This continuity or unity of the church in time is a simple historical fact, and as certain as any other historical fact, and even more so, for it is a fact that has never fallen into the past, and to be established only by trustworthy witnesses or documents. By it the church to-day is and must be as apostolic and as authoritative as in the days of the apostles Peter, James, and John. Individuals die, but the church dies not; individuals are changed, as are the particles of our bodies, but the church changes not. As in the human race individuals pass off, but the race remains always the same; so in the church individuals pass away, but the church remains unchanged in all its integrity; for the individuals die not all at once, and the new individuals born in their places are born into the one identical body, that does not die, but remains ever the same. No matter, then, how many generations succeed one another in their birth and death, the body of the church is subject to no law of succession, and remains not only one and the same church, but always the one and the same present church. The church of to-day is identically the church of yesterday, the church of yesterday is identically the church of the day before, and thus step by step back to the apostles; on the other hand, the church in the time of the apostles is identically the church of their successors down through all succeeding generations of individuals to us. There has never been an interval of time when it was not, or when it lost its identity as one and the same body. The church is precisely as apostolic now as it was in the beginning, or as were the apostles themselves.