De Ecclesia Christi

« The Church of the New Testament is, not by human making but by divine institution, a visible religious society; for Christ, God-man, founded divine religion for men, not only lying hidden in souls but as it were incorporated in visible things and institutions, which themselves join their religious society of men by the profession of one faith, by the discipline of morals, and by the sacraments of sanctification and divine worship. Whence the Church on earth is not one visible and another invisible, but the very visible Church of Christ has invisible properties also; nor is one Church conspicuous and another to be believed through faith, but the very Church which is visible is believed by faith, as the object of divine revelation and the subject of supernatural attributes; and therefore that one and the same visible Church is also the Church of the divine promises. »

I. The question is not, if we examine the matter more carefully, whether the Church which Christ instituted is visible, but the question is whether Christ instituted the Church as visible; the question concerns not materially the visibility of the Christian Church, but formally the Christian visibility of the Church. No human society is given, no religious society among men, and to narrow the comparison more closely, no heretical sect is given, which is not held together by its own bonds, necessary to composite human nature for forming any society whatsoever, and especially a religious one, and therefore also external and sensible. « Men cannot be gathered into any name of religion, true or false, unless they are joined by some fellowship of visible signs or sacraments, and the power of these sacraments avails inexpressibly much » (St. Aug., Contra Faust. l. XIX. c. 11.). Yet those sensible bonds and ties follow the nature of the society itself, whose own formal reason they are, inasmuch as it is a society; and so in natural societies instituted by men such bonds are of human institution; in false religions and in heretical sects (as the religions themselves) they are not only human inventions but also contrivances of impiety; if any things, however, have been retained by the sects as remnants of the divine religion, these pertain not to the sects formally as such, but to the divinely instituted religious society, from which they have fallen away and to which nevertheless, though rebellious, they remain always bound¹. Certainly therefore also in the society instituted by Christ, in the Church of Christ, the bonds of union by which the society of the united is formed and constituted intrinsically must, according to the nature of this human-divine society, be visible; otherwise the human society and Church on earth would not exist; and they must have been implanted by Christ himself the founder, otherwise the society and Church would not be divine and Christian. For without such a « fellowship of visible signs » one can perhaps conceive in the mind (by a certain abstraction) a number of those who worship God by divine religion, but no society of men worshipping God, since the essential form of society is lacking; and if then a number of men, as if compelled by nature, came together into fellowship through such a form of visible signs, that society would be instituted not divinely but by human work. Therefore the very name Church, when we speak of the Church among men, implicitly carries the meaning of essential visibility, not only by reason of its matter, because it is made of visible men, but chiefly and properly by reason of its form, because it is a society of men. Wherefore to ask whether Christ instituted the visible Church is exactly the same as asking whether he instituted the Church on earth; and those who speak of a Church on earth that is invisible as divinely instituted join terms that mutually exclude one another. Hence it is that Luther and his followers, in those documents in which they defend their concept of invisibility, after even the sacred name Church was erased, called it by the profane name community (gemeinde). For, the number of saints, which they said is known to God alone and is wholly invisible and unknown to us, being set aside, the Church which they afterwards tried to form could be nothing other than a « community » coagulated by political institutions. Hence they can dispute, without any contradiction, so much about changing the constitutions of their « communities »; but the contradiction is all the greater in words, and the unjust cruelty in deeds, since now they are wont to profess openly that they are waging war « not against the Catholic Church but against the hierarchy, » in which the sacred constitution, implanted immutably by Christ in his Church, is contained; and they imagine that the constitution of the Church can be changed while the Catholic faith and Church are preserved.

II. These things having been premised, it is now no less manifest from our whole preceding treatment that Christ founded his Church as visible than it is certain that Christ instituted some Church of his on earth. Speaking absolutely, God could have given his supernatural revelation and religion to men in such a way that he himself, by immediate revelation or inspiration, constituted each individual prophet in doctrine, saint in discipline, and priest sufficient to himself in divine worship, and so joined to no authentic magisterium, to no divinely instituted government, to no peculiar priesthood. The agreement that in such a hypothesis would exist among many in faith, in discipline, and in divine worship would not be contained by visible bonds, but would be wholly owed to the invisible inner inspiration of each one, which in all would be the same from the one Spirit; nor would there then be a divinely instituted social unity, and therefore no divinely instituted Church in the biblical sense of the word; for although one could speak of a number of the faithful, the individuals, standing each by himself, would not be parts and members of any organically united whole, which is the kind of Church exhibited in the Scriptures. « He himself gave some Pastors and Doctors for the perfecting² of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up (εἰς οἰκοδομήν) of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the unity of faith..., that we may now no longer be little children, tossed about and carried round by every wind of doctrine in the cunning of men... Christ, the head, from whom the whole body, compacted and connected through every joint of supply... makes increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity » Eph. IV. 11–16.

