Chapter III (1)

'I told you, sister, how devoted I was to painting; and this taste my husband spared no pains to gratify. He took me, one day, to one of the most splendid picture-galleries in Paris, and there, amongst other _chef d'oeuvres_, I noticed a most beautiful picture of St. Mary Magdalen. I stood entranced before it: it represented a graceful, slender figure kneeling fore a rustic altar. The hands were clasped in prayer, and the face was slightly raised toward heaven; but anything so exquisite as the blended look of remorse and love upon those splendid features I never saw; it was as though the raining tears had softened the dazzling beauty and brightness of the large, liquid eyes, and had blanched the roses on both cheek and lip, and had left over the fair face a lingering light, soft and spiritual. Long golden tresses waved over her shoulders, and lay (even as she knelt) upon the ground in their profusion and luxuriance. Hope and love were written on the noble brow, while such humility, such self-abasement were expressed in the prostrate, kneeling figure, that at one glance the history was read. I forgot time, place, and all things--my whole soul absorbed in the wondrous beauty of the picture. My husband had left me to procure a catalogue, when suddenly a heavy hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a voice hissed, rather than spoke, into my ear: 'Ay, look--for the sin that branded her is marked upon your brow!' The hot breath of the speaker flushed upon my cheek--a low, scornful laugh, and it was gone. Bewildered, I turned round, but saw no one who seemed likely to have addressed me or who seemed to notice me. A few paces from me, looking intently upon a small painting, there stood a tall, stately lady, and no one else was near. I hastened, when I recovered the use of my faculties, to ask her if she had seen any one speak to me, when she quickly arose, and left the room. As she turned to pass to the door, I saw her face; it was handsome, but so cold and haughty, and with so fierce an expression of self-will, that the words froze upon my lips; it was a strange face, too, and it haunted me all day. I was bewildered; but I did not tell my husband. {785} I did not wish to trouble or annoy him. I was frightened and out of spirits, and when evening came, my husband would insist upon my going to the opera. I went; but I could not forget those dreadful words. The opera was beautiful; but my attention would wander. Looking round the boxes, I suddenly saw the same lady I had met in the picture-gallery. Her handsome, haughty face bore an expression that surprised me; her large, glittering eyes were fixed upon me, and a smile of triumph, malicious and revengeful, curled her lip. I turned to my husband and said: 'I do wish, Percy, you would tell me who that lady is there opposite with the pink dress.' He turned, at my request; but when he saw her, his face became deadly pale, and convulsed with emotion. 'Do you know her?--are you ill?--what is the matter, Percy?' I cried.

"'Nothing,' said my husband, 'but the heat is too great; will you come home, Eva?'

"I rose, terrified, to leave the box, and turning again to look at the lady, I found her gone. As we were driving home, when my husband became more composed, I told him of my adventure in the picture-gallery, and asked him if he could possibly conjecture the meaning of it.

"'Why, why, Eva, did you not tell me this before? Now, do not be frightened; but I have decided to leave Paris by the midnight train: it is now ten o'clock; will you be ready?'

"'Yes; but why this haste?'

"'Ask me no questions, Eva; only hasten, and let us be gone.'

"My husband's manner was stern, and he became so silent that I dared not interrupt him. Directly we arrived at home, he left me to arrange for our journey, and, ringing for my maid, I told her to prepare for instant departure. I was tired, and my head ached with useless conjectures. I felt a foreboding of coming misery that I could not account for. I was in the drawing-room, packing a few books, when a servant entered and told me I was wanted. I said I could not see any one, I was engaged; but in a few minutes the man returned, and said the lady insisted upon seeing me, and before he had finished speaking, the lady I had seen at the opera stood before me.

"'You are leaving Paris,' she said, with a sneering smile; 'but it is important that you should grant me a few moments; perhaps I may alter your plans.'

"I bowed and the servant withdrew. She stood and surveyed me for some minutes with a strange, glittering look in her wild eyes; and then coming to me, she said:

"'You are passing fair. Percy Montford's second choice speaks well for his taste.'

"'I do not understand you, madam,' I said proudly; 'nor do I see by what right you intrude upon me or use my husband's name.'

"'Your husband, girl!' and a mocking laugh rang in my ears. 'Nay, Percy Montford is no husband of yours.'

"'You are mad,' I replied. But she interrupted me--

"'Mad! No; and yet, I tell you, I am Lady Montford! You do not believe me? I will tell you again. Sixteen years ago, when I was young, and the world said beautiful, I became the lawful wife of the man who has deceived you.'

"I rose indignantly, and grasped the bell-rope.

