De Ecclesia Christi

« It has been revealed, both practically by the divine institutions in the Church and theoretically by explicit doctrine in the Scriptures, and luminously explained in Catholic tradition, that not only the just but all sinners, except those whom in the preceding theses we demonstrated to be outcasts from the Church, are truly and simply members of the visible Church. Nor do the Fathers, and Augustine by name, contradict this truth, when¹ they seem to deny that sinners belong to the Church; but they consider the Church in some respect, namely according to the proximate end of actual sanctification, and according to the gift of holiness. »

So far it has been proved which men do not belong to the Church of Christ on earth, and therefore not to the visible Church. But now it is further asked whether this enumeration and removal, as a kind of negative list, from the roll of the members of the Church, is complete; or whether rather, just as heresy, schism and excommunication inflicted for crimes exclude from the kingdom of God on earth, that is from the Church, so other sins also, whether all or at least notorious and public sins, exclude before and apart from the sentence of excommunication? For no less than the truth of faith and social charity, holiness and theological charity seem to be the proper form of the Church; whence, as those who lack the former do not seem to belong to the Church celebrated in the Scriptures and in tradition, so neither do those deprived of this holiness seem to belong to the Church which is celebrated in the Scriptures and in tradition, and which by its very foundation and by its end is proved to be the kingdom of holiness just as much as the kingdom of truth.

But that sinners guilty of any crimes whatever, except those described in the preceding theses, are and remain truly and simply members of the Church, is so clear from the very nature of the visible Church, from her whole life and history, and from her doctrine and institutions, that it is remarkable this truth could be attacked by heretics, both ancient — Montanists, Novatians, Pelagians², Donatists — and in the Middle Ages by the many sects of the Cathars, and more recently by Protestants and Jansenists, though by different ones in different ways. But indeed the ancient sects and the Jansenists perverted the true reason of the holiness of the Church and of sanctification through the Church; and for the deformers of the sixteenth century, and now for their disciples who still profess themselves Christians, setting aside also their absurd theories of justification, it was and is necessary to have that fiction of an invisible Church consisting only of saints or of the predestined, in order to persuade men that their sect, newly fashioned, had always existed from Christ and the Apostles, though known or knowable to no mortal; or rather in order to affirm this, as stubbornly as foolishly, against Catholics, who convinced them by an unavoidable argument of defection from the faith and communion of the perennial Church of Jesus Christ. Partly, therefore, for the further vindication of visibility, and partly for the declaration of the inner condition and end of the Church on earth, belongs this demonstration of the union and mingling of sinners with the just and holy members in one body.

I. The end of the Church, and of all her institutions, is indeed the perfection of holiness and of union with God; but the Church on earth is still on the way, and consummation will not be except at the term of the blessed vision and enjoyment. Hence the Church on earth militates that she may become triumphant in heaven; she strives in the contest that she may win the prize; the kingdom begun strives toward the consummated, faith toward vision, hope toward enjoyment, charity still changeable and in pain toward unchangeable charity in full blessedness. In this twofold state, the former is indeed imperfect even as regards the whole body, in comparison with the second, perfect state ³, just as the Apostle compares what now is only in part (ἐκ μέρους, in part) with what is to come, perfect (τὸ τέλειον, the perfect): the state of faith on earth, as children, with the state of vision, as grown men (1 Cor. XIII. 9-12). Nor yet, because of this imperfection, which is called negative, does the Church cease to be the bride and body of Christ; so also the imperfection privative of sin in many single members, who are indeed sick, yet not finally dead and torn from the body⁴ but to be healed in the body itself, does not take away from them the character of members ⁵, and the less does it destroy the truth of the body of Christ, which is still « being built up » and growing, and has not yet come « to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ » (Eph. IV. 12-16).

1°. Indeed the Lord taught his Church, and in it and for it instituted a form of prayer, by which its members are commanded to cry out unceasingly, in union and communion: forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. This prayer, as appears from the very universality of its words, is not referred only to those daily sins, which do not take away grace, and of which the disciple whom Jesus loved testifies: « if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us » (1 Jn I. 8); but rather even more to grave sins, namely to obtain the disposition necessary for remission ⁶. This is manifest as much from the words of the prayer and from the far greater need of grace for the remission of grave crimes⁷, as from the parable of the one among the king's servants « who owed him ten thousand talents » (Matt. XVIII. 23 ff.). For in that parable the divine Master declared that very connection between our forgiving and our obtaining from God the remission of debts, which he had expressed in the form of the prayer ⁸; and debts are there adduced as an example, not now slight but most grave, to be remitted by God.