That purely spiritual economy, proper to each individual and independent, congruous perhaps for the blessed at the term³ but not for redeemed men on the way, would be, already a priori at least, improbable in every respect; a posteriori, from history, from revelation itself, and from the perpetual evident fact, it is wholly certain that never, either in the Old Testament or much less in the New, has God communicated to the human race revelation and religion in the manner described, which can be admitted only in some special cases, and then only in part, through an extraordinary providence hidden from us⁴. « What is done with individuals (by that extraordinary providence), God who acts and those with whom he acts know; but what is done with the human race (by ordinary providence) he wished to be commended through history and through prophecy » (that is, through supernatural facts and public revelation). St. Aug., De vera religione, c. 25. n. 46.

Yet from these facts and this revelation it is most certain that Christ the Lord (since we are treating only of the Church of the New Testament) instituted his whole religion in no other way than as a form standing forth and presenting itself in the visible Church, so that the Christian religion is, as it were, incorporated in the Church and through her the religion itself is made visible ⁵, and so that the whole work of Christ can be traced back to the foundation of this his social and therefore visible Church, which he acquired by his blood and presented to himself (αὐτήν ἑαυτῷ) glorious (see theses VI, n. 1; VII, n. II.).

Indeed the whole Christian religion is contained in the truth of revealed doctrine to be believed in faith; in the holiness of precepts and in the discipline to be lived by the work of the agent (opere operantis) in hope and charity; in the mysteries of sacrifice and sacraments for adoring God in perfect worship and for sanctifying men in grace by the work worked (opere operato). Now all these things, and therefore his whole religion, Christ did not institute except as elements informing his Church: in the authentic magisterium of the Apostles and of their successors until the consummation of the age, to which, by the same institution, there corresponds for the whole Church not only inward faith but also unity of preaching and profession; in the sacred government, that is the power of ruling, of these same legates of Christ, by which, through their own laws, judgments, and sanctions, Christian life is directed throughout the Church not only by inward virtues but also by discipline and external acts, which, both as manifesting fruits and as incentives and aids of virtues, are the proximate object of sacred government; finally, in the peculiar priesthood, by which the same sacred teachers and pastors are invested, so that they may sacrifice the real body of Christ under visible species, in the name and with the participation of the whole Church, to divine worship, for the whole Church, for the common fruit; and so that they may sanctify the mystical body of Christ, that is the Church itself, in its individual members by visible sacraments.

Moreover all these elements, from which and in which Christ formed his Church, coalesce into unity in so wonderful a combination that the same persons who, under one aspect, are set over as teachers, pastors, and priests given by Christ to teach, rule, and sanctify, these same individuals, under another aspect, are subject to teaching, ruling, and sanctifying; and so, under one aspect, they belong to the teaching Church, and under another aspect they belong to the learning or listening Church, with the exception of the supreme pastor and teacher, the visible head of the Church. Of him, however, this too holds in a certain measure: namely as regards the definitions of doctrine already made by the magisterium, as regards jurisdiction of the internal forum, and as regards sanctification through the sacraments ⁶.

That the Church is such as we now indicate, and therefore that religion was instituted by Christ only under this concrete form, is most manifest from the preceding theses, so that it needs no further demonstration. See theses VI–IX. In these visible elements, therefore, the Church was instituted by her divine founder himself and is composed of them; so that if you remove even one of them, and still more if you deny and take away all the visible elements insofar as they inform and shape the society, as the Protestants have done and as necessarily follows from their principles, no Church of Christ would remain. Hence the character of visibility is so essential that the Church of Christ on earth cannot even be conceived in the mind without it; she must be called either none at all or visible.

It is quite different to say that the elements of the Church are visible and therefore that there is no other Church of Christ on earth than the visible one, and to say that in these elements there are no properties, no virtues, and no efficacious powers, which are invisible in themselves. The second statement is manifestly absurd from the given description of the elements of the Church; for the Church is not a corpse but the body of Christ, living by supernatural virtue and vigour. Just as Christ, head and exemplar, is not Christ if, with the Photinians or Nestorians, only his visible humanity is regarded; nor is he Christ if, with the Monophysites, only the invisible divinity is regarded; but he is one Christ in and from the invisible and the visible nature « (out of two and in two natures, unconfusedly and undividedly) », so the mystical body of Christ, the Church, is not, except insofar as her visible elements are informed and constituted in their own proper reason by divine properties and gifts, which in the visible elements themselves, invisible in themselves, are perceived only by faith and by the intellect illumined through faith. Thus the teachers, pastors, and priests instituted by Christ are distinguished by external signs from the same institution of Christ, in perpetual succession; but the infallibility of the magisterium, the authority of the sacred government, and the power of the priesthood indeed inhere in the visible bearers themselves and are exercised by visible acts, yet in themselves they remain invisible, the object of faith alone. The same holds of the visible sacraments and of sacrifice, with respect to their efficacious power of sanctifying and with respect to the victim under alien species; and no less of the members of the Church in their visible initiation, profession, discipline, and Christian life, if these visible elements are compared with the inward and in itself invisible faith and sanctification. In brief it can be said that the Church is visible as a whole, but not in every respect. See these matters more fully demonstrated above.