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"'Nay,' said she, 'pause one minute before you summon aid or assistance. I repeat--sixteen years ago I was married. My husband had then no title; he was simply Mr. Ingram; he lived with me one year, and then, finding my temper hot and my spirit bitter, he left me, (amply provided for, it is true,) and has never seen me since. I have followed him, I have tracked him from city to city. I found out his admiration for you; I knew he would marry you secretly--openly he dared not, for fear of me. I could have saved you then, but I would not; I hated you because you were beautiful and good, and I have watched and waited with a fierce longing for the moment when your cup of joy was full, that I might dash it from your lips, and turn it to the poisoned chalice I have so long drunk. You still disbelieve me? Look,' and she took some papers and laid before me. My hands shook, and my sight failed me when I tried to read them; but I saw enough; and covering my face, I sank on my knees.

"I remember now, sister, that in my madness and my grief I knelt to that woman, and I prayed to her to unsay her fearful words. I can remember how she rejected me, how she scorned me and my wild prayers, and how proudly she stood over me, gloating in my misery.

"'No, Eva Leason! you broke your mother's heart--you had no mercy upon her, and I have none upon you. I am claiming only justice, I am speaking only truth.'

"'Percy!' I cried, 'come and save me!'

"'Ah! Percy, save her! You are so noble and good! You never deceived her, never betrayed her!' And then I remember no more, save that darkness seemed to come upon me until I lost all sense and feeling.

"When I recovered in some degree my recollection, I was lying upon a sofa, and my husband--ah! mine no longer!--knelt beside me, his face and head hidden, and yet I knew that he was weeping. She was gone.

"I sprang to my feet.' Percy,'I cried, 'tell me, is this true? You found her here. Has she told me the truth?' And I waited for his answer with my life depending on it.

"'I will deceive you no more, Eva. Alas! she has told you true.'

"'And you have deceived me, stolen me from my mother and my home, and made me an outcast!' My heart seemed on fire. I tore the ring from my finger and the jewels from my hair, and threw them at his feet; but he knelt, and passionately implored me not to leave him, to listen to his story, to have mercy on him. But no, I heeded no word; I tore my dress from his hands; I rushed from him; I took no time; I had but one thought, and that was to fly. I was delirious with grief and anger; my cloak and bonnet were in the hall; I threw them on; and before Lord Montford knew where I was, I had taken a carriage, and was on my road to the station. My heart ached for my mother. I remember but very little else. I crossed the Channel, and my passage took nearly all my money: I had just enough to reach London, and then I was penniless. It seemed to me that I wandered for hours in the dreary streets, and at last I fell. I was picked up and carried here. Now, tell me, sister, was not my punishment bitter? Can you wonder that I craved to die, and hide my shame and misery?"

"You are much sinned against, Eva; but tell me how could Lord Montford marry you when he knew his first wife was living?"

"I do not know, sister; I cannot think; yet now I remember, that night he told me that he had married her when he was quite young, and had never known peace or rest since; and that, when he knew me, he loved me so and feared to lose me, he could not resist the temptation. {787} Did I tell you, sister, that the first thing I heard when I came to England was that my mother was dead? I saw it in a paper."

But, dear reader, I shall weary you if I repeat all poor Eva's long history; I must hasten and finish my story.

Some weeks after this, I was sitting with her, reading to her, when Mother Frances called me hastily from the room. I had told her Eva's history, and I felt from her manner that she had something of importance to say concerning her.

"Sister," said the superioress, "there is a gentleman in the convent parlor, and he has sent in his card. See, it is Lord Montford."

"O Mother Frances! what shall we do? what can we say to him? He has, then, traced poor Eva here!"

"Let us first discover his errand, and then we will act as seems best."

When we entered the parlor, Lord Montford rose, and when he addressed us, his voice trembled.

"May I ask," he began, "if a lady who some time since obtained shelter at the hospital, is still here? I have traced her here; can I be allowed to see her?"

"Lord Montford," said Mother Frances, "Eva's history is well known to me; and I have no hesitation in saying that, while this roof shelters her, she shall be safe from your further deceptions."

"Nay, you mistake, Rev. Mother, I am come to offer Eva the only reparation in my power. As you know my errors, concealment is useless. My first wife is dead, and I am come to make her my own again."

It took a long time to prepare Eva for this news; I dreaded it. She was so near the verge of the grave, that I feared the least agitation would be fatal. She bore it calmly; and when I had told her, Lord Montford entered the room, and I left them together.

Would, dear reader, that I could tell you, as the old story-books do, that Eva lived long and happily; but alas! no; she died three weeks after this, reconciled to God and to the church.

Eva Lady Montford lies in her quiet grave; violets are growing where her bright head was laid low. The winds chant drearily among the trees that shelter her tomb; and if you visit it when the morning sun gilds the flowers, or the moon silvers the leaves, you will always meet there one who, if he sinned deeply, has repented more deeply still.

