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was just about to purchase it to Himself by the shedding of His precious Blood. We there find our Blessed Lord, having first declared that His work was finished on earth, and having earnestly besought the Father now to glorify Him, proceeds to pray for His Apostles, that His Father would preserve them in unity, and truth, and holiness. He says, "I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world; I have given unto them the words that Thou gavest Me, and they have received them; Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one as We are. Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." Thus did Christ lay the foundations of His One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church; in the remainder of His prayer He intreats like blessings for all who should be built on this sure foundation, that they might be so joined together in unity of spirit by the Apostles' doctrine, as to be made an holy temple acceptable to God through Him. (Coll. for St. Simon and St. Jude.) "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; that they all may be one, as Thou Father art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." Accordingly we read that when, on the day of Pentecost, three thousand were brought to believe on Christ through St. Peter's word, they were baptized into that holy communion, "and they continued stedfast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship," (according to a text already quoted,) and the Lord daily added fresh members to this Church. And in later times, when false teachers were gone abroad seducing the disciples, the Apostles wrote to them, declaring and reminding them what the Apostolic doctrine was, that they might have the joy fulfilled in themselves of knowing that they were in the unity of the Apostolic Church, one in Christ and in the Father. And so St. Paul explains why he wrote to the Corinthians, "not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy; for by faith ye stand." (2 Cor. i. 24.)
St. Peter, again, in his Second Epistle, uses exactly the same language with St. John. He writes as "a servant and an Apostle