In accordance with this norm divinely prescribed, the Church, mindful of the weakness of her sons, pleads with God in her public and private prayers almost more urgently and frequently than anything else, both for preservation from sins to be committed and for purgation from sins committed: « God, the institutor and ruler of your people, drive out the sins by which it is assailed; » « may the confession of our guilt obtain the indulgence of its offences; » « mercifully grant us the indulgence of all our faults; » « restraining our sins by voluntary mortification, may we be chastised temporally rather than be assigned to eternal punishments; » « may we deserve, by your protection, to be rescued from the imminent dangers of our sins, and by your deliverance to be saved. »

These things, and their twins repeated in the liturgical books of all the rites of the West and the East, are not only a truthful and humble prayer according to the law of praying, but at the same time a confession of faith according to the law of believing; and it is connected with that faith by which we believe the Church as she now is on earth. For with faith in the Father, and in the Son incarnate and redeemer, and in the Holy Spirit, is joined in the apostolic creed, and in the others that follow, the faith by which we believe not indeed in the Church but the Church, and the communion of the saints, as a complex of supernatural works of the Holy Trinity: the price of redemption through the incarnate Son, the kingdom and temple sanctified in the Holy Spirit. And in this Church, insofar as she is on earth, we believe that from the same redemption and sanctification the remission of sins will perpetually be granted in the future ⁹.

2°. For the very members of the Church Christ instituted, as with the other sacraments for increasing and preserving holiness, so the sacrament of remission of sins (Jn XX. 23; cf. Jas. V. 15, 16). Thus in the kingdom of sanctification there are both sacraments of the living, for nourishing and preserving the supernatural life by which they already live: « he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day » (Jn VI.); and sacraments of the dead, not only for regeneration, by which they are first born in the Church, and which renewal (ἀνακαινισμός, renewal) can happen only once: « for it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened (τοὺς ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας, those once enlightened)... to be renewed again (πάλιν ἀνακαινίζειν, to renew again) to repentance » (Heb. VI.)¹⁰; but also for reconciliation (καταλλαγή, reconciliation) with God, of which the Apostle, crying out to sinners in the Church, says: « we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God » (2 Cor. V. 20), while at the same time he fears lest perhaps he may find among them, the cause of his sorrow, some impenitent people in the Church: « lest I mourn many of those who sinned before and have not done penance for the uncleanness and fornication and impurity which they committed » (2 Cor. II. 3; XII. 20, 21).

Hence on the divine institution of the remission of sins rests penitential discipline, which, derived from apostolic times, was already observed in the second and third centuries according to certain norms, universal in their substance, in the Western and Eastern Churches. In this matter, however, two things are to be noted. First, in many ecclesiastical documents it is directly concerned only with public penance, to which only the guilty of the gravest and public crimes were subjected; then, moreover, the removal of penitents from the mysteries, according to their different degrees, is not to be confused with excommunication properly so called and with severance from the body of the Church. For they were excluded from reception of the Eucharist before absolution, from the very end of this sacrament and by the divine law promulgated by the Apostle (1 Cor. XI. 27, 28); they were kept from the mysteries and other functions in order also to render a fuller satisfaction to the Church ¹¹ and for a more salutary preparation for the sacraments. In Book II of the Apostolic Constitutions, which, written in the third century, exhibit the most ancient laws of the Church, this distinction between the discipline of penitents in the Church and excommunication is most clearly shown. First the Bishop is taught not only how penitent sinners are to be absolved « by the imposition of hands, » but also by what remedies they are to be healed and prepared for absolution, whether by harsh or by gentle means, even if « the wound is deep and has swollen, » and « if the ulcer creeps, use the cautery and draw out the putrefaction, afflicting them with fasts, that is. » But when all these things have availed nothing, and moreover a danger of infection arises for the other members, then at last it is prescribed that one must come to excommunication. « When you have done these things, and perceive that from the feet to the head there is no plaster to be applied, nor oil nor bandages, but the ulcer spreads and anticipates all medication, like gangrene putrefying all the members; then with much circumspection and consultation, with other skilled physicians also called in, cut off the putrid member, so that the whole body of the Church may not be corrupted. Therefore do not be easy and ready to cut off... But if you see someone impenitent and hardened, then with sorrow and mourning cut him off from the Church as incurable » (ἀνιάτως ἔχοντα τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἀπόκοπτε, cut off from the Church the one who is incurable), Apostolic Constitutions, II, ch. 41.

