Thus the double power which expresses the divinely-established government of the Church, the Primacy and the Episcopate, is as close a transcript of the Lord's life on earth with His Apostles as the diocese taken by itself. In His intercourse with His Apostles He is the germ of the Bishop with his priests; in His Vicariate bestowed upon Peter He repeats or rather continues His visible Headship on earth.
But spiritual jurisdiction is the expression of Christ's sovereignty on earth, and in the order just described it is linked with His Person as strictly as the worship exercised by means of His Priesthood, and the spiritual character which every one of His children bears. Surely no kingdom has ever been so contained in its king, no family in its father, no worship in its object, as the Christian kingdom, family, and worship, which together is the Church. Is it, then, any wonder that all Christian hearts from the first were filled with the blessing of belonging to such a creation as this, in which to them their Redeemer lived and reigned, penetrated them with His own life, and gathered them in His kingdom? Are not the words of S. Cyprian just what we should expect those to utter who overflowed with this conviction? At the same time that Cyprian was so writing, Dionysius, the Archbishop of Alexandria, addressed Novatian the antipope in these words: "It was better to suffer any extremity in order not to divide the Church of God. And martyrdom endured to prevent schism were not less glorious than that endured to refuse idolatry, but in my opinion more so. For in the one case a man suffers martyrdom for his own single soul, but in the other for the whole Church."(291)
But let us trace the chronological sequence in history of that great institution, the real as well as logical coherence of which has just been set forth. The Church was a fact long before its theory became the subject of reflection. It came forth from the mind of the divine Architect and established itself among men through His power; and it is only when this was done that the creative thought according to which it grew could be delineated.
The fact, then, exactly agrees with the theory, and history here interprets dogma.