[Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this passage by the council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare Ballerini, op. S. Leonis t. i., p. 1087.]
The advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27. [Footnote 156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively to the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is. The remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In our view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the future glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the words of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the sanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice of Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the Church is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water, which owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the word. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and glory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore gradually effected in the present world in proportion as the purification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of Christ, exerts its efficacy in he Church.
[Footnote 156: Hase, Handbuch der prot. Polemik (Manual of Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]
If the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness of the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The love of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for their own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the Church has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the mutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives with a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of Christ which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be needed for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this relation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to recommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence upon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for imitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition of the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to the Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held up to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal, a mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?
The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments. But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the character of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual historical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by the agency [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in possession of the sacraments.
[Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, i.e., outside of, her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of heretics. ]
Protestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the administration of the sacraments according to their institution as an index of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the presumption of a [{746}] distinct historical organization as the necessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A contrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true Church on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of hypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a contradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith alone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in something incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by the use of the sacraments according to their institution. Where is the connecting link between the external and the internal Church? The congruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is purely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere external thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine of sola fides is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible Church. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that the phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments is of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of the reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a materialization of the idea of the Church.
The modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its reverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of their system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known theory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire consistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.
The manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power in history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily capable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does this explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just expounded?
The Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal ornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their efficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of her temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic of the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with the palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this alliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this necessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This foundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle heretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.