The distinction of Augustine belongs here as well: between other sins, even the gravest, by which a man is not cut off from the Church, and heresy, by which, as long as he persists in it, he is already cut off. « For then each one is unfruitful and not yet cut off from the root, when he does those works with evil desire, of which it was said that those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God (Gal. V.); but when¹² he has begun, for those same works, also to resist the most manifest truth by which he is refuted, then he is cut off... Thus also, before he is visibly excommunicated, whoever bears a hostile spirit against the truth by which he is convicted and reproved is already cut off. So it comes about that both the good seed and the bad seed grow together through the field until the harvest, that is, both the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the evil one (who by evil desire do those works of which he spoke a little before) grow together through the world, in the Church throughout the whole world, until the end of the age. » Aug., On the Unity of the Church, n. 74.

II. What we have indicated sufficiently shows the demonstration, as it were practical, manifest in the very elements and acts of the Church: that in the kingdom of sanctification are included not only those « who are just and holy, that they may still be justified and sanctified » (cf. Apoc. XXII. 11), but also those « who are in sins, that they may be remitted for them » (cf. Jas. V. 15). No less clearly does Christ the Lord, in his theoretical teaching, describe and confirm this still imperfect state of his kingdom on earth, so that in the kingdom itself, until the consummation of the ages, sinners are mingled with the just and holy.

This doctrine is contained in the parables explained by Christ himself concerning the character of his kingdom on earth, and so manifestly that the African Councils and Augustine, in asserting Catholic doctrine and refuting the error of the Donatists, regarded these parables of the divine Master, as regards the diversity of the members of the Church, of the just and of sinners, as an ineluctable argument and almost the foundation of the Catholic demonstration. The kingdom of heaven is like a field in which wheat and tares grow together until the harvest, when the reapers will gather the tares to burn, but the wheat they will store in the barns of the Lord. Christ explained this parable at the disciples' request. « The field is the world »: that is, the whole time of the state of the kingdom of heaven in this age; for the harvest is « the consummation of the age. » In the kingdom of God, for its present state, there are « sons of the kingdom, » indeed worthy of the eternal kingdom, like the wheat, and « sons of the wicked one » (υἱοὶ τοῦ πονηροῦ, sons of the evil one) in the same field, who by their works follow the devil ¹³, and by these works the tares have been sown by the devil. At the consummation of the age, finally, « the Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all scandals and those who work iniquity, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. » Therefore there are, and will be, in the kingdom of Christ on earth, scandals and workers of iniquity until the consummation of the age, at which last the separation of the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the wicked will be full, both in merits and in eternal rewards and punishments. Matt. XIII. 24, 38-41.

Other parables are of the same kind. « The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, gathering from every kind of fish. » Two kinds of fish are explained, good and bad. The net is drawn up to the shore « when it is full », that is, when the number of saints in the Church of God, and consequently also of the reprobate, is complete; then the fish are separated from the same net, which is the kingdom of heaven. As the wheat into the barns, so the good fish are gathered into the vessels of the Lord; as the tares to be burned, so the bad fish are cast out (ἔξω ἔβαλον, cast out) of the net in which until now they had been mixed with the good. The conclusion and explanation of the parable is given by the Lord in the same words as before: « so it will be at the consummation of the age. » Matt. XIII. 47-50.

At the coming of the Son of man, at an hour which is not expected, whether at the particular judgment at the death of each, or at the universal judgment at the consummation of all, « then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins. » All and only those by whom the kingdom of heaven on earth is constituted are represented by the ten virgins, who all, by the very fact that they are in the kingdom of heaven, « went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride » (the bridegroom Christ, and the bride who is to be « adorned for her husband », Apoc. XXI. 2 ff.). But of all those who go to meet him in the kingdom of heaven, « five are foolish », who have indeed the vessels of dead faith but not the oil of shining charity; and when the door is already shut and the time is no more, they knock in vain and are answered: « I do not know you. » Hence those are warned who are represented by the parable of the virgins, and who therefore are in the kingdom of heaven, and in it took up their lamps going out to meet the bridegroom and the bride: « watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour »; for, of course, among these too there can be, and are, those who did not take oil in their vessels. Matt. XXV. 1 ff.

