Summa de Ecclesia

¹ Now that the points which the holy fathers set forth in the creed to be believed concerning the holy and universal Church have been declared above, it remains to touch on the beginning of the Church, or when the Church began. For various modes of speaking are found in the sayings of the saints concerning the beginning of the Church, which cause obscurity and difficulty to less skilled readers in understanding the truth. On this Aug. says, expounding Ps. 118, I knew from the beginning from your testimonies, because you founded them forever: the Church speaks, which on earth was not lacking from the beginning of the human race, whose firstfruits is holy Abel, sacrificed. For that too was said from the beginning: They shall be two in one flesh, which great sacrament the Apostle Paul expounds: I say, he says, in Christ and in the Church. And the same Aug. on Ps. 128 says: Of old there is a Church, and from the time when there are called saints, there is a Church on earth. On this it is to be considered that, as held above, the Church is the gathering of the faithful. And there was and is one and the same faith in the ancient fathers from the very beginning, as it were, of the human race, and in those who believed after the coming of Christ, on account of which the Apostle in 2 Cor. 4, speaking of himself and the other fathers of the New Testament, says: Having the same spirit of faith, namely which the ancient fathers had, where the Gloss, which is Augustine's, says: He shows that in the just of diverse times the faith is the same. For the same faith saved the ancient just which saves us too, namely of the mediator of God and men. Times were varied, not faith, because they believed Christ would come, would suffer, would rise and would ascend into heaven, while we believe Christ has come, suffered, risen and ascended into heaven. Hence it is manifest that, as Aug. says in his sermon on Jacob and Esau, the Church must not be taken to be only in those who began to be saints after the coming and nativity of the Lord, but all who were saints belong to that same Church. And the same Aug. in his book On the City of God confirms the same beautifully, saying: Not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and his apostles, but from Abel himself, the first just man slain by his impious brother, and thenceforth to the end of this world, amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God the Church makes her pilgrim way. Moreover the same Aug., expounding Ps. 36, I have been young and now am old, speaks thus quite excellently to the point: For the Lord himself in his body, which is the Church, was young in the first times, and behold now he has grown old. You know and acknowledge and understand, and so believe, that our head is Christ, and we are the body of that head. Are we alone, and not also those who were before us? All who have been from the beginning of the world have Christ as head. For they believed that he was to come whom we now believe has come, and in his faith they were made firm, as are we, that he might be the head of the whole city of Jerusalem, with all the faithful from beginning to end numbered together. Thus far Aug. But here it is to be noted that the time of the Church is read as distinguished into various ages, though in diverse ways. For at times two ages or two times of the Church are distinguished, namely of youth and of old age, as appeared in the just-adduced authority of the prophet, Ps. 36. At times four times or ages of the Church are found distinguished. The first is the age of childhood, and under this it was in Abel, in the prophets and patriarchs, of which under the name of youth it is said in Ps. 36: I have been young and now am old, where the Gloss says: The Church speaks as one man who was first in Abel, in the prophets and patriarchs. Song of Songs, last chapter: Our sister is little and hath no breasts; the Gloss: Our sister the Church, before it grows through increases of virtues, cannot offer the breasts of preaching to weak hearers. It is called adult when, joined by the word of God and filled with the Holy Spirit, it is borne through the ministry of preaching into the conception of sons, whom it brings forth by exhorting and bears by converting. The second age is called that of youth, and this was in the time of the martyrs, who were strengthened with such fortitude of soul that by no assaults of enemies could they be recalled from faith and from the charity of Christ, of whom the Apostle says in Rom. 8: Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? anguish, or famine, or tribulation, etc., as if to say: nothing; of whom Ps. 70 says: For thou art my patience, Lord, my hope from my youth; the Gloss: since thou hast armed me with faith, hope and charity and the other virtues with which war is waged against the devil. The third age is called old age, in which the faith of Christ was spread abroad through all nations, Ps. 91: My old age in abundant mercy; for the Gloss says on Ps. 36: The Church grew old in a fruitful old age when in honorable age, spread abroad through all nations, it received Christ. The fourth age of the Church is called decrepit, namely at the end of the world, of which under the name of old age, Ps. 70: And unto old age and grey hairs, O God, forsake me not; the Gloss: at the end of the world there will be old age, that is, decrepitude, when, with iniquity abounding, the charity of many shall grow cold, when Antichrist shall come, and life shall be closed with the wished-for end. At times, moreover, five times of the Church are found distinguished, as is touched in that parable of Christ, Matt. 20: The kingdom of heaven is like to a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard, etc., which blessed Gregory expounding in his homily speaks thus: Who holds the likeness of the householder more rightly than our Maker, who rules those whom he created, and so possesses his elect in this world as subjects, the lord in the house who has the whole vineyard, namely the Church, which from just Abel to the last elect who is to be born at the end of the world has brought forth as many saints as it has sent forth branches. These therefore the householder hires as laborers for cultivating his vineyard in the morning, at the third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hour, because from the beginning of this world to the end he does not cease to send preachers for instructing the faithful people. For the morning was from Adam to Noah, the third hour from Noah to Abraham, the sixth also from Abraham to Moses, the ninth from Moses to the coming of Christ, the eleventh from the coming of Christ to the end of the world. But Aug. speaks of six ages of the world, and so of the Church, in book 4 on the Trinity and in the book of the Eighty-three Questions, speaking thus: There are six ages of the world, of which the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was made the first man, to Noah, who made the ark in the flood. The second thence to Abraham, who was called the father of all nations which would imitate his faith. The third from Abraham to David the king. The fourth from David to the captivity by which the people of God was carried over to Babylon. The fifth from that transmigration to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sixth age is now being enacted. Thus far Aug. And the same Aug. sets forth the same under the name of times and of the six days on Ps. 92, reckoning the sixth day or time from the preaching of John to the end. From which is confuted the error of certain heretics asserting that before the coming of Christ there was no faith among the ancients, and consequently no Church, which is called the congregation of the faithful, whose reasons we shall resolve in the following chapter.