“And not for these only do I pray, but for all those who, through their words, shall believe in me.” The continuation of that authority.
“Sanctify them in truth.” The common nature of the passive church, the term of the supernatural moment.
“That they may be one, as thou Father in me and I in thee, that they may be one in us.” The completion of the inchoative society, brought about by the supernatural
element of union, and by the incorporation with the Theanthropos.
To complete the theory of the church, we have now to point out the characteristic marks which distinguish it from any counterfeit institution of men. These marks are four: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity.
Unity. What is the church, viewed in its essence, attributes, and interior organism? It is the Theanthropos annexing his infinite energy and his substantial presence to a sacramental element, both physical and personal, and through them first elevating human persons to a supernatural being, with its essence and faculties of supernatural intelligence and supernatural will in an incipient and inchoative state; secondly, through his sacramental, personal element proposing and expounding his gnosis to their supernatural intelligence; by a second sacramental moment elevating this supernatural essence and faculties to a determinate and definite growth: by the sacramental moment of his presence incorporating all elevated persons unto himself, and thus putting them in immediate contact with himself, and through him with the Trinity on one side and with all the cosmos in nature and personality on the other side, and thus affording their supernatural faculties proper objects on which they may feed, expand, be developed, and arrive at their ultimate perfection. Finally, by the personal sacramental element governing and directing all their exterior relations and communication to one social final end; and all this not in any particular spot or period of time, but in all space and in all time. From this it is evident that the church of Christ is one in force of the unity of the Theanthropos with the sacramental element; one in consequence of the interior
unity of organism, both of the active and passive church; one in consequence of the unity of the supernatural being and faculties, the end of the church; one in force of the unity of the object of the supernatural intelligence; one in consequence of the unity of the object of the supernatural will—God and his cosmos, in their relations to each other; one in consequence of the real communion and intercourse between the members of the church; one, finally, in consequence of the oneness of the visible government of the church, all emanating from one invisible and one visible head.
The second distinctive mark of the church must be holiness. For the end of the church is to impart to human persons in time and space the term of the supernatural moment, together with its faculties, and especially the faculty and habit of supernatural intelligence and supernatural will or charity, in which, as we have demonstrated in the tenth article, the very essence of holiness consists. If the church, therefore, were deprived of this distinctive mark, she would fail in that very object for which she was instituted.
But it is to be remarked that not any degree of holiness would be sufficient to constitute a distinctive mark of the church, but a certain fulness of it is required in some of its members, for a twofold reason.
Like every moment of God’s exterior action, she is subject to the law of variety by hierarchy. This involves the necessity of the church ranging between the lowest degree of sanctity to the very pinnacle of sublimest and loftiest exhibition of it; otherwise, those two laws could not be realized.