Besides these, the Fathers, against the Donatists, often press the comparison, set forth by John the Baptist, of the wheat and the chaff on the same threshing-floor (Matt. III. 12). « Your bishops (the Donatists') certainly tried to deny that it is written in the Gospel that the Church is compared to a threshing-floor; but soon, convicted by the recitation of the Gospel words, they turned to this, that there too, they said, hidden wicked people are signified, not manifest ones, of whom it is written: he will come bearing his winnowing fan in his hand and will cleanse his floor, will store the grain in the barn, and will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Judge, therefore, you, open your eyes, attend to the truth with your ears. If for this reason, as they themselves said, the Lord compared the Church to nets, because he wished the evil in her to be understood not as manifest but as hidden, which the priests do not see, just as fishermen do not see the fish within the nets under the waves; does the threshing-floor also get threshed under water or under the earth? Or certainly in the nighttime hours, not in the sun, or does a blind farmer work on it? How much better, therefore, would they correct themselves than pervert the holy Gospels, and try to twist the Lord's words to the vain error of their own mind..... God, moreover, guards the innocence of his saints and faithful, as of the good fish, as of the fat grains, so that the mingled kinds to be rejected may not harm them within those nets, and the mingled chaff to be winnowed may not harm them in this floor. » Augustine, book after the Carthaginian conference, n. 14.

Augustine argues similarly about the banquet, at which there had also come a guest not having a wedding garment, Matt. XXII. 11 ff.¹⁴ « How is this true, he says, unless because in that one great body was prefigured all the wicked mingled in the Lord's banquet before the Lord's judgment? » Augustine, ibid. n. 27. St. Gregory explains very splendidly this signification of the wedding banquet, in Gospel homily 38, nn. 7–14. « Behold, now from the very quality of the guests it is clearly shown that through this king's wedding the present Church is designated, in which good and bad meet together. For she is mixed with the diversity of sons, because she begets all to faith, yet does not bring all, by change of life, to the liberty of spiritual grace, as their sins require. For while we live here, we must journey mixed along the way of the present age; but then we are separated when we arrive. For the good alone, unmixed, exist nowhere except in heaven, and the bad alone nowhere except in hell; but this life, which is placed between heaven and hell, as it stands in the middle, so receives the citizens of both parts together; whom nevertheless holy Church now receives indiscriminately, and afterwards separates at the exit. » Gregory, ibid. n. 7. The same doctrine is presented by the parable, or rather metaphor, of the sheep and the goats, Matt. XXV. 32: « We were doing this, that the cause and person of the goats should not prejudice the cause and person of the sheep, although both herds are kept on common pastures, until by the chief shepherd in the last judgment some are separated to the left and others to the right. » Augustine, loc. cit. n. 6. They explain in this way also the comparison of the Apostle (2 Tim. II. 20) about the great house, in which there are vessels both precious and vile. Cyprian reproaches the Novatians for the exclusion of such vile vessels from the Church: « What a swelling of arrogance it is... that anyone should dare, or believe that he can do, what the Lord did not grant even to the Apostles, that he can distinguish tares from wheat; or as though it were granted to them to carry the winnowing fan and purge the floor, should try to separate the chaff from the wheat; and while the Apostle says that in a great house there are not only golden and silver vessels but also wooden and earthen ones, he seems to choose the golden and silver vessels, and to despise, cast aside and condemn the wooden and earthen ones, when only on the Day of the Lord are the wooden vessels burned in the fire of divine heat, and the earthen ones are broken by him to whom the iron rod has been given. » Cyprian, ep. 52, p. 74; cf. ep. 51, p. 65. To this sense Pacian argues from the same testimony, ep. 1, n. 5, and ep. 3, nn. 4, 26; Augustine, On Baptism, Book VII, n. 99; sermon 15, n. 2; Ambrosiaster on the same passage of the Apostle.