From the wind that sighs over Eva's grave, comes there, my dear young reader, no warning to you? Is there no secret hoarded in that heart of yours, that a mother's eye has never penetrated; and if so, will it lead to your happiness in this world or the next? Ah! no; concealment or deception in the end works misery, let the cause be what it may. A pure and open heart before God, and a just and blameless one before the world, is my prayer for you.

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The Church and Her Attributes.

The heterodox of all shades recognize, in some form or in some sense, what they call the church of Christ, and hold it in some way necessary, or at least useful, to salvation. The Anglicans profess to believe in a church founded by Christ himself, of which they claim to be a pure or purified branch; the Presbyterians profess to believe that there is a church, out of which there is no salvation; the Methodists and Baptists call their organizations churches, and hold them to be parts or branches of one universal or catholic church; and even Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, who deny the incarnation, speak of the church, though precisely what they mean by it is not easy to say. So far as we know, there is no sect, school, or party, not included among those whom our theologians call infidels or apostates, that does not profess a belief, of some sort, in the holy catholic and apostolic church of the creed.

In a controversy between us and the heterodox, the question is not, _An sit ecclesia?_ but, _Quid sit ecclesia?_ The controversy hinges, not on the existence of the church, but on what the church is, and only rarely on which is the true church; for when all have once come to agree as to what the church is, there will be little dispute as to which she is. We start, then, with the assumption that there is something to be called the church of Christ, and proceed at once to point out what she is.

The church of Christ, taken in its most comprehensive sense, in all states, places, and times, is, says Billuart: "_Congregatio fidelium in vero Dei cultu adunatorum sub Christo capite_--the congregation of the faithful, united under Christ the head, in the true worship of God." Most of the heterodox, as well as all Catholics, will accept this definition. But this definition includes the faithful who lived before Christ; as well as those who have lived since, and as those who lived and died before the incarnation could not enter into heaven before the way was opened by our Lord himself, who is the first-born from the dead, and the resurrection and the life, a definition more particularly adapted to the state of the church since the coming of Christ is needed. The church has indeed existed from the beginning; but before the Word was actually incarnated, she existed by prophecy and promise only; but Christ having come and fulfilled the promise, the church exists now in fact, in reality, for the reality foretold and promised has come. Hence St. Paul, in referring to the faithful of the Old Testament, says, "And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise"--or the fulfilment of the promise--"God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." Heb. xi. 39, 40. The church, before Christ, was incomplete, and needed further fulfilment or perfecting; the church in the state in which she exists since Christ, is the church realized, completed, or perfected. According to this state, and as the kingdom of God on earth, she is, as Billuart again defines: "Societas fidelium baptizatorum ejusdem fidei professione, eorumdem sacramentorum participatione, eodem cultu inter se adunatorum sub uno capite Christo in coelis, et sub ejus in terris vicario summo pontifice--the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments and the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and on earth under his vicar, the supreme pontiff." [Footnote 70]

[Footnote 70: Billuart, _De Reg. Fid._ Dissert. III.
_De Eccl._ Art. I.]

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All will not accept the whole of this definition; but all will agree that the church is a society embracing all the faithful, united in the true worship of God under one head, Jesus Christ in heaven; but the heterodox deny the union under one head or one regimen on earth. But what is a congregation or society of the faithful under Christ its head? A congregation or society under one head implies both unity and multiplicity, either many made one, or one manifesting or explicating itself in many, and in either sense supposes more than the heterodox in general understand by the church. The faithful, congregated or associated under one head, Christ, are one body, for Christ is the head of the congregation or society, not merely of the individuals severally; but the heterodox generally, in our times at least, make the church consist solely of individuals aggregated to the collective body of believers, because already united as individuals by faith and love to Christ, as their head; which supposes Christ to be the head of each individual of the church, but not of the church herself. According to this view, men are regenerated outside of the society or church, and join the church because supposed to be regenerated or born again, not that they may be born again. The church in this case is simply the aggregate of regenerated persons, and derives her life from Christ through them, instead of their deriving their life from Christ the head through her. The one view makes the church a general term, an abstraction, performing and capable of performing no part in the regeneration and sanctification of souls; the other makes the church a reality, a real existence, living a real life not derived from her members, and the real medium through which our Lord carries on his mediatorial work; and therefore union with her is not only profitable to spiritual life, but necessary to its birth in the soul, and therefore to individual salvation. This must be the case if we suppose Christ to be the head of the congregation or society called the church, and of individuals severally only as they are affiliated to her.