The heresy of the Protestants therefore does not lie in their affirming that there are some essential invisible elements in the Church of Christ; for that is most true and most certain from the Catholic faith. Indeed those invisible elements are far more numerous, and more noble and more efficacious, than those the Protestants admit; so they err no less in denying or perverting what is truly invisible in itself and inheres in the Church by the institution of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, than in denying or perverting what, from the same institution of Christ and the operation of the Holy Spirit, is the conspicuous element of the Church and perpetually remains.

IV. From what has been said it is now also apparent how the visible Church of Christ is an object of faith. This must be explained, not only to remove that utterly absurd conclusion of the adversaries, « the true Church is believed by faith, therefore it is invisible, » but much more to illustrate the very genuine notion of visibility.

Just as in the objects of the natural order, visibility in relation to a human act is to be regarded not as mere sensible perception but as sensible perception joined with rational intelligence, since the human act of perception through the senses is rational and not merely material as in brutes; so religious things, even those that are visible, insofar as they are religious, are constituted as objects of an intelligence that is not merely natural but illumined by faith. We can say: just as reason distinguishes human consideration from the merely animal perception of these same sensible objects, so faith distinguishes the Christian consideration of the sensible objects belonging to revealed religion from mere human perception, so that the same sensibles, by that very thing by which they are constituted objects of revealed religion, are constituted also objects of supernatural faith. Thus the Christian sacrament is undoubtedly a sensible rite, visible no less to the unbeliever than to the believer; but that by which the sensible rite itself is constituted within the notion of a Christian sacrament, namely its divine institution and supernatural efficacy, is not open to the senses but must be believed by faith; and by this faith the Christian consideration of the faithful differs wholly from the human perception of unbelievers regarding the same visible rite. Nor, because the supernatural dignity and power of the sacrament is not perceived by the senses, will anyone deny that the sacrament in which that dignity and power is believed is visible; or conversely say that the sacrament which is visible is not an object of divine faith. By faith we believe that this conspicuous rite is a sacrament divinely instituted and efficacious for sanctification; not by faith but by the senses is perceived, here and now, the performing of an action, for example of ablution and the utterance of words. So too, in the Church universally, the formal reason under which she is visible in a human manner, that is, by the senses joined with the intellect, is not divided, but is distinguished, from the formal reason under which she is the object of divine faith.

1°. The Church is visible as a society existing in this determinate manner and order, and propagated through the course of history.

a) Indeed the hierarchy is visible, with its claim, profession, and function: the magisterium and doctrine, in all forms of preaching, and the profession of the peoples as well; government, with sacred discipline and external Christian life; the priesthood, with sacrifice, sacraments, and divine worship.

b) Historical evidence establishes that in this its constitution the Church was visible in all ages up to the Apostles, and that she has been propagated down to us by a continuous series of successions. Therefore the visible Church is seen not only in the present, but by a simple historical view, which is equivalent to sight, and which unbelievers who use reason can have, far differently from divine faith, the Church is understood to have been visible in all the preceding ages. For the present time she is visible to the physical senses together with the intellect; for all times, to the historical and intellectual sense, the Church is visible.

