Chapter XXIV: 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 A new era was, however, now coming upon the Church; her Founders were gradually being withdrawn from her, and it was necessary that she should receive such a complete and permanent organization as would enable her to transmit to succeeding ages the saving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 perpetually raised up to show forth the same Offering in the Church below.

Thus, though up to the time of St. Paul's martyrdom (A.D. 67) Episcopal rule, as distinct from Apostolic, would seem to have been exceptional, before the death of St. John (A.D. 100), government by the Bishops had undoubtedly become the recognized rule and system of the Church.