The Catholic bishops of Africa, in the « mandate » by which they prescribed the norms that eighteen selected men were to follow in disputation with the Donatist bishops at the conference held at Carthage in June of the year 411, comprehended the Catholic doctrine on this matter in a lucid compendium drawn from the holy Scriptures and Catholic tradition: the state of the Church, in which sinners are mingled with the just in the communion of profession, of government and of the sacraments until the consummation of the age. ¹⁵ First, they say, let the chosen bishops demonstrate that the true Church of Christ was foretold and celebrated in the law, in the prophets, in the psalms, and in the Scriptures of the New Testament, from which they should bring forward the principal testimonies; and that she is the one which is among all nations, so that her essential mark is catholicity. Then, which now concerns us, they proceed thus. « This Church, which in this manner, as was foretold and fulfilled, took its beginning from Jerusalem, and from there spread through Judea and Samaria and the other parts of the world by the preaching of the Apostles... those men, against whose error we command our colleagues to confer and defend, say that the bishop Caecilian, formerly of the Church of Carthage, and his associates perished, polluted by I know not what sins, and that its remnants remained in the party of Donatus ¹⁶. Let those to whom we here give this mandate refute and confute this vain and sacrilegious accusation in such a way that they first distinguish the cause of the Church from the cause of certain men. For since the Church is foretold to have evil men mixed in with her until the time of the harvest, when the tares are separated from the wheat, or the chaff departs from the grain when winnowed, or the sheep are separated to the right and the goats to the left, who are now mixed in the same pastures; or the evil fish are separated from the good, who are now together drawn into the same nets to the shore, on that same shore, that is, at the end of the age. Now any men in the Church, if they are good, are her wheat or grain, her sheep, her good fish; but if they are evil, they are her tares, her chaff, her goats, her evil fish. Therefore the whole harvest, the whole threshing-floor, the whole flock, the whole fishing, is not condemned on account of them; lest we, rashly judging the evil before the time, and objecting the sins of some to others, by sacrilegious separation abandon the good on account of the evil, whereas rather we ought to tolerate the evil on account of the good with pious unity. They must, therefore, be pressed, these enemies of these evangelical likenesses and of so plain a truth, to teach what they intend, and first to show, if they are able, how the Church... of whomever they accuse, perished by contagion and remained in the party of Donatus. » Therefore it is not on the refutation of crimes, which they heap falsely upon Caecilian and others, that the hinge of the defence must be placed; and it is not so much juridically, about the particular deeds of men, that one must dispute with heretical accusers, but rather theologically one must demonstrate that in the true Church of Christ there can be, and are, sinners, and these not only hidden but also manifest.

To this demonstration belong, besides the Gospel parables, the things which they further enjoin their deputies to bring forward, among whom Augustine was by far the most eminent. « What we say, they say, in order to repel their crimes, should be shown most evidently, and more abundantly (namely beyond the doctrine contained in the parables adduced), by those to whom we impose the office of this defence: that is, that the Church of Christ can be neither polluted nor destroyed by a corruption, as if pestilent, of any evils mingled with her to the end, not only unknown but even known. » They bring forward examples of this kind from the holy prophets, « who did not separate themselves from that people, in which indeed the good were among the wicked, by bodily discrimination (by breaking off religious communion), judging it better to bear the wicked by patience than to abandon the good through calumny. » Indeed we have the most evident demonstration in the Apostolic college itself. « The Lord Jesus Christ himself showed a singular example of patience: his traitor, certainly the worst, he bore, not only known in the number of the disciples (in the number and census, namely, not only of members of the Church but of members also distinguished by apostolic dignity), but also foreknown (destined at last to be reprobate¹⁷ through his own fault) he assumed into the number of the disciples. » The same is shown most clearly by perennial tradition, namely in the doctrine and discipline of the Church from the apostolic age onward. For « in the times of the Apostles the witness is the Apostle Paul, groaning among false brethren (2 Cor. XI. 26), and noting in his epistle (Phil. I. 15) certain men who preached Christ out of envy, which indeed is a diabolical vice; how the good, for the sake of keeping the unity of Christ with devoted care, bore the wicked in communion of the sacraments without any loss to themselves, although they abhorred their malice far off. That after the Apostles also the good bishops, for the sake of the unity of Christ, tolerated wicked men, not only any laymen but also fellow bishops, the letters of the martyr Cyprian are witness, where he laments the avarice of certain colleagues, even to the cruelty of usury and the robberies of estates; yet he was not made such by the contagion of the wicked, but through love of the good he bore such men, admonishing of this not only by example but also teaching it by precept. For in a certain letter of his (ep. 54, to Maximus) he says: even if tares seem to be in the Church, neither our faith nor our charity ought to hinder, so that because we see tares in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church » ¹⁸. They conclude finally their « mandate » on this disputation with an argument ad hominem, which Augustine often presses, but which is not necessary for us now. The Donatists had indeed determined that those who had withdrawn from their schism to join another schism with Maximian were not defiled, provided they had not been present at Maximian's schismatic ordination. From this opinion of theirs, absurd though it is, the Catholics argue thus for the true doctrine. « Let them be compelled, even if late, to understand from this (by the Catholic deputies) that much rather in Catholic unity the evil cannot be absent from the good, as chaff from the grain,¹⁹ if in the schismatic division (sect), where there is chaff alone, Maximian was held to have been unable to stain the companions of his own division, provided only they were not present at his ordination. »

