And further: That very intricacy of the interwoven Catholic line, which renders it so impracticable a thing to trace the individual private Succession of any Bishop upwards to the Apostles, gives it an amassed mightiness, and hitherto uncalculated strength, when tracked downwards from the beginning. The twelve Apostles began it, by ordaining the first Bishops; and when in the very next generation the practice became established, of three Bishops assisting at every fresh consecration, it was at once morally impossible to pervert, or intercept the grace Apostolical. In the very next generation any three Bishops who came to a fresh Ordination, would each bring a three-fold Succession, so as to convey the Grace which had flowed through nine different Churches. The difficulty of failure would thence be still further augmented in the next generation, and the next. And what would be even at so early a stage, a moral impossibility, would needs go on accumulating from age to age. So that if at any time by any possibility, the Church’s vigilance was defeated, and one of the ordaining Bishops was of doubtful Apostolicity, there were two more united with him, and so preserving the grace of the institute. {62a} This was in accordance with the very first of the extant Apostolical Canons, {62b} which enacts, “Let a Bishop be ordained by two or by three Bishops” (and the larger number was almost invariably required). The strictness with which this was kept up, is borne witness to alike by Fathers, {63a} and Councils, and Historians, from the very beginning. And if this were not unequivocally and universally the case, (as it certainly is, so as to make quotation and reference seem like affectation,) it would be easy to bring abundant and overbearing evidence of another kind. For the watchful care and pains of all the Churches in the matter of Ordinations is just as notorious, as that Christianity existed and prevailed in the world. The very faults of the early Christians, no less than their virtues, contributed to secure the Succession. Far indeed from lethargy were those times. Abounding heresies, mutual jealousy, and religious zeal, all combined to augment the Church’s watchfulness. And, above all, the vigilantly sustained Discipline, by which the whole community was so interwoven, that the greatest and smallest affairs of Christian concern were alike communicated to the whole body. Not only would any new ordination be known in each of the three Churches from which the ordaining Bishops came; but it was very presently notified also to the Metropolitans {63b} by Episcopal letters. And beyond this, the election of a Bishop was a matter well known, and publicly canvassed. It was not a thing which (like the Canon of Scripture) might have been for a time kept to themselves, by the learned. No, the common people knew perfectly of the transaction. An infraction of an Apostolic rule, even in a minor point,