true and nominal believers, it would have been easy for him to do so. His comprehensive words do not need to be guarded by any limitations we can impose upon them.

Following his example, we are permitted and bound to call the whole body of professed believers on earth "the Holy Catholic Church," because in the judgment of charity the great mass of those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are accepted of him, and because, whatever may be the destiny of particular individuals in its membership, its destiny as a body is to be finally washed, sanctified, and glorified. Its holiness is not yet complete. Nevertheless, the process of its sanctification makes continual progress. As Calvin beautifully says, "the Lord is daily smoothing its wrinkles and wiping away its spots.” 1

The same reasoning applies equally to the unity of faith which is another attribute of the true Church. There is just as much division and diversity of doctrinal opinion among true believers as there is among nominal Christians. Peter and Paul certainly belonged to the communion of saints; yet how they differed and disputed with each other! If unity of faith is a mark of the true Church, and if that unity is destroyed by existing doctrinal differences, then there is no such thing as the Church of God, visible or invisible, outside of heaven. The truth is, unity of faith does not depend upon exact agreement in doctrine, nor is it destroyed by the conflict of creeds. "The profession of the true religion" is at once the distinctive note and the bond of the visible Church. In the mind of God and in the experience of believers there must be, though we are not able sharply to define it, an essen

1 Institutes, book iv. chap. i. 7.

tial minimum of truth, sufficient for salvation, and therefore sufficient for the unity of the Church. It is remarkable that Calvin, in attempting to define this essential truth, says nothing about what is peculiar to Calvinism.

"For all the heads of true doctrine are not in the same position. Some are so necessary to be known that all must hold them to be fixed and undoubted as the proper essentials of religion, for instance, that God is one; that Christ is God, and the Son of God; and that our salvation depends on the mercy of God; and the like. Others, again, which are the subjects of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith."1

We have an admirable and universally accepted summary of essential truth in the Apostles' Creed, which was adopted or rather retained by all the Reformers. Calvin made it the basis of his Institutes. This creed of creeds, as we understand it, recognizes the Holy Catholic Church as a visible body. "The communion of saints" is not merely explanatory of "the Holy Catholic Church," still less is it a tautology, expressing the same idea in another form. The first statement describes the Church as visible, and the second as invisible. To identify the two is to mar the simplicity and

1 Calvin's Institutes, book iv. chap. i. 12.

The unity of the visible Body and Church of Christ consisteth in that uniformity which all persons belonging thereunto have, by reason of that one Lord whose servants they all profess themselves, by reason of that one faith which they all acknowledge, and by reason of that one baptism wherewith they are all initiated. The visible Church is therefore one in outward profession of those things which supernaturally pertain to the very essence of Christianity, and are necessarily required in every particular Christian man. HOOKER: Ecc. Polity, book iii. chap. i. 3, 4.

beauty of the creed, and to obliterate what is essential to its completeness as a symbol of the Catholic faith.1 But whether this is true of the Apostles' Creed or not, it is certainly true of the Scriptures. They recognize the Church as both invisible and visible. And in both aspects it is a living organism, whose head is Christ, and whose members are His Body. As the soul without the body could not accomplish its life-work on earth, nor inherit its full redemption in heaven (see Rom. viii. 23), so the Church of the living God, regarded simply as an invisible communion of saints, or as a manifestation of faith in the lives of individuals, could not be "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii. 19) on earth, neither could it "make known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph. iii. 10). We contend, therefore, that the visible Church is just as much a true church as the invisible. It is "not a mere abstract idea, a convenient expression for the number of all those who visibly profess the faith of Christ throughout the world. It is made up of all those who, visibly professing the faith of Christ, are constituted by that profession into one corporate body, and stand in one outward covenant relationship to Christ. This, so far as regards the visible Church, is the primary and usual application of the term in Scripture. The application of it to local churches or separate congregations is only a subordinate and secondary meaning." 2

The first announcement that the visible Church, under its New Testament form, was about to be established, was made by John the Baptist when he preached in the wilderness of Judæa, saying, "Repent ye, for the

kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. iii. 2). The same announcement was repeated by Christ at the beginning of His public ministry (Matt. iii. 17). The kingdom of God, of Christ, and of Heaven, as we shall undertake to show in a future lecture, are synonymous, and interchangeable with the Church of God and of Christ.

The first reference in the New Testament to the Church under the name of the ecclesia is found in the promise of Christ to Peter, "On this rock I will build My Church" (Matt. xvi. 18), or, as it might be more accurately rendered, "I will build the Church for Myself." This gives the true emphasis to the promise; for at the time it was uttered, Jesus and His disciples had been excommunicated from the existing Church, and He was on his way to be crucified. He did not during His life set up a visible society apart from the Jewish church of the time, but He made preparations for doing so after His death. And now, with the shadows of death and apparent failure thickening about Him, He says to Peter, as the spokesman and representative of the chosen twelve, "I will build the Church for Myself, and I will build it on thee." Our first glimpse of the actual fulfilment of this promise is in the record of the day of Pentecost: "Then they that gladly received his word," the word preached by Peter, "were baptized: and the same day there were added [to Peter and the rest of the Apostles] about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And the Lord added to the Church daily such as were being saved" (Acts ii. 41, 42, 47).

Here, then, we have the Church of Christ fully organized and equipped, with its living ministry, its

assemblies for worship, its administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, — still abiding indeed under the shadow of the Old Testament Church, and recruiting from it, but having a separate organic life of its own; and to this visible Church God adds those who were being saved, as the Divinely appointed means of saving them. From this time on to the end of the inspired history the Church is a body conspicuously visible, both as a society for the propagation of the Gospel and as an object of persecution. Saul "made havoc of the Church" (Acts viii. 3). 'Herod stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the Church" (Acts xii. 1). Prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for Peter" (Acts xii. 5). Paul exhorts the elders of Ephesus "to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood" (Acts xx. 28). What candid reader can fail to see in this record of trial and of triumph, and in the conspicuous ministry of the Apostle by whom this visible society was first gathered and organized, the exact fulfilment of the Saviour's promise, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it"? 1

Taken in their obvious and natural sense, how easy Christ's words are to be understood; and so far as they apply especially to Peter, how fully are they justified by the facts recorded in the Acts of the Apostles! He was not separated from the others, neither was he exalted above them as an infallible primate. Paul

1 This interpretation plainly doth agree with the matter of fact and of history, which is the best interpreter of right and privilege in such cases; for we may reasonably understand our Saviour to have promised that which in effect we see performed. — ISAAC BARROW: Works, iii. 104.