Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

1. The Church of Christ has always existed. Christians never professed individualism, but at every time they were joined to religious societies denominated from Christ. Innumerable documents of antiquity prove this, e.g. the most ancient temples, in which Christians gathered for the common worship of God; the series of bishops who administered each of the churches from the times of the apostles; the letters of peace (litterae formatae), which were wont to be handed over in testimony of ecclesiastical communion; the responses of the martyrs, by which they everywhere declared themselves to be members of the Church of Christ; the sentences by which, already in the first centuries, unworthy Christians were excluded from the churches; liturgical and penitential books, the acts of councils, the works of the Fathers, of heretics and even of the pagans themselves, the monuments of the catacombs, the most ancient paintings and sculptures, from all and each of which it is clear that Christianity never existed except in the social form of the Church. Unless, therefore, we say that the Christian religion was corrupted by all Christians of the earlier centuries against the will and intention of Christ, we must altogether concede that Christ Himself instituted the ecclesiastical society. Indeed, by the testimony of the whole of antiquity:

2. The Church was always attributed to Christ. For: 1°. All Christian groups, as many as there were, imposed upon themselves the name of the Church of Christ from the most ancient time. So great was the certainty that Christ had in fact instituted some Church. 2°. The individual groups that called themselves the Church of Christ never disputed among themselves whether Christ had founded a Church, i.e. some religious society strictly understood, but only which one of them was the true Church of Christ. 3°. To all religious groups instituted by men the very name of Church was denied.

Thus Tertullian: "That [gospel of Marcion] plainly also has churches, but its own, as much later as adulterous … with Marcion, namely, as founder, or someone from Marcion's swarm. Wasps also make honeycombs; Marcionites also make churches."¹

According to Cyprian, Christ "does not divide men from the Church, He who instituted and made the Church"²; every church not instituted by Christ is "adulterous"; as the figure of an ape is to the figure of a man, so stands the church instituted by men to the Church instituted by Christ.³

It is clear, therefore, that Christian antiquity significantly attributed the institution of the Church to Christ. Moreover, no one can hold this opinion of antiquity to be false without contaminating himself with full historical scepticism.

From the testimony, therefore, of Christ Himself, of the apostles of Christ, and of Christian antiquity, it is established that Christ immediately instituted the ecclesiastical society. He Himself chose not atomism and individualism, but a religious organism.