c) In the same way there belong here the external deeds and charisms, which are themselves sensible and which sprout in and from the Church, like fruits from a tree, in every age: on the one hand, the wonderful preservation and propagation of the Church, the transformation of the pagan world into the Christian world by the Apostolic spirit without any corresponding human support, bloody martyrdoms in the persecutions of all her enemies, bloodless victories in the struggles and snares of all errors; on the other hand, the uninterrupted multitude of miracles in bodily deeds, and the manifestations of charisms and of heroic virtues in spiritual deeds and in the perfect life. All these things, so far as they are visible, are not the object of faith but motives of credibility of those things which are believed about the Church by divine faith; so that the Church who is believed and to whom belief is given presents herself, in her own elements and sensible deeds, to all nations as worthy of trust, both as an object to be believed and as a witness to be followed. In exactly the same way Christ himself, visible on earth, the founder, exemplar, and head of the Church, showed himself through his sensible deeds from his birth to his ascension into heaven, both as a witness of the truth who must be believed and as the truth itself and the Son of God, in whom one must believe. « If I do not the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do, and if you will not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in the Father » Jn X. 38.⁷ As it is written of Christ: « I have given him as a witness to the peoples, a leader and teacher to the nations »; so it is said of his Church immediately afterwards. « Nations that knew you not shall run to you, because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you » Is. LV. 4, 5. As it was said of Christ: « I have given you for a covenant of the people and for a light of the nations » Ib. XLII. 7; so of the Church it is said: « the nations shall walk in your light, and kings in the brightness of your rising » Ib. LX. 3. As « the root of Jesse, who stands for a sign of the peoples... and shall lift up a sign to the nations » Ib. XI. 10; so the Church is the city on the mountain of Sion, which all nations see, and to which all flow who seek truth and salvation. « And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains, and shall be lifted above the hills, and all nations shall flow to it; and many peoples shall go and say: come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths, for out of Sion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem » Ib. II. 2; Mich. IV. I. Cf. Vatican Council, sess. III, cap. 3.

2°. This very Church, visible in the manner just stated, with her hierarchical constitution, her magisterium and profession of faith, her government and discipline, her priesthood, divine worship, and sensible charisms, is also described and revealed by the word of God; so that the Church itself, which under one aspect is visible and historically intelligible, under another aspect is the object to be believed with divine faith on account of the authority of God who reveals. That is, she is an object not only to be seen in her elements and deeds, so far as they are sensible, and to be understood by the natural intellect, but to be believed, in those same elements and deeds and in all her attributes so far as they are revealed by the word of God, by the intellect illumined through faith.

For a) the divine authority in the magisterium and in government, the truth, holiness, and efficacy in the priesthood, sacrifice, and sacraments, and the other supernatural properties, are known only from the word of God, and therefore are believed by faith. b) The existence of this Church, which we now see present, through the course of the centuries back to the Apostles, her propagation through the Apostles, and indeed her institution by Christ visible on earth, can indeed be known historically and without divine faith, which, from what has been said, pertains to visibility; but just as the divinity of Christ himself, so the divinity of the institution of the Church, both in general and in the abstract, and specifically and in the concrete of this Church, is believed by faith alone. Indeed those things too which can be understood historically and naturally, the institution by Christ, the propagation through the Apostles, and the other facts, are the object of divine faith, insofar as they are contained in history not merely human but revealed.

From these things the absurdity is manifest of the distinction between the true Church, invisible, which must be believed by faith, and the visible « ecclesiastical mass, » as they used to say, to which natural sense and in no way supernatural faith is referred. Rather, the visible Church herself is an object of faith, although under one aspect and consideration she is visible and naturally intelligible, and under another aspect she is to be believed by supernatural faith. So too, in Christ the Lord, the Head of the Church, the Apostles did not see one and believe another; but the very one whom they saw under the aspect of sensible humanity they believed under the aspect of divinity: not another and another, which was afterwards the heresy of Nestorius, but one thing and another. « Thomas saw a man and confessed God, saying: my Lord and my God. He believed by seeing, therefore, who, considering the true man, cried out that this very man is God, whom he was not able to see. » St. Gregory, in Evang. l. II, hom. 26, n. 8.

V. That this very visible Church is the Church of the promises, to whom namely the promises are made and to whom alone all the promises made by Christ the Lord concerning the Church and for his Church are referred, needs no further proof; for from what has been shown, no other Church of Christ on earth besides the visible one has been instituted, and so none has ever existed. Indeed, in the same words in which Christ, God, announced the institution of his visible Church, he also declared its infallibility, its authority, and its perennial and indefectible power in the teachers, pastors, and priests whom he instituted and who would discharge his legation; so that if these promises were taken away, no words of the institution of the Church would remain, or they would have no meaning; and conversely, if the institution of the visible Church were taken away from the same words, no subject would remain for the promises, and so the promises themselves would vanish.

Surely Christ the Lord never said: I will preserve my doctrine without a teacher, my religious life without a pastor and without subjection, active sanctification and divine worship without ministers and priests, in certain saints known to no mortal, who, each independent, are sufficient to themselves; and I will call the number of these, known to me alone, in the midst of an ecclesiastical mass which does not belong to my Church but is a damned mass of hypocrites, my Church, to be preserved perpetually. This was not the speech of Christ but of the Deformers, as long as they intended to accuse the whole visible Church in the world of defection and to tear unhappy peoples away from her, as we declared above.