There is, we suspect, a deeper philosophy in the church than the heterodox in general are aware of. "The church," it was said in this magazine, in one of the essays on _The Problems of the Age_, "is the human race in its highest sense," that is, the regenerated human race, the human race in the teleological order, not in the order of natural generation, which is simply cosmic and initial. This supposes in the church something more than individuals, as, indeed, does society itself. With nothing but individualities brought together there is no society, there is only aggregation, because there is no unity, nothing that is one and common to all the individuals brought together. In all real society there is a social principle, a social life, in which individuals participate, but which is itself not individual, nor derived from the individuals associated. Thus in every real nation, not a pseudo nation made up of the forced juxtaposition of distinct and often hostile communities, there is a real national life. {790} An insult to the nation each one feels is an insult to himself; and if the existence of the nation is threatened, every one in whose heart throbs the national life, rises, and all, in the fine Biblical expression, "march as one man" to the rescue, prepared to save the nation or die in its defence.

The unity of social life is still more manifest when we come to the race. We are aware of the old quarrel between the nominalists and conceptualists on the one hand, and the old realists on the other; but we disposed of that controversy in the article entitled _An Old Quarrel_, in the Magazine for May of last year, and established, we think, the reality of genera and species, while we denied that of abstractions, or simple mental conceptions. If we deny the reality of genera and species, we must deny the fact of generation, and the Catholic dogmas of the unity of the species and of original sin. If all men have not proceeded from Adam by way of natural generation, there can be no unity of the species; and if no unity of the species, there can be no original sin, which is "the sin in which we are born," the sin of origin, the sin of the race, transmitted by natural generation from Adam to all his posterity. To deny the reality, of the species is to deny this, is to deny generation, that we are born in any sense of Adam; to deny generation is to deny regeneration; and to deny regeneration is to deny the whole Christian or teleological order. We cannot then logically be nominalists or conceptualists and Christian believers at one and the same time.

We do not pretend that the species subsists without individualization any more than we do that the individual can subsist without the species. What we contend for is, that in every individual there is that which is not individual, but distinguishable from the individuality, which is common to all the individuals of the species, and which in men binds all men, from the first to the last, together in the unity of their natural head or progenitor. The species is more than the individual, operates in the individual, determines his specific nature, and separated from which the individual is nothing; but the species does not subsist without individualization, and could not be explicated by natural generation if not individualized. Yet the entire race was individualized in Adam.

We can now understand the assertion that "The church is the human race in the highest sense," the regenerated race in its progenitor, its unity and reality, therefore in its real head, in the supernatural order. The head of the regenerated race, or the race in the supernatural or teleological order, is Christ himself, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. Hence the apostle says, (i Cor. xv.,) "As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive." The apostle, in this fifteenth chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, draws a parallel between the first Adam and the last Adam, which must hold good be the race as born of the first Adam, and the race as born anew of the last Adam; and, therefore, the race born anew must hold to Christ in the order of regeneration a relation strictly analogous to that borne by it in the natural or initial order, to the first Adam. The difference is, that in the natural order the race is explicated by natural generation, and in the supernatural or teleological order by the election of grace. But the relation between the members and the head is no less real in the one case than in the other, and we live in the order of regeneration, if born again, the life of Christ as really and truly as in the natural order we live the life of Adam. The church, then, proceeds as really through grace from Christ, the supernatural head, as the race itself proceeds from Adam, the natural head.

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This view of the church is sustained by Saint Augustine, who represents Christ as both the head and the body of the church, and says Christ and his members are the whole Christ--_totus Christus_. If we view the church in her origin, her principle, her life, that is, in her head and soul, she is Christ himself; if we view her as the congregation or society of the faithful, made one in the unity of the head, the church is the body of Christ. Hence, Saint Paul teaches, (Colossians i. 18,) that Christ "is the head of the body; the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead;" "the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands being supplied with nourishment and compacted groweth unto the increase of God." (Ib. ii. 19.) "Christ is the head of the church; he is the Saviour of his body." (Eph. v. 23.) "Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." (i Cor. xii. 27.) "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." (Eph. v. 30.) "And if one member suffer anything, all the members suffer with it: or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it." (i Cor. xii. 26.) Nothing can more clearly or unequivocally assert Christ as the head of the church, the church as the body of Christ, or the members of the church as members of his body and members of one another, or the perfect solidarity of Christ and the church, and of the members of the church in Christ, and with one another, as implied in the definition of the church quoted from Billuart.

The men of the world do not understand this, because they recognize no existence but that of individual things, and have no conception of unity. What transcends the individual or particular, is, for them, an empty word, or a pure abstraction, therefore nothing. They have never asked themselves how individuals or particulars can exist without the general or universal, nor how there can be men without the generic man. What has not for them a sensible existence is, indeed, no existence at all. They seem never to reflect that, if there were no supersensible reality, there could be no sensible reality. The sensible is mimetic, depends on the intelligible or noetic which it copies or imitates. Take away the intelligible or non-sensible, and the sensible would be a mere appearance in which nothing would appear--less than a vain shadow.

