nd steady basis should
not be wanting on which the New Jerusalem might rise through time to
eternity[1].

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Section 1. _Second Council at Jerusalem._

[Sidenote: A.D. 67.]

[Sidenote: Purposes of the Second Council.]

There is good reason for believing[2] that after the martyrdoms of St.
Peter, St. Paul, and St. James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and
about the time of the invasion of the Holy City by Vespasian, a Second
Council of such of the Apostles as still survived was held for the
purpose of electing a successor to the See of Jerusalem, and definitely
settling the future government of the Church. [Sidenote: Bishops only
rarely appointed at first,] Bishops had already been consecrated in
certain cases, as at Ephesus, Crete, and Rome; but during the time that
the Apostles were still engaged in founding and governing the different
branches of the great Christian community, the appointment of Bishops
(in the sense of heads of the Church) seems to have been the exception
rather than the rule. [Sidenote: but now everywhere to replace the
Apostles.] A new era was, however, now coming upon the Church; her
Founders were gradually being withdrawn from her, and it was necessary
that she should receive such a complete and permanent organization as
would enable her to transmit to succeeding ages the saving grace of
which the Apostles had been the first channels, that so what had been
founded through their instrumentality might be continued and extended
through the ministry of others.

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[Sidenote: The establishment of the Apostolical Succession the special
work of St. John,]

This work of organization was fitly entrusted to St. John, who for so
many years was left upon earth to "tarry" for the Lord, on Whose Breast
he had leaned, and Whose teaching had filled his soul with adoring
love, and with those depths of spiritual knowledge which are stored up
for us in the "Theological Gospel." [Sidenote: and the necessary
consequence of his teaching.] It seems natural that he to whom it was
given most fully to "enlighten" the Church respecting the Blessed
Mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Two Holy Sacraments, should
also be charged with the care of providing for the continual
transmission of the sacramental grace of the Incarnation through the
"laying on of hands," and that he who saw and recorded the glorious
ritual belonging to the Heavenly Altar, should organize that system by
which Priests might be p