We have, then, here the principle of authority and tradition as seated in the hierarchy, and at the same time the whole order and unity of the Church as girdling the world by its chain of the Episcopate, and as possessing the truth and exhibiting it in its quality of an institution. It is before us and at work in its succession of men, in its sacraments which they administer,(157) in its truth which is imparted by the one and delivered by the other. It is no vague congeries of opinions held by individuals with the diversity of individuals, but a body strongly organised, and possessing an imperishable life, the life of its Author. And we have all this mentioned as fulfilled at the distance of one life from our Lord’s ascension, while indeed his kinsman and elder in age, S. Simeon, is still bishop of Jerusalem, and mentioned by one of whom a beautiful though insufficiently grounded legend says that he was that child whom our Lord had called and placed before His disciples as the model of those who should enter into His kingdom. He was at least so near in time to Christ that this could be said of him. He is the bishop of Antioch; he is on his way to be thrown to the beasts in the Colosseum at Rome;(158) he is welcomed on his way by church after church, and he sees and describes the bishops, in their several boundaries through the earth, as each maintaining the mind of Christ in the unity of his Body. Such is the Church merely stated as a fact towards the beginning of the second century.