We have defined the church in her origin, principle, and life, to be Christ himself; as the society of the faithful, to which all the faithful are affiliated, to be the body of Christ. But the principle on which we have asserted this union of the faithful with Christ, applies only to those who are in the order of regeneration; for in that order only is Christ our head, or are we, as individuals, affiliated to him, and included in him, as the father of regenerated humanity; and hence they who die unregenerated, suffer the penalty of original sin and of such actual sins as they may have committed. How then do we enter that order? By the new birth; by being born of Christ into it, as we enter the natural order by being born of Adam. The Pelagians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists reject the distinction of the two orders, and recognize no regenerated humanity; the Calvinists, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Evangelicals, etc., hold that we are translated from the order of nature into the order of grace by the direct, immediate, and irresistible operation of the Holy Ghost. {792} But the Holy Ghost, in his immediate operations, is God acting in his divine nature, and the medium of our regeneration is God in his human nature, the Man Christ Jesus, who, on this view, would be superseded as the mediator of God and men. The order of regeneration originates in the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, or God in his human nature, not in God in his divine nature; and therefore, to be in that order, we must be born of God in his humanity. If we could be regenerated by the Holy Ghost, or God in his divine nature alone, without the intervention of God in his human nature, or the Man Christ Jesus as the medium or mediator, the incarnation would go for nothing, and we should be made by the new birth, sons of God in his divine nature; since neither the Father nor the Holy Ghost assumed flesh; as the eternal Word is himself the son of God, and God as he is God; which, we need not say, is simply impossible and absurd. By the hypostatic union with the Word, man becomes God in his personality, but not in his nature, for the human nature remains always human nature. The two natures remain, as we are taught in the condemnation of the Monophysites, for ever distinct in the unity of the one divine person. By regeneration we are elevated, indeed, to be sons of God, but sons of God by participation with the Eternal Son in his human, not in his divine nature. We are made joint-heirs with Christ, and sons of God by adoption, not by nature.

There is no act conceivable without principle, medium, and end. In the creation of man and the universe, the three persons of the holy and indivisible Trinity concur, but in diverse respects--the Father as principle, the Son or Word as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end or consuminator. In the regeneration, which St. Paul calls a "new creation," the whole Trinity also concur, the Father as principle, the Son as medium, and the Holy Ghost as end, consummator, or sanctifier; but here it is the Son in his human nature, not in his divine nature, that is the medium; for St. Paul says, "There is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Son, in his human nature, is the medium of the whole order of regeneration, or of our redemption, new birth, and return to God as our final cause or last end. We must then be begotten of him in his humanity by the Holy Ghost, as the condition of being born into the regeneration, and becoming members of the regenerated human race. The heterodox overlook this fact, and even when asserting the incarnation, leave it no office in the regeneration and sanctification of souls, or, at best, no continuous or permanent office. According to them, the mediatorial work was completed when Christ died on the cross, at least, when he ascended into heaven; and now the salvation of souls is carried on by the Holy Ghost without any medium or any participation of God in his human nature, as if one person of the indivisible Trinity could operate alone, without the concurrence of the other two! This, if it were possible, would imply the denial of the unity of God, and the assertion of the three persons of the Godhead as three Gods, not three persons in one God. The heterodox, the supernaturalists, as well as the naturalists, really deny the whole order of grace as proceeding from God in his human nature, its only possible medium, and hence the reason why they so universally shrink from calling Mary the Mother of God, and accuse of idolatry the devotion which Catholics pay to her. {793} Though the eternal Word took the flesh he assumed from her, yet, as that flesh is not in their view the medium of our spiritual life, they cannot see in her, more than in any other pure and holy woman, any connection with our regeneration, and our spiritual or eternal life. They cannot see that, in denying her claims, they virtually reject the whole Christian order.