Christ the Lord says that his Church is the one which he has built upon Peter; in this Church, as in the kingdom of heaven on earth, he commits to Peter the keys, or supreme power, so that by binding and loosing he may exercise it over whatever pertains to the kingdom of heaven, throughout that whole kingdom. The Church of Christ is therefore not an unknown number of self-sufficient saints, but a kingdom completely known, administered by its visible head from power received from Christ, with acts exercised by that power on known subjects, which acts are therefore themselves external and visible. To this Church built on Peter, and to this kingdom established under Peter, and so to his one visible Church, he promises indefectibility, in the very reason and property of the Church and kingdom of Christ, so that the visible Church itself can never cease to be the true Church and kingdom of Christ: « and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. » Therefore indefectibility is promised also to the visible foundation, to the administrator and the administration of the supreme power, and to the functions of binding and loosing. Matt. XVI.

Likewise the Lord commands the Apostolic college, constituted under Peter and with Peter, the visible pastor of all the sheep and lambs of Christ, to make all nations disciples and to baptize each one in them, and to lead all the baptized into the observance of the whole doctrine and discipline. On the other side, therefore, he commands obedience and subjection toward the Apostles who teach, administer the sacraments, and lead into observance of all his commands. This same visible Church, so arranged, he promises shall be perpetual and indefectible in the preaching of doctrine and in faith, in government and discipline, in the sacraments and sanctification, under his protection and under the assistance of the Spirit of truth, all days until the consummation of the age. « Teach all nations, baptizing them... teaching them to observe all things... and behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age. » « He will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth. » Matt. XXVIII; Jn XIV. See thesis XI.

The same Church, so arranged, he commanded to be heard, and rebels to be punished as heathens and tax collectors, with the universal power promised of binding or loosing on earth whatever pertains to the Church, so that what is bound or loosed is so in heaven. As certainly as this authority and power is not from human polity but from the institution of Christ, so evidently can it be neither exercised nor understood except in the visible Church. Matt. XVIII.

This very thing must be repeated concerning the Apostolic description of the Church, in which pastors and doctors are given by Christ himself, so that we may not be carried round by every wind of doctrine, and that until the consummation and fullness of the body of Christ. In the same way the Church is presented as the house of God, which the Bishops administer, together with the inferior ministers subject to them according to a fixed rule of conduct, which is therefore visible; and the same Church, so described, is proclaimed as « the pillar and ground of the truth. » Eph. IV; 1 Tim. III.

Finally, to pass over the rest, Christ the Lord instituted the unbloody sacrifice of his body given and broken for us, and of his blood, as it was in the chalice, poured out for us at the last supper, to be done in the same way as he had done it, by the Apostles in his Church and for his Church, in his remembrance. But this priesthood, or rather these visible priests in concrete, he instituted to offer the visible sacrifice in the visible Church herself, in perpetual succession until his second coming; so that the priesthood itself, the sacrifice, and the sacrament are one of the most illustrious bonds, and the most sublime manifestation of unity, in the visible body which is the Church, far more excellently than in the Old Testament, when the priesthood, the temple, and the sacrifices constituted the bond of the one visible religious society of the people of Israel. « Because the bread is one, we, the many, are one body, all who partake of the one bread. Look at Israel according to the flesh: are not those who eat the sacrifices partakers (κοινωνοι) of the altar? » (1 Cor. X. 18.). Wherefore the promise of indefectibility also pertains to the continuous series of priests and to the perpetual sacrifice, and so to the Church and her visible worship, not to some unknown saints whom no one has ever known or will know. « This do in my commemoration, » in which words the perpetuity is already included from the very nature of the institution, and is also expressly declared by the Apostle: « For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes » (1 Cor. XI. 26.).

Scholion. In denying the visible Church the Protestants take refuge in certain speculative principles, and then in a positive doctrine drawn from some texts torn from their context and from the analogy of faith.

1°. The whole business of sanctification, they say, is personal for each individual, and it is internal and spiritual: « the kingdom of God is within you » (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν); « the flesh profits nothing; it is the spirit that gives life; » « the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit » Luke XVII; Jn VI; Rom. XIV. They add that this spiritual character is proper to the New Testament in comparison with the Old, which was carnal, set in external institutions and a mere preparation for the spiritual: « the hour comes, and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth » Jn IV. Then they twist this very inward sanctification and union with God into an altogether different sense, and devise at will means to it beyond and against the manifest doctrine of Scripture and of all revelation. For according to this heresy, as we have already set out above, the justification of man is accomplished by faith alone, by which the justice of Christ is imputed to man, excluding any magisterium, ministry, and priesthood of the Church; and they call this an immediate union of individual saints with Christ, excluding the « mediation of the Church. » They say therefore that the true Church consists only of these saints, who are knowable by no external sign, and so to no man but to God alone. They have persuaded themselves that this fiction is sufficient for the purpose for which it was devised, so that these light-shunning saints and this invisible Church could be said to have persisted through many centuries, lying hidden everywhere on earth within the visible Church « of Antichrist ».

