, an augmentum Dei, i.e., a growth emanating from God. God effects it, but by the instrumentality of the Church, within her and as issuing from her. For this purpose God hath installed her as his pleroma. Precisely because the Church is filled with God, or is his pleroma, the members of the Church may gradually become complete in him. Thus there is a development and a progress only for the individual members of the Church. She herself, by virtue of her essential character, is superior to development, and acts as the impelling force of this development. Christianity has a history, but it is not itself a history. The essence of Christianity, which is that of the Church, is not a thing in process of formation, it is a thing accomplished and perfect from the beginning.
The scriptural idea of the body of Christ presents the principle of Catholicism in a new light. The Church alone has Christ for her head. It is her exclusive privilege to be the body of Christ. This gives her a fellowship of life with Christ, by which she is distinguished from the world, the [{678}] latter sustaining to him no relation but that of subjection and dependence. But upon what rests this privilege of the Church? Why is she alone the body of Christ, the pleroma of the God-head?
Christology must supply the fundamental reason. According to the Catholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only by virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth only the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal himself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ than by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in all! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters through the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily.
The idea of Catholicism, therefore, coincides with that of fulness. As the pleroma of him who filleth all in all, the Church harbors in her bosom a treasure, the richness of which is inexhaustible. Every created thing, every single period, every particular phase of the culture of the human mind, has some good attribute. Yet this attribute is a mere special advantage, a peculiar quality, a feeble reflex of the chief good, a single ray of the shining sea of goodness inclosed in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, of the fulness of the Godhead. The completeness of the revelation of God's goodness is found only in the sacred humanity of Christ, and therefore in the Church. Hence the Church is the highest good that is to be found on earth. Let the productions of the human mind, at a given stage of its development, be ever so glorious and sublime, they can never supplant the pleroma of the Church. Her wealth is fraught with all the possible results of the human intellect and imagination; and these, in the fulness of the Church, are intensified, raised, as it were, to a higher power of goodness. Every production of the human mind is more or less in danger of falling short of the requirements of later ages. The metal of all such fabrics needs to be recast from time to time, as forms and fashions change. In default of this, it gradually degenerates into mere antiquity, or, in the most fortunate event, it preserves only the character of an honored relic. From this fate of all that comes into existence the Church is exempt. She alone is ever young, and always on a level with the times. This qualifies her to be the teacher of the world from age to age. Hence, also, she is enabled to minister an appropriate remedy for the disease of every generation. How, then, can a movement which makes war on the Church claim to be an advance of the human mind in the right direction? The interests of true civilization will never interfere with those of the Church.
As well that the Church is the body of Christ as that in her is the fulness of him who filleth all in all—both of these attributes adhere to her in virtue of her divine foundation. Thus Catholicism, whose fundamental principle we have contemplated in this twofold scriptural aspect, is not the product of the combination of any external circumstances. It is grounded in the very idea of the Church, in the inmost depths of her being. Therefore she remains the Catholic Church in every vicissitude of her external condition, whether in the splendor of princely honors, or under the crushing weight of Neronic persecution.
If, then, Catholicism is of the essence of the Church, the momentous conclusion is irresistible, that the true Church is capable of realization in such an image only as enables her to present herself in her essential feature of catholicity. It follows that the papacy, as necessary to the Catholic manifestation of the Church, is imperatively demanded by the law of her being.
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