The difficulty, though not the mystery, disappears the moment we recognize the sacramental principle, which it was the prime object of the Reformers to eliminate from the Christian system. In the definition of the church, she is said to be "the society of the faithful baptized in the profession of the same faith, and united _inter se_ in the participation of the same _sacraments_." The sacraments are all visible signs signifying, that is, communicating grace to the recipient. Among these sacraments is one, which is the sacrament of faith, the sacrament of regeneration, that is, baptism, in which we receive the gift of faith, and are born members of Christ's body, and united to him as our head, and as the head of the regenerated race. In baptism we are regenerated, born into the supernatural order, the kingdom of heaven, and have the life of Christ infused by the Holy Ghost into us, so that henceforth we become flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, one with him, and one with all the faithful in him, as really united to him in the spiritual order, as we are to Adam in the natural order, and derive our spiritual life from him as really as we derive from God, through Adam, our natural life. This is what we understand St. Paul to mean when he says, "It is written, the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit." The sacraments are all effective _ex opere operato_, and through them the Holy Ghost infuses the grace special to each, when the recipient opposes no obstacle to it. Infants are incapable of offering any obstacle, and are regenerated by baptism in Christ and joined to him. In the case of adults who have grown up without faith, the _prohibentia_, or obstacles to faith, must be removed, by reasons that convince the understanding and produce what theologians call _fides humama_, or human faith, such faith as we have in the truth of historical events; but this faith is wholly in the natural order, although it embraces things in the supernatural order as its material object, and does not at all unite us to Christ as our head. It brings us, when faithful to our convictions, to the sacrament of baptism, but cannot introduce us into the order of regeneration; the faith that unites us to the body of Christ, and through it with Christ himself, or divine faith, is the gift of God, and is infused into the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sacrament of baptism itself. [Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Theologians generally teach that an act of
supernatural faith, elicited by the aid of a special
transient grace, precedes the infusion of the habit of
faith.--Ed. Catholic World.]

Hence, in her present state, only the baptized belong to the society called the church of Christ, and only the baptized are united as one body under Christ, their head in heaven, or under his vicar on earth. The satisfaction or atonement made by our Lord to divine justice, though it was made for all, and is ample for the sins of the whole world, avails individuals, or becomes practically theirs, only as through baptism, _vel in re, vel in voto,_ they are really united to Him, and are in Him as their head, as we were in Adam; and hence the dogma, _extra ecclesiam nulla salus,_ judged by the world to be so harsh and illiberal, is founded in the very nature and design of the church, of the whole mediatorial work of Christ, and in the very reason of the incarnation itself. {794} To say a man can be saved out of the church, is saying simply a man can be saved out of Christ, without being born of Him,--as impossible as for one to be a man and, in humanity, without being born of Adam. The justice, the sanctity, the merits, the life of Christ, can be really ours, only as we are really assimilated to His body, and are in Him as our living head, our Father in the order of grace; and hence it was not idly or inconsiderately, that St. Cyprian, one of the profoundest of the fathers, said: "He cannot have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother." It lies in the very nature of the case.

The other sacraments are channels of grace from the head to the body and its members; and are all means of sustaining or restoring the life begotten in baptism, preserving, diffusing, or defending the faith, bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord, augmenting the life and compacting the union of the body of Christ, and solacing individuals in their illnesses, and comforting and strengthening souls in their passage through the dark valley of death. The sacramental system is complete, and provides for all our spiritual wants. Baptism initiates us into the life of Christ; the Holy Eucharist nourishes that life in us; Penance restores it when lost by sin; Confirmation gives strength and heroic courage to withstand and repel the assaults of Satan; Orders provide priests for offering the unbloody sacrifice, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ, intercessors for the people, teachers, directors, and defenders, in the name of Christ, of the Christian society; Matrimony institutes and blesses the Christian family; and Extreme Unction heals the sick, or sustains, strengthens, and consoles the departing. Indeed, the sacraments meet all the necessities of the soul, in both the natural and the supernatural orders, from its birth to its departure, and even leave us not on the brink of the grave, but accompany us till received into the choir of the just made perfect.

The medium of all sacramental grace is the Man Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, and the sacraments are the media through which the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ flows out from him, the Fountain,--the grace that begets the new life, justifies, sanctifies, and makes pleasing to God, we mean,--is infused by the Holy Ghost into the soul, and constitutes alike the vital principle of the individual, and of the whole body, quickening and sustaining each. In rejecting sacramental grace, the heterodox separate the individual soul, and also the church herself, from all real communion or intercourse with Christ, or God in his human nature, and accept the seminal principle of rationalism, into which we see them everywhere falling. They dissolve Christ, and render the Word efficient only in his divine nature. The sacraments are the media of our union with God in his human nature, through which the hypostatic union is, in some sort, repeated in us, or made by the Holy Ghost practically effectual to the justice and sanctity of believers, and the perfecting of the church, which is the body of Christ; and as this grace, in its principle and medium, is Christ himself, all who are born of it are born of him, and the life which they live in and by it is the one life of God in his humanity. {795} Looking at the church, in what theologians call her soul, she is literally and truly the man Christ Jesus, and looking at her as the whole congregation of the faithful, she is the body of Christ, and related to him as the body to the soul. It is this intimate relation of the church to God in his human nature, that led Moehler to represent the church as in some sort the continuation on earth, in a visible form, of the Incarnation; and she is certainly so closely united to his divine personality, that we may say truly, that he is her personality, as really as he is the personality of the flesh he assumed and hypostatically united to himself. Perrone says that, if we exclude from this view all pantheistic conceptions, it is scriptural, and, moreover, sustained by the fathers, especially St. Athanasius, who says, in writing of the Incarnation, "Et cum Petrus dicat: certissime sciat ergo omnis domus Israel, quia et Dominum eum, et Christum fecit Deus, hunc Jesum quern vos crucifixistis: non de divinitate ejus dicit, quod Dominum ipsum et Christum fuerit, sed de humanitate ejus, quae est UNIVERSA ECCLESIA, quae in ipso dominatur et regnat, postquam crucifixus ipse est: et quae erigitur ad regnum coelorum, ut cum illa regnet, qui seipsum pro illa exinanivit et qui induta servili forma, _ipsam assumpsit_." [Footnote 72] Christ, in his humanity, is the universal church, which rules and reigns in him. We cannot study the great fathers of the church too assiduously, and we wish we had earlier known it. The doctrine we are trying to set forth is there.