But a) if the ultimate consequences of these principles are drawn, one will have to go over to the opinion of certain Gnostic sects, of medieval pseudo-mystics, and of other fanatics of our own time, who, perverting the very notion of human nature and the whole supernatural revelation, wished the reality of the flesh assumed by the Word to be eliminated, and likewise the redemption through his passion and death, all the sacraments, external divine worship, indeed the existence and usefulness of inspired Scripture; and who referred everything to contemplation and to an inner sense under the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit in individual souls. b) The proximate end of all divine institutions is undoubtedly spiritual sanctification, union with God, and the salvation of souls; but what this sanctification is, and what are the means instituted for it, is not to be devised by the deluded minds of men, but must be learned from the whole divinely revealed economy; nor are the means to be confused with the end itself.

Sanctification and union with God, however, is certainly not an empty shadow arising from the foolish persuasion that God does not see us and judge us as we really are, just or sinners; but it is accomplished by a true transformation of the soul through the infusion of grace and of the virtues in faith, hope, and charity. « But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory (of the Lord) to glory (proper and inherent to us), as by the Spirit of the Lord » 2 Cor. III. 18. ⁸

The means to this sanctification, and to the eternal salvation of souls, instituted by Christ the Saviour himself, we have shown to be in the visible magisterium, with its manifest acts for preaching, preserving, and explaining the revealed truth; in the visible ministry for ruling the faithful by sacred laws and discipline on the way of salvation; and in the visible priesthood, ministering through visible sacraments, sacrifice, and public worship for the sanctification of the faithful. All these, in one word, are called the means of sanctification placed by Christ in the visible Church and administered visibly through the visible Church. The Church therefore intervenes between God the sanctifier and the sanctified faithful as minister, not as author of grace; by which grace they are indeed united immediately with God dwelling in them. « But you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. Let a man so account of us as ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God » 1 Cor. IV. 1. « What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Ministers of him in whom you believed... For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's husbandry, you are God's building (οἰκοδομή) » ib. III. 5, 9. « He has given us the ministry of reconciliation... For Christ, therefore, we are ambassadors » 2 Cor. V. 18, 20.

c) Those hidden saints whom they imagine, they say, have lain hidden either in the Catholic Church itself or in certain sects cast out from the Church. But in the Catholic Church, in all places and times, all professed that faith, practised and shared that worship, by which faith and worship they say the whole Church had fallen away from Christ and become Antichrist's. So whether those whom they call hidden saints are said to have simulated that defection from Christ, in public profession and worship, merely outwardly and through hypocrisy, or to have truly admitted it in their hearts, they would certainly be no less alien from Christ; « for whoever shall deny me before men, I will deny him before my Father. » As for the heretical sects, there never existed any which either agreed with the principles of the Protestants or differed from the Catholic Church for those reasons which these men put forward; whence also those sects all were condemned by the founders of Protestantism no less than by the Catholic Church, as heretical and alien from Christ. Since therefore all the adherents of the sects, whether feigning or in earnest, embraced both their profession and their worship, the fictitious saints of the Protestants cannot be found any more in the sects than in the Catholic Church. Finally, what is the head of the matter: that « hand of faith, » or foolish persuasion, that God does not see and judge man as he is in himself, but by a certain fiction of law reckons man just without making him just by his own inherent justice, was not thought of by anyone at all until the Deformers of the sixteenth century, or, not to need proof, certainly for many centuries, just as Luther himself used to boast of his invention. Therefore for at least many centuries these hidden saints, justified by confidence in the merit of Christ imputed to them while they remained sinners in themselves, did not exist at all; and so nowhere on earth was that fabricated monster to be found which they call the invisible Church. Since therefore Christ the God promised and established his Church, built on the rock, indefectible until the consummation of the age, it is none other than the visible Church, always kept whole and handed down from him and from the Apostles onward, which itself is nothing else than the perpetual Catholic Church in the successors of Peter and of the Apostles; and those who separated from her, whether in the course of the centuries or in the sixteenth century, all evidently defected from the Church of Christ. They are therefore in neither the visible Church, from which they fell away, nor in the invisible, which Christ did not institute on earth at all.