So that we may not proceed further in a matter already sufficiently clear: it is established from the holy Scriptures, from the institutions and discipline of the Church, and in this from apostolic tradition, from the very end and very nature of the holy and sanctifying Church; and in the Donatist controversy especially, in the fourth and fifth centuries, it was wholly brought to clarity and explicitly defined that any baptized sinners who keep the true faith without heresy and social charity without schism, as long as they are not excluded by ecclesiastical sentence of excommunication, are truly and simply members of the visible Church and citizens of the kingdom of God on earth. Hence among the dogmas — « which so agree with the Catholic faith that whoever wishes to oppose them not only in all but even in each one, in that he obstinately resists any one of them and does not hesitate to teach things contrary to them, appears a heretic and an enemy of the Christian faith, and on this account to be anathematized by all Catholics » — St. Fulgentius rightly also sets down this article. « Hold most firmly, and never doubt, that the threshing-floor of God is the Catholic Church, and that within it, until the end of the age, the chaff is contained mixed with the wheat, that is, the bad are mingled with the good in the communion of the sacraments... and that the bad are usefully tolerated by the good within the Church, if this is done by living well with them and by admonishing them well, so that, seeing and hearing what is good, they may reject their evils, and tremble at being judged by God for their evil works, and so, anticipated by the gift of grace, be confounded for their iniquities and be converted to a good life by the mercy of God. But the good ought not to be separated from the bad who are established within the Catholic Church, except by dissimilarity of works, so that they do not have in common with those with whom they share the divine sacraments the evil works by which those are criminal. » St. Fulgentius, On the Faith to Peter, chs. 43 and 44.

III. Although these things are so, it cannot be denied that there is a great difference between the way in which the just and holy and the way in which sinners, sons of God and sons of the devil, are united in the framework of the holy Church, in the communion of saints; and they are and are called members of the body of which Christ is the head, and so members of Christ. We have seen above that the bonds of union with the Church are manifold, and not all of one kind but, speaking generally, of two orders. For a) there are external bonds, conspicuous in themselves, which, although they have the character of means to the end, namely charity and holiness, are nevertheless, by the institution of the founder of the Church, essential elements by which the Church on earth is formally constituted as visible. b) There are internal bonds, wholly spiritual, not conspicuous in themselves, which, although they are nobler and are the proximate end of the holy and sanctifying Church, yet, precisely because they are manifested only through those former things, do not constitute the visibility of the Church and her conspicuous society. We have demonstrated that the conspicuous elements essential by Christ's institution are: the sacrament of faith, baptism; communion in the profession of faith under legitimate teaching authority; social charity, or obedience of discipline, under legitimate hierarchical government, or sacred rule; communion in divine worship and the sacraments under legitimate priesthood. So those who lack even one of these — the unbaptized, heretics, schismatics, the excommunicated — do not simply belong to the Church on earth, although they can belong to her in some respect, namely by the bonds they still retain, and be « united to her in some part », as we heard Augustine say. Indeed it can also happen per accidens that, by the perfection of spiritual dispositions and internal bonds before God, « to whom the will is reckoned as the deed, where necessity excludes the deed, » actual external bonds are supplied, in the manner declared above. Hence conversely it comes about that sinners, although they remain truly and simply members of the visible Church on earth through all the external bonds, nevertheless are unlike her according to her nobler spiritual elements and according to the proximate end, which is sanctification; and therefore, if the Church is considered according to this form of holiness, according to the end of actual sanctification, and so according to the Spirit, they can and ought to be said not to belong to the Church.

