Chapter VIII — On the Church

I. Ecclesia is a Greek word, which in Latin signifies a convocation; under the state of grace it is wont to be described thus: It is a society of men called to the faith of Christ, which is inwardly vivified by faith, hope, and charity; but outwardly is governed by the profession of the same Christian faith, by the communion of the Sacraments, and by the preaching of the divine word by legitimate Pastors under its visible head on earth, the Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. The Church is also taken for the material house itself dedicated to God, where the Faithful assemble, of which Matthew 21 says: My house shall be called the house of prayer. But it is commonly taken for the society of the Faithful; and in this sense Paul speaks to the Galatians, chapter 1: Beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God.

II. Just as in the physical human body certain members are vivified by the soul, while certain others adhere to the body yet are not informed by the soul, so it happens in the moral body of the Church. Some Christians communicate with the society both in the external participation of the sacraments and in the other rites, and also in faith, hope, and charity; and these are vivified by the soul, and are living members of the Church. Others only outwardly profess the faith with the other Faithful, and frequent the Sacraments. These are said to be of the body of the Church, but they are outside her soul. That the Church comprehends both good and bad is evident from Matthew 3 [recte 13], where she is compared with the threshing-floor containing wheat and chaff, and with the net gathering together every kind of fish. Wherefore shamefully erred the Cathari and the Donatists, who excluded from the Church all those stained with fault.

III. Heretics, schismatics, and the excommunicated are outside the Church. Children of Heretics who have been baptized are within the Church until the use of reason; and when they have attained it, if they criminally adhere to the synagogue of the Heretics, they become Heretics outside the Church; if they withdraw from it and betake themselves into the bosom of the catholic Church, they become Catholics and members of the true Church.

IV. The marks of the Church are four: One, holy, catholic, and apostolic. She is one by unity of body, because the faithful compose one moral body or society. One body: therefore one head. She is one by unity of spirit, which animates the whole body. She is one by unity of faith and doctrine, by unity of hope, by unity of charity, by unity of the invisible Lord God and of Jesus Christ, and of his visible Vicar the Roman Pontiff. Not even the Heretics themselves dare to deny her unity. One body, one spirit, one faith, one hope, one baptism, one charity, one head they freely admit. But they contend that this head is invisible only — namely, Christ Jesus. But they err shamefully. The body of the Church is visible: therefore the head is visible. In very deed Christ the Lord instituted Peter as the head of his Church, and the successors of Peter. For as he willed the body of the Church to be perpetual, so also its head. Which truth the perennial tradition of the Church confirms.¹

¹ See Tome I, Apparatus, Book 1, Dissertation 3, chapter 4.

V. The second mark of the Church is Sanctity, in that she is consecrated to God, both on account of the sanctity which shines forth in her chief members and on account of the purity of doctrine which she professes. She is named Catholic, or universal, under a threefold title: first, by reason of doctrine, which excludes and execrates all errors; second, by reason of time, because she will endure in unbroken series even to the end of the world; third, by reason of place: Going into the whole world, preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16). Nor is it required that she extend herself at the same time to all places; nay, Christ himself foretold that his Religion, on account of the crimes of the Faithful, would pass from kingdom to kingdom. From the East it has migrated into the West, and from the West into other parts of the world.

VI. The Donatists objected many things against this universality, and exaggerated the spread of the Arian heresy. The Donatists have been imitated by the Lutherans and Calvinists. The mouths of all these St. Augustine stops, On the Unity of the Church, chapters 13 and 19, and again in Epistle 103. This single epistle grinds to pieces the audacity of the Lutherans and Calvinists.²

² See Tome I, Apparatus, Book 1, Dissertation 3, chapter 4.

VII. The Church is called Apostolic, both because she was founded and propagated by Christ through the Apostles; and because in her there is a perennial and never interrupted succession of Bishops derived from the Apostles; and finally because by the ministry of these the doctrine of the Apostles is kept immaculate.

VIII. That the Church is visible even Calvin himself confesses, Book 4 of the Institutes, chapter 1, section 2; to which subscribes the Lutheran Melanchthon, under the title On the Church. The disciples of Luther and Calvin, more demented than their masters, pressed by the arguments of the Catholics, invented an invisible Church. And in very truth their Church is invisible and fictitious — instituted not by Christ, not by the Apostles, but by Luther, by Calvin, by Zwingli, and by other men of the same bran. Therefore their Churches are named Lutheran, Calvinist, Protestant — not Catholic, not Apostolic, not Christian. So well ascertained are the testimonies of divine Scripture which demonstrate the Church to be visible, that it is superfluous to transcribe them.

IX. That the Holy Spirit assists his Church, lest she err in matters of faith and morals, is an ineluctable dogma. Innumerable most illustrious Theologians — Melchior Cano, Pedro de Soto, Bellarmine, Bossuet, to whom are added Arnauld and Nicole — have confirmed it with every kind of argument, the deliriums of the Protestants being utterly overthrown. So lucid is the promise by which Christ the Lord testifies, Matthew 28, that he will preserve his Church from all error, that it can be eluded by no tergiversation: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

X. So invincible have the disciples of Calvin found the arguments of the Catholics, by which it is proved that the Church cannot be deceived and is directed by the Holy Spirit lest she err, and so inept the sophisms formerly devised for obscuring this truth, that they have been compelled to fabricate a new chimerical system. They blurt out, with the minister Jurieu, that the Church is visible, perpetual, indefectible, comprehending all the schismatic and heretical Sects which admit the fundamental articles; and this Jurieu explains at length in his book entitled The True System of the Church, where on page 51 he refutes Augustine, and prates that he was deceived because he excluded from the catholic Church the Schismatic communions which do not destroy the foundation. This grossest of errors collapses of itself. For the catholic Church has always cut off from her bosom the schismatic and heretical communions. Let the Calvinist minister explain to us: who defined that these articles are fundamental, and not others? Where is this Church to be found, composed of various Sects which tear one another to pieces with mutual censures? This Church is Lutheran and Calvinist, Protestant — not Catholic and Apostolic. The divine Scripture, the Fathers, the Councils have always cut off the schismatic and heretical Sects from communion and from the apostolic succession, as rotten members. The Church pronounced anathema against the Origenists, the Novatians, the Donatists, the Quartodecimans, the Sabbatians: were the errors of these fundamental? Not even Jurieu himself will dare to assert it. His new system, therefore, collapses of itself — a system devised precisely because he saw and knew that the other systems of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Protestant synagogue were utterly inept.

XI. Controversies concerning Religion cannot be settled by divine Scripture alone, but the definition of the Church is necessary. This is the fundamental truth on which all the controversies between Heretics and Catholics depend. With a full pen I have treated this controversy elsewhere;³ now I compress it into few words. Scripture has a twofold sense: one literal, the other spiritual. The letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth, says the Apostle Paul. The letter killed the Jews, who explained the oracles of the Scriptures concerning the coming of Christ in an alien sense. The letter kills all Heretics. The Sabellians admitted one single divine person, whom they called by three names — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — on account of the diverse offices. The Arians blasphemed that Christ was absolutely inferior to God. The Manicheans blurted out that the old Testament wars with the new. The Pelagians denied original sin. All these, and very many other Heretics, perished by the killing letter. All of them contended that the holy Scriptures stood on their side; and they fought one against another with the weapons of the divine Scriptures.

³ Tome I, Apparatus, Book I, Dissertation 3.

XII. I do not so much wonder that the Protestants, Lutherans, and Calvinists disagree with the Catholics in the articles concerning the real presence of Christ, concerning Justification, concerning the veneration of images, concerning the Sacrifice, and other points: for those who excel in acumen and erudition in discussing points of this kind can color even errors with certain paints. But in this capital controversy, on which all the rest depend, they betray that they lack sanity of mind and labor under manifest fatuity. The Lutherans and Calvinists contend that Scripture alone is the judge of controversies; and at the same time they dispute most fiercely about the sense of these words: This is my body. The Lutherans defend that these words are to be taken in the literal sense; the Calvinists, in the spiritual sense. The Lutherans maintain that when these words have been pronounced, the body of Christ exists truly and really under the sacred symbols; the Calvinists, on the contrary, teach that the body of Christ is found there only in figure. The Lutherans assert that the body of Christ is really found there, that the substance of the bread remains, and that the body of Christ is there only in the use, and deny that it remains when the use is over. The Catholics, on the contrary, maintain that the very substance of the bread is converted into the body of Christ, and that this remains under the sacred symbols even apart from the use. The Calvinists utterly deny all this. That article is fundamental, as is evident. For if the body of Christ does not exist there, the Catholics are idolaters, because they adore bread; if it really exists, the Calvinists are impious, who despise it. If holy Scripture is of itself, no otherwise than the Sun, as Calvin says, splendid and perspicuous, then blind are the Lutherans and Calvinists, who for two centuries have been disputing over the aforesaid sense of the words and do not see the most splendid light. If the sense can be pulled apart into various directions by the wits of men, then utterly fatuous in this controversy are the Lutherans and Calvinists who deny the necessity of a judge to define this controversy and six hundred others. From the founding of the Christian Church heresies, and those very many, have always stalked abroad, and stalk abroad daily. Every Sect boasts the holy Scriptures for itself. And nonetheless the Protestants are not ashamed to prate that no judge is required to settle these controversies. Read what I have adduced from John Locke in Tome I, Apparatus, Book I, Dissertation 3, chapter 5, section 4.

XIII. The vicious circle which the Protestants object is a childish rattle, and the offspring of a most rotten calumny. They calumniate the Catholics as teaching that the Church bestows upon the divine Scriptures their authority and, as they say, their infallibility, and that at the same time the Church receives her authority from those very Scriptures. The Catholics teach that holy Scripture has its authority and infallibility from God. But because, on account of the vain wits of men, this divine Scripture can receive various senses, God instituted the Church as judge, to declare which is the genuine sense intended by God; which sense has its authority from God, and from the Church only the declaration that such a sense is from God. And lest the Church err in this, God promised his help; and this promise he consigned to his divine Scriptures. The Church herself is subject to the divine Scriptures, and is bound to embrace the sense which she judges to have been intended by God. Where here is even the shadow of a vicious circle? See more in the place cited.