any hand in the growth of the great society of God upon earth. Nor could Christ, in view of the object to which He had founded His Church, without proving untrue to Himself, have left behind Him a helpless and unfinished work, dependent for its very life on the discretion of the secular authorities and taking its laws from the State. The Church’s four marks (above, p. 295) point to something higher.