While Peter[48] was "passing through all," that is, exercising his general supervision as primate of the Church, God sent His angel "in a vision manifestly" to "a certain man in Cesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of that which is called the Italian band, a religious man, and fearing God with all his house, giving much alms to the people, and always praying to God." And the angel says to him: "Thy prayers and thine alms are ascended for a memorial in the sight of God, and now send men to Joppa, and call hither one Simon, who is surnamed Peter; he will tell thee what thou must do." Though God, then, sends an angel, it is left to _Simon, who is surnamed Peter_, to declare His counsel, in what affected the salvation of innumerable souls. Other Apostles there were to whom had been said equally, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature," and "Ye shall be witnesses to Me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth;" and "as the Father hath sent Me, I also send you." Yet putting aside all these, as on so many other occasions, Peter is preferred, and that because to him alone was said, "on this rock I will build My Church," and again, "Feed My lambs, be shepherd over My sheep." Fitting it was that, when the wall between the Jews and Gentiles should be taken away, by him specially, all should be collected into one, on whom, as the divinely-laid foundation, all were to rest. Fitting, again, that the Lord's prophecy, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; those also I must bring; and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd," should be fulfilled chiefly by his ministry to whom the Lord had committed His own office of universal visible pastor. For the Church, in her very birth, and in the whole process of her growth, bore this upon her forehead, that _universality_ as well as _unity_ belonged substantially to Peter, and that it was no less his function to gather up all nations into the mould of unity by his ministration as the one chief shepherd, than to embrace them all in the wide circuit of his love. Therefore it is a marvellous agreement in which the _institution_ of the Primacy has a corresponding _execution_; and as the latter confirms the former, so from the former you might anticipate the latter before it was recorded in the sacred history.