the union of which constitutes the Church Universal. And as it is especially in this characteristic of Rome, as being the foundation, that the force of cohesion resides which makes the Church one united and harmonious whole, in Rome, too, should be found the conditions of the Church's unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity. Take from the Church the primacy which Peter brought and bequeathed to Rome, and the Church has ceased to exist; it has vanished from men's eyes, has lost its infallible teaching, and can no longer guide mankind in the way of salvation.
'It was in a visible way that Jesus Christ designated the Apostle Peter from the rest; and in like manner it is from its visible head, and from its union with him, that the Church derives that complete fulness of organisation which constitutes its beauty and its glory. The Roman Church possesses, immediately and intrinsically, the attributes which characterise the kingdom of God;[1] all others share in them only by their union with it. For Rome is the One only Church to which all others must conform, by reason of its preeminent primacy, and because within it the Apostolic traditions have been preserved.[2] Rome, with its arenas dyed with Christian blood, showing on the line of its Pontiffs twenty-seven confessors in the purple of martyrdom; Rome, that for centuries
b 2