If therefore we compare the manner of speaking about sinners in the Church with that about those who, standing outside, are nevertheless referred to the Church in some respect, the order is reversed. The latter are simply, that is, without added explanation, to be said, and ought to be said, to be outside the Church and not in the Church; but they cannot be said to belong to the Church except by an explicit declaration, or at least one manifest from the context, in some respect, that is, according to the bonds still remaining by which they are said to be referred to and to belong to the Church ²⁰. On the contrary, the sinners of whom we are speaking are simply members of the Church, and they cannot be denied to belong to the Church except in some respect, namely as considered under a certain formal aspect and by a spiritual gift. Unless some declaration is added or tacitly understood, they ought to be said, and cannot be denied without error in faith, to be in the Church; if, however, it is either explicitly declared or implicitly understood that the Church and the union of her members are regarded not universally but singly and solely according to the vivifying Spirit and the participation in and union with this life of the Spirit, nothing prevents sinners from being said, according to this manner of considering, not to be in the structure of the Church, not to be of the Church, not to belong to the Church, to be outside the Church.

These things hold, not as if it were permitted to use this manner of speaking everywhere, but so that certain expressions found among the Fathers may be rightly understood — for example in Optatus of Milevis, and very frequently in Augustine, who, against the Donatists, held the first place in defending the Catholic doctrine on sinners in the Church, mixed with the saints and the just, until the consummation of the age, as we have sufficiently shown from these same Fathers. The reason, for these Fathers, for considering the Church in such a way that sinners are not included was first indeed that general one of which we have spoken: namely that the chief adornment of the bride of Christ and body of Christ, and the end intended in itself, is actual holiness, to which only the just correspond, while sinners are contrarily opposed. Then there was for these holy doctors a second, particular and polemical reason, arising from the very nature of the Donatist heresy and of the arguments by which they were accustomed to defend it. For there was a double error on their part: that notorious sinners are not members of the Church; and further, that whoever are outside the Church, since they do not have the Holy Spirit, promised and given to the Church alone, cannot validly administer sacraments — for which opinion it was their solemn custom to appeal to the authority of the martyr Cyprian. Now against the former part the Fathers, and above all Augustine, as we have seen, demonstrate that the dogma is revealed in Scripture and explained in Tradition: tares with wheat in one field, sinners with the just in one Church communicate not in works and bonds of holiness, but in teaching and doctrine, government and discipline, priesthood and sacraments. As to the other part of the heresy, since another consideration of the object is now introduced, and the refutation has changed, there is a transition from the visible elements to the internal element of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Augustine is accustomed to reply that from the Church so considered, all sinners — not only notorious ones but also hidden ones, whom the Donatists did not exclude from the Church — are equally outcasts from this bond and this structure of the Holy Spirit; while Cyprian always acknowledged that the sacraments can be validly administered even by manifest sinners. Therefore, since sinners do not belong to the Church considered as containing the spiritual element of holiness, any more than heretics or schismatics, and yet sinners themselves, as Cyprian acknowledges entirely and the Donatists in part, validly administer the sacraments, although deprived of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the same power cannot be denied even to heretics and schismatics, because the sacraments are and remain the sacraments of Christ and of the Church, not of the men by whom they are administered.

Thus Augustine argues, both often elsewhere and especially in Book III from n. 22 and in almost the whole of Book IV, On Baptism, against the Donatists, so as to join these two things: that sinners are within and are in the Church; and yet that they are not in the unity of the Church, which is formed by peace in the Holy Spirit, and do not belong to the one dove, which is without spot. « For neither are those devoted to the Church who seem to be within, and who live against Christ, that is, who do things against Christ's commandments; nor are they to be judged as belonging at all to that Church which he himself cleanses by the washing of water in the word, so that he may present to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind. If they are not in that Church, to whose members they do not belong, they are not in the Church of which it is said: one is my dove, one is to her mother; for she is without spot and wrinkle²¹. Or let him say, if he can, that they are members of this dove, who renounce the world in words and not in deeds... But we, according to what each man is at present, ask whether they are to be reckoned today among those members of the Church that is called one dove and spotless and wrinkle-free bride, of whom Cyprian says, in the letter I have mentioned, that they do not keep the way of the Lord, nor observe the heavenly commandments given for their salvation (he brings forward more from Cyprian's letter 7 to the clergy, letter 73 to Jubaianus, and from the book On the Lapsed)... But if that dove does not recognize them among its members, and if they persist in the same perversity, the Lord will say: I do not know you, depart from me, you who work iniquity. They seem to be in the Church, and are not (considered in the manner here discussed); indeed they even act against the Church. How then can they baptize with the baptism of the Church (Cyprian himself confessing it), which profits neither them nor those receiving it, unless they are changed by a true inward conversion, so that the sacrament, which did not profit those receiving it when they renounced the world in words and not in deeds, begins to profit them, since they have begun to renounce also in deeds? So also those whose separation is open (from the Church considered simply), because they are not today in the members of that dove, neither these (openly separated) nor those (sinners); but some of them perhaps will be in the future... Just as I seem to be pressed when it is said to me: therefore does a heretic forgive sins? so I too press when I say: therefore does one who does not keep the heavenly commandments, a covetous man, a robber, a usurer, an envious man, who renounces the world in words and not in deeds (all of whom Cyprian himself confessed in the same words to be in the Church and to confer and receive sacraments validly), forgive sins? If by the power of God's sacrament, then as much the one as the other; if by his own merit, neither the one nor the other. For that sacrament is known to be Christ's even in bad men; but in the body of the one dove, incorrupt, holy, chaste, not having spot or wrinkle, neither the one nor the other is found. » Augustine, On Baptism, Book IV, nn. 4, 5.

