According to the former theory, the spiritual and corporeal parts, religion and the church, are after the model of human nature and the Incarnation, in vital, essential, and perpetual unity. The church is the way of salvation, the body of Christ vivified by his Spirit, the medium of union with God. Christianity is a sacramental religion. The episcopal order has been established and consecrated by Jesus Christ to possess and transmit the plenitude of sacerdotal grace and power received from him as a gift; to preserve and transmit the faith, sacramental grace, the pure oblation of Christian worship, the discipline of the New Law in Catholic unity.
A Christianity of the first species, loosely organized in an imperfect society, could never have been transmuted into the second species. The specific Catholic Christianity, hierarchical, dogmatic, sacramental, liturgical, is the historical Christianity of the period of the first six œcumenical councils, and appears at the Council of Nice, in the person of the great Athanasius, in all parts of the earth, in all the saints and doctors, in all writings and all monuments, pointing backward to the past, the era of martyrdom, the period of foundation and of apostolic labor, as the origin and source of its doctrine, discipline, and worship. A transmutation of species in Christianity like that which the Protestant theory supposes is rationally impossible. There is the additional impossibility to be taken into account of such a great and universal change having occurred without leaving its records and traces in history. Christianity is an historical religion, and the historical Christianity is identical with Catholicity. It is the absolute and universal religion which has manifested itself as a work which only divine power could have produced, in the history of the past; in present history it is showing before our eyes its supernatural and divine character; and the fulfilment of its end in the final consummation and triumph of the kingdom of Christ will finish the last chapter of the Revelation of Christ in History.
“THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR THEM IN THE INN.”
Foot-sore and weary, Mary tried
Some rest to seek, but was denied.
“There is no room,” the blind ones cried.
Meekly the Virgin turned away,
No voice entreating her to stay;
There was no room for God that day.