526 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
kernel in the shell. It is not a Utopian dream or Platonic commonwealth, but most real and historical. The term “invisible” was chosen because the operations of the Holy Spirit are internal and invisible, and because nobody in this life can be surely known to belong to the number of the elect, while membership of the visible church is recognizable by baptism and profession.
Important questions were raised with this distinction for future settlement. Some eminent modern Protestant divines object to the term “invisible church,” as involving a contradiction, inasmuch as the church is essentially a visible institution; but they admit the underlying truth of an invisible, spiritual communion of believers scattered throughout the world.!. As Protestantism has since divided and subdivided into a number of denominations and separate organizations, the idea of the church needs to be further expanded. We must recognize a number of visible churches, Greek, Latin, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and all the more recent Christian denominations which acknowledge Christ as their Head, and his teaching and example as their rule of faith and duty. The idea of denominations or confessions, as applied to churches, is of modern date; but is, after all, only an expansion of the idea of a particular church, or a contraction of the idea of the universal church, and therefore authorized by the double Scripture usage of ecclesia. The denominational conception lies between the catholic and the local conception. The one invisible church is found in all visible denominations and congregations as far as true Christianity extends. Another distinction should also be made between the church, and the kingdom of God, which is
1 Rothe (Anfange der christl. Kirche, I. p. 101) says that the idea of a moral and spiritual union and communion of all believers in Christ, or of the communion of saints, is in the highest sense real (ist nach unsrer innigsten Ueberzeugung eine im héchsten Sinne reale), but cannot be called a church. He resolves and dissolves the church ultimately into the kingdom of God, which he identifies with the ideal state.
§ 85. ENLARGED CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH. 527
a more spiritual and more comprehensive idea than even this invisible catