2. It is not a kingdom of this world, inasmuch as it governs with a view to an end which is outside and beyond this life. This end determines everything within it, as also we have seen above.
3. Again, it is not of this world because the source of its regimen lies in the Incarnation and Passion of the Son of God, acts the virtue of which consists in God's supreme government of the world, in His absolute lordship over it as Creator and Redeemer. All authority in it descends from Christ, "as the Apostle and High Priest" by this divine appointment, from whose Person the apostolate and priesthood are transmitted to those whom He sends, in like manner as He Himself was sent by His Father.
4. Again, it is not of this world because its subjects are produced as so many copies of this divine original; it is the only kingdom in which the people proceeds out of the King as much as the regimen by which it is ruled. He is strictly the Father whom His children imitate so far as they are His children; in Him Fathership and Kingship are identical.
5. Again, it is not of this world because its sacraments bestow grace, a gift of God coming down upon the world, in it, but not of it; the fountain-head of the gift being that God has taken the flesh of Adam and borne the sin of Adam, and therefore, through seven sacramental streams, dispenses the grace which heals the sin, as it affects the whole life of man as the offspring of Adam.
6. Again, it is not of this world in the perpetual witness which it bears to the truth, in which witness specially our Lord declares that His sovereignty lies. If this witness had closed with His death, that would have been the triumph of falsehood. And those who allege that truth has been corrupted in His kingdom do, in fact, declare with the same breath, though they often do not perceive the consequence, that His witness has ceased and failed. But truth, as the token and inheritance of His kingdom, depends, like grace, upon a divine gift attached to His Person, and transmitted through the order of His kingdom's regimen.[25]
7. Furthermore, it is a kingdom because of the complete analogy with that civil government which makes a temporal kingdom. It has jurisdiction for jurisdiction, and a graduated hierarchy of officers descending more directly from the head than exists in any temporal monarchy. And what the multifold arts and sciences which embellish natural life are to any of these kingdoms, that the divine inheritance of teaching Christian truth, in its bearings upon the acts and thoughts and philosophy of mankind, is with a much higher degree of perfection in the Christian kingdom.