Augustine explains the distinction more clearly in the same work: the just constitute the house of God itself, considered according to its beauty and according to its fruits or end, and are in the structure of the house, which is held together by fruitful righteousness; sinners are in the house, but do not constitute it, because they do not belong to the structure of righteousness; heretics, schismatics, and the excommunicated, who are to be held as heathens and publicans, are not in the house but out of the house, that is, they have gone out of the house. The just therefore are in the Church bodily and spiritually, by communion of sacraments and holiness of morals; sinners are in her bodily and not spiritually, by communion of sacraments, not by holiness of morals; while others, « more separated », are in her in neither way. « I think, he says, I do not speak rashly, that others are so in the house of God that they themselves are also the same house of God, which is said to be built upon the rock, which is called the one dove, which is the beautiful bride without spot or wrinkle, and the enclosed garden, the sealed fountain, the well of living water, the paradise with the fruit of apples; which house has also received the keys and the power of loosing and binding²². If anyone has despised this house when it corrects and rebukes, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican. Of this house it is said: Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house... and blessed are those who dwell in your house; they will praise you for ever and ever; and innumerable such things. This house is also called wheat, bearing fruit thirtyfold or sixtyfold or a hundredfold with patience. This house is in vessels of gold and silver, and precious stones, and woods that do not rot... For it is in the good, faithful and holy servants of God, everywhere scattered, bound together by spiritual unity in the same communion of sacraments, whether they have known one another by sight or not. But others are said to be in the house in such a way that they do not belong to the structure of the house, nor to the fellowship of fruitful and peaceful righteousness, but are said to be like chaff in the wheat; for we cannot deny that these also are in the house, the Apostle saying: in a great house there are not only golden vessels and silver, but also wooden and earthen ones, and some indeed to honor, others to dishonor. From this innumerable number (of sinners), there comes not only a crowd pressing within upon the heart of a few, in comparison with so great a multitude of saints; but also, the nets having been broken, heresies and schisms arise among those who must already be said to be more out of the house than in the house, of whom it is said: they went out from us, but they were not of us. For those already segregated even bodily are more separated than those who inwardly live carnally and animally, and are spiritually separated. » Augustine then goes on to teach that, both in the great house, even « by the feigned whom the Holy Spirit flees », and by heretics and schismatics, « who, more separated, are not more in the house than out of the house », the sacrament is truly received, but uselessly; « which, that it may become useful, he says, one must withdraw from heresy or schism, and cling to that house; which not only heretics and schismatics, but also those ought to do, who are so in the house by communion of sacraments that they are outside the house by diversity of morals. » Ibid., Book VII, nn. 99, 100.

Therefore Augustine never contradicted either himself or Catholic doctrine, that sinners are truly and simply members of the Church on earth; but he considered the same Church in different ways: either according to the visible elements and the unity of the body, in which sinners are joined and mingled with the just; or according to the proximate end of the actual sanctification of the members and the holiness of the Spirit, in whose structure of righteousness the sinners are not yet, but toward which doctrine, discipline, sacraments (visible elements) and internal invisible graces in the Church itself promote and lead them. « Whoever has grown cold in charity is weakened in the body of Christ; but he is powerful, who has already exalted our head, to heal even weak members, provided they are not cut off with too great impiety, but cling to the body until they are healed. For whatever still clings to the body is not of hopeless health. » Aug., sermon 137, n. 1.

So far the illustrious author; the rest is lacking.