2°. The texts of Scripture by which they said this hidden Church of theirs is set forth are hardly worth explaining, so manifestly do they pertain nothing to the matter at hand. For to persuade from Scripture that the Church on earth is invisible, or can ever be invisible, it would be necessary to demonstrate from them that the office of magisterium, ministry, and priesthood, and the objects of these offices, namely the preaching and profession of the true faith, the vigilance of the rulers (Heb. XIII. 17.), and the direction of morals by salutary laws, and the sacraments and sacrifice, are not instituted by Christ, or are going to cease at some time. For these are what essentially constitute the visible Church. But whoever affirmed that these offices would not merely at times be rendered more difficult and less free in their exercise by the persecutions of the enemies of the Church (which was indeed foretold by Christ himself, the Apostles, and the prophets), but would simply fail, either in themselves or in their external exercise, would certainly be arguing that the deeds and promises of Christ, by which he established his own Church and promised her perpetuity under his protection, which we have shown from these same Scriptures, were fallacious; and he would overturn and deny the whole internal history of the Church, which flows in a perennial stream from Christ and the Apostles down to us. If therefore some texts of God's word can be found in which the internal operation of the Holy Spirit in the souls of individuals is seen to be preached in opposition to the external ministries in the Church, it is certain that in those texts there is contained a comparison of invisible gifts with visible institutions, of spiritual operation with the external operating means, and so not an exclusion but indeed an affirmation or supposition of these institutions and means; or in them (as in many texts which they were accustomed to produce of old) the discourse is not even about the invisible elements of the Church but about something altogether different. For, as in the works of God, so in his words, there can be a diversity indeed, but no real contradiction.

Concerning such passages, in which grace and inner anointing is celebrated, the magisterium and ministry of the Church being presupposed and not excluded, we have said enough in the Treatise on Tradition (th. XII, p. 106 sqq., ed. 2). But what the Protestants were accustomed to produce of old to demonstrate the invisible Church, namely the one family of Noah in the ark; the seven thousand men « whose knees have not bowed before Baal » in the time of Elijah (3 Reg. XIX. 18.); the kingdom of God, which Christ said: « is within you » (Luke XVII. 21.); the Church in the symbol of the woman « fleeing into the desert, where she had a place prepared by God » (Apoc. XII. 6. 14.): all these things have nothing whatever to do with the matter in question, and only show that when people have recourse to such things, nothing even of the appearance of proof can be found in the Scriptures for that fiction used to excuse apostasy.

The times of Noah, Gen. VI. VII. (cf. Matt. XXIV. 37. 39.), contain nothing about the constitution of the Church of the New Testament, except that from the bodily destruction of all who were outside the ark the Fathers are accustomed to deduce the necessity of belonging to the Church, and that visible Church in which alone spiritual salvation is given. Cyprian, describing the Church, whose « proof for the faith is easy, by a compendium of truth from the words of the Lord: you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, » whose « episcopate too is one and undivided, » and which is itself « one Church, extended in multitude by the increase of fecundity, and bathed in the light of the Lord, sending its rays over the whole world, » adds: « whoever leaves the Church (the one founded upon Peter and cohering in the unity of the episcopate) is alien, is profane, is an enemy; if anyone outside the ark of Noah could escape, so also whoever is outside the Church will escape. » Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiae, p. 195. As to the visibility of the Church, the perfection of the Church of Christ the incarnate Word is one thing, and the imperfection of the patriarchal Church is another. Moreover, even in this period the patriarchs were priests by worship and visible sacrifices, and « preachers of justice » (2 Pet. II. 5.) for preserving, preaching, and explaining, with new increments divinely received, the revelation (see the Treatise on Tradition, th. XX.), among whom Noah is expressly numbered as priest and preacher. Certainly therefore the patriarchal Church also, however far distant from the perfection of the institutions of Christ, was visible in the preaching and profession of faith, with priesthood and magisterium, sacrifices and sacraments corresponding to that imperfection (see above, th. III, and cf. th. II–IV, on the Sacraments in general). If they insist on reducing the Church to « a few, that is eight souls, » it must be answered first that the catholicity which was promised to the Church of the New, and not of the Old, Testament is one thing, and the visibility which essentially belongs to the Church in every stage is another, though in a different mode according to the diversity of the economy. Second, they must be asked: how do they know that all who were sinners at the time of Noah had fallen away from the true worship of God and from the Church? We read that all flesh had corrupted its way, and that Noah, preaching divine vengeance, was not believed, nor did they then do penance (Gen. VI. 1–12; 1 Pet. III. 20.); but that all or most of them had then fallen into idolatry is nowhere written. Indeed, it is written, and this persuades the contrary, that many of those who perished bodily in the flood were saved spiritually, and so by true faith and penance (1 Pet. III. 19.).

