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.
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. 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. 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. 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.