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

1. Christ says to the apostles set over the Church: "Going into the whole world, preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."¹ "He who hears you, hears me: and he who despises you, despises me. But he who despises me, despises him who sent me."² "But if he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican."³ "Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven."⁴ By these and similar words the Lord clearly teaches that men, despising the Church, are spurned by God, receive no remission of sins, and in the end are damned.

2. The apostles adjudge apostates from the Church to damnation. Thus Paul bids the heretic, i. e. the man who has fallen away from the Church, to be avoided in these words: "He that is such a one is subverted, and sins, being condemned by his own judgment."⁵ John, although he is the apostle of love, says of heretics: "If any man comes to you and brings not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you."⁶ Of the same apostle Irenaeus reports: "And there are those who heard him [Polycarp] saying that John, the disciple of the Lord, going at Ephesus to bathe, when he had seen Cerinthus within, sprang out of the bath-house unwashed, saying that he feared lest the bath-house fall down, while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, was within."⁷

3. The Fathers exclude formal heretics and schismatics from salvation. Ignatius martyr: "Do not err, brethren: if anyone follows one who makes a schism, he does not attain the inheritance of the divine kingdom."⁸ Origenes: "Let no one therefore persuade himself, let no one deceive himself: outside this house, i. e. outside the Church, no one is saved."⁹ Cyprianus: "Whoever, being separated from the Church, is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church, nor will he who has left the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger, he is profane, he is an enemy. He cannot have God as father, who has not the Church as mother."¹⁰ Augustinus: "Outside the Church [the schismatic Emeritus] he can have everything except salvation. He can have honor, he can have the sacrament, he can sing Alleluia, he can answer Amen, he can hold the gospel, he can both have and preach the faith in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: but nowhere except in the Catholic Church will he be able to find salvation."¹¹ "Whoever, therefore, shall have been separated from this Catholic Church, however laudably he may think himself to live, by this one crime alone, that he has been cut off from the unity of Christ, he will not have life, but the wrath of God abides upon him."¹² Theodoretus: "For us, moreover, salvation comes through the Church; but those who are outside her do not enjoy eternal life."¹³

Therefore the assertion about the Church alone saving was promulgated by Christ himself, constantly professed by the apostles, and firmly celebrated already in the first Christian centuries; nay, this axiom stands of itself from the fact that the Church in the concrete is the same as the Christian religion, the sole mediatrix of salvation. Accordingly: 1°. all men, as many as wish to be saved, are bound to seek the Church with all their desires, to enter it and to remain in it unto the end; 2°. the Church must strive with the greatest effort for its own propagation, conservation and efficacy, rejecting schism, heresy and every error;¹⁴ 3°. the adversaries unjustly reproach the Catholic Church with "intolerance" for the reason that she applies to herself the axiom set forth and proved above. For whatever Christian body wishes to be the true Church of Christ must also contend that it is the unique institution of salvation; but whatever Christian body holds that it is not the unique institution of salvation, by that very fact proclaims that it is not the true Church of Christ.