What is next brought forward about the seven thousand faithful in the time of Elijah is no more to the point. First, here too there must be no confusion between the catholicity or extent of the Church (which was promised and instituted for the Church of the New Testament alone) and her visibility. Next, attention must be paid to the different perfection of visibility itself in the Church of the Old, even the Mosaic, and in the new Christian economy (th. III.). Finally, if the passage 3 Reg. XIX. 18., which is objected, is examined, nothing is taught in it about the invisibility or visibility of the Church of Christ, since this Church is not discussed there; and not even a shadow of an argument for the invisibility of the Church, even of the Old Testament, can be drawn from it. For this alone is said: that in the kingdom of Israel also, from its constitution under Jeroboam I, which was politically divided from the kingdom of Judah and schismatic and idolatrous in its religious institutions, there remained still many faithful, who were united in religion and divine worship to the true Mosaic Church. For they remained under the ordinary ministry of priesthood, magisterium, and government, whose centre was Jerusalem; and they celebrated the legitimate worship itself, in solemnities and sacrifices, in that very centre of religion, as appears from several other passages: 2 Paral. XV. 9; XXX. 11. 25; XXXI. 6; XXXIV. 9. 33; Tob. I. 6. With the ordinary ministry, however, for sustaining religion, according to the manner of that economy, there was joined the extraordinary ministry of the prophets, of whom many, like Elijah himself and Elisha, flourished in the kingdom of Israel, powerful in word and deed.

As to the third passage brought forward, the word of Christ to the Jews: « the kingdom of God is within you »: if it is understood of the Church itself, it certainly signifies the visible Church, which was already being prepared among the Jews and was contained as in a fruitful root in the person, power, preaching, and works of the divine founder himself. But insofar as the kingdom of God is meant as internal in the soul, it is not the Church considered adequately, but some property of her, which, although invisible in itself, is nevertheless to be made manifest by its effects in the visible Church itself (see th. XI, n. I.).

Finally, in the passage Apoc. XII the Church of martyrs is described: either in the literal sense, according to the persecutions of the last times still future, or (as it seems to me, considering the contexts) in the immediate literal sense, according to the persecutions of the idolatrous empire in the first three centuries, now already past; and in the typical sense, which is fuller, according to the persecutions still future at the consummation of the age. But the Church of martyrs, in the three powers and their functions, in which (often described by us above) visibility essentially consists by Christ's institution, remains no less conspicuous as the kingdom of God on earth. While she « is fed » by her pastors with doctrine, discipline, and sacraments in the « solitude » of the catacombs, there she begets and prepares « male sons » (υἱὸν ἄρρενα), who by the shedding of their blood « are caught up to God and to his throne, » so that with the Lamb, in whose blood they have washed and whitened their robes (VII. 14.), they « rule all nations with a rod of iron »; and while in time of peace she shines also with external splendours ⁹, these, though indeed connected with visibility, and also promised, though not in a determined manner or measure, do not however constitute the essential visibility of the Church itself. The Apostles and their nearest successors, Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and with them the presbyters Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian (see th. XV.), describe this very Church of martyrs, fleeing into solitude amid the persecutions; but they knew her as no other than « one church diffused throughout the whole world by the concordant numerousness of many bishops » (Cyprian, ep. 52, to Antonian.). Whence those who separate themselves from the visible Church of priests and people, as long as they remain in the crime of heresy or schism, cannot be martyrs of Christ. « What peace do the enemies of the brethren promise themselves? What sacrifices do the rivals of the priests believe they celebrate? Do they think Christ is with them when they gather together, who gather outside the Church of Christ? Even if such people are killed in confession of the name, that stain is not washed away by blood; the inexpiable and grave guilt of discord is not purged by suffering. He cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church... They cannot remain with God who have not wished to be of one mind in the Church of God. Though they be given up to flames and fires, or cast to the beasts and lay down their lives, it will not be the crown of faith but the punishment of perfidy, nor a glorious end of religious virtue but a death of despair; such a one can be killed, he cannot be crowned. Thus he professes himself a Christian, as the devil often lies about Christ... Does he seem to himself to be with Christ, who acts against the priests of Christ, who separates himself from the fellowship of his clergy and people? He carries arms against the Church, he resists the arrangement of God. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ... he dares, having despised the Bishops and the priests of God, to set up another altar, to make another prayer with unlawful words, to profane the truth of the Lord's victim by false sacrifices, and does not know that he who strives against the ordinance of God is punished by divine vengeance for the boldness of his rashness » (Id., De Unitate Ecclesiae, p. 198–201.). Therefore this visible Church alone, by the unity and succession of the Episcopate, by sacrifice, sacraments, worship, and discipline, amid the persecutions, is the one which, as is described in the Apocalypse, bears the martyrs of Christ.