[Footnote 72: Edit. Maur. opp. tom. i. p. 2, p. 887; apud
Perrone, Praelect. Locis Theolog. p. I. c. 2; _De Anima
Ecclesiae_, Art. I.]

There is nothing here that favors pantheism: 1. Because the hypostatic union is by the creative act of God, as much so as the creation of Adam. 2. Because, although God is really the church, regarded in her soul, it is God in his human, which is for ever distinct from his divine nature, and therefore in his created nature. 3. Because the Word was incarnated in an individual, not in the species, as some rationalists dream, save as the species was individualized in the individual nature he assumed; and, 4. Because, though Christ is identically the soul, the informing principle, the life of the church, the individuals affiliated to the body of the church retain their individuality, their human personality, and therefore their own free-will, personal identity, activity, or their character as free moral agents. Not all individuals apparently affiliated to the body of the church are really assimilated to her, and vitally united to the body of Christ. They pertain to the society externally, but not by an inward union with Christ, the head and soul. They are, as St. Augustine says, "_in_ not _of_ the church," as the dead particles of matter in the human body which receive not, or have ceased to receive, life from it, and are constantly flying or cast off. _Gratia supponit naturam._ All the operations of grace presuppose nature, and nature has always the power to resist grace. Without grace nature cannot concur with grace; yet even they who have been born again, and have entered into the order of regeneration, are always able to fall away, or back, practically, into the natural order. Not every individual in the church is assimilated to her, nor every one who is assimilated to her will continue to the end. But she herself survives their loss and remains always one and the same body of Christ.

{796}

We have dwelt at great length on this view of the church, not because we have any special partiality or aptitude for mystic theology, but because we have wished to show that the church is not something purely external and arbitrary. We hold that all the works of God are real, and have a real and solid reason of being in the order of things which he has seen proper to create. He does nothing in the supernatural order, any more than in the natural order, without a reason, and a good and valid reason. We have wished to get at the reality, and to show that Catholicity is not a sham, a make-believe, a reputing of things to be that are not; but a reality, as real in its own order as the order of nature itself, and, in fact, even more so, as nature is mimetic, and Catholicity, to borrow a term from Plato, is _methexic_, and participates of the divine reality itself. All heterodox systems are shams, unphilosophical, sophistical, and incapable of sustaining a rigid examination. Their abettors do not, and dare not, reason on them. The age supposes Catholicity is no better, is equally unsubstantial, unreal, dissolving and vanishing in thin air at the first glance of reason. We have wished to show the age its mistake, and to let it see that Catholicity can bear the most thorough investigation, and that it has nothing to fear from the most rigid dialectics. We do not pretend to divest it of mysteries, or to explain the mysteries so as to bring them within the comprehension of our feeble understandings, but to show that the church, with all her attributes and functions, has a reason in the divine mind and in the order of things of which we make a part, and is a real, inward life, as well as an outward form.

From the view of the church which we have presented, it is easy to deduce her attributes. She is in some sort, according to St. Athanasius, the human nature of Christ, or Christ in his humanity, and he is her divine personality, for his humanity is inseparable from his divine person. That she is one, follows, necessarily, from the unity of Christ's person, from the fact that, in her soul, she is Christ and, in her body, is his body. Her unity is the unity of Christ himself, and the unity of the life she lives in him. There are individual distinctions and even varieties of race or family among men in the natural order, but all men are men only in that they are one in the unity of the species. Jesus Christ is not only the individual man Christ Jesus, but also in the order of regeneration the species, as Adam was both an individual man and the entire species in the order of genesis or generation. The church as growing out of the incarnation, and, in some sense, continuing it, and in her body composed of individuals born of him and affiliated to him, must necessarily be one, one in her faith, one in her sacraments, one in her worship, one in her love, one in the life that flows through her, animates and invigorates her, from the one Christ, who is her _forma_, or informing principle, as the soul is the informing principle of the body--_anima est forma corporis_, as the holy Council of Clermont defines. Diversity in any of these respects breaks the unity of the body and interrupts communion with the head, and the communion of the body with the soul, whence is derived its life. It is therefore all Christians have always held heresy and schism to be deadly sins, and the most deadly of all. They not only sever those guilty of them from the body or external communion of the church, but from her internal communion, from Christ himself, the only source of supernatural and divine life. {797} There is not only the grossest ingratitude and baseness in heresy and schism, but there is spiritual death in them. By them we die to Christ as, in the natural order, we should die to Adam, or lose our natural life, if we were deprived of our humanity or cut off from communion with its natural head. It is not from bigotry or intolerance that the church regards heresy and schism with horror; it is because they necessarily separate the soul from Christ, and destroy its spiritual life; because they reject Christ, and crucify him afresh. It is so in the very nature of the case, and she can no more make it not so, than the mathematician can make the three angles of a triangle _not_ equal to two right angles. It is not, therefore, without reason that the church has always insisted that to keep the unity of the faith is the first of Christian duties, or that St. Paul bids St. Timothy to keep the deposit, and to hold fast the form of sound words; for without the faith it is impossible to please God. We know men may err without being heretics; we know that invincible ignorance, an ignorance not culpable in its cause, excuses from sin in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but there is no invincible ignorance where one may know the truth, but will not; and invincible ignorance itself cannot regenerate the soul, and elevate it to the supernatural order, which can be done only by faith given in baptism.

The church is holy, holy in her doctrines, her worship, her life, and in her living members. This follows necessarily from the fact, that in her soul she is Christ, and her body the body of Christ. She is holy as he is holy, and because he is holy, as she is one because he is one. Doubtless all individuals in her communion are not holy; for men may, as we have seen, be _in_ the church and not _of_ the church. Regeneration, or the infused habits of faith, justice, and sanctity, do not destroy one's individuality, or take away one's free-will; men may, if they will, profane the sacraments, eat or drink unworthily, even fall from grace, and become gross sinners against God and criminals before the state. These are not holy, but the reverse; yet all who are born again, and are united by a living bond to the church, may derive, if they will, life from Christ through her, and all who do so are holy in her holiness, as she is holy in the holiness of Christ. His life, the life of God in his humanity, is their life.

The attempt to disprove the sanctity of the church from the bad conduct of some, if you will many, of her members, overlooks the real character of the church, supposes her to be simply an aggregation of individuals, living only the life she derives from them; and it also starts from the false assumption that grace is irresistible and inamissible. Poor Luther, in the morbid state into which he fell in his convent, could find relief only in assuming that, as he had once been in grace, he must be still in grace, and sure of salvation; for grace, once had, can never be lost, however one may sin after having received it. Yet this doctrine was false, and but for his morbid, half insane state of mind, he would never have entertained it for a moment. Protestantism sprang from the diseased state of Luther's soul. A sad origin.

The church is _visible_ as well as invisible. This also follows necessarily. The internal life of the church is invisible, hidden with God; but the body of the church is visible, as was the body of Christ when on earth. {798} The church is composed, as we have seen, of body and soul, and everybody living on earth in space and time, is by its own nature visible, and would not be body if it were not. The body of the church is composed of individuals united in the profession of the same faith, and in the participation of the same sacraments, under one head, and is therefore, since the individuals are visible, a visible body. The whole analogy of the case supposes her to be both invisible and visible, as are all the sacraments, which are visible signs or media of invisible grace. The church is the medium through which the soul is regenerated and comes into communion with Christ, the head, and derives life from his life; and how if not visible could we know where to find her, or be able to approach her sacraments, and through them be born again, and be united in the supernatural order to Christ, as in the natural order we are united to Adam? No: the church is as a city set on a hill, and cannot be hidden; and is set on a hill, made visible, that all may behold her, and flock within her walls.

The church is indefectible. This follows from the fact that Christ himself whose body she is, is indefectible, and dies no more, but ever liveth and reigneth. No matter whether you call the rock on which he said he would build his church, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, Peter, the truth that Peter confessed, or Christ himself, her indefectibility is equally asserted. He himself in every case, is the chief corner-stone, is, in the last analysis, the rock; and the church cannot fail, not because men may not fail, but because he who is her support, her life, cannot fail, since he is God, and as truly God in his human nature as in his divine nature. The heterodox of all shades, however they may err as to what she is, hold, as we have seen, that the church is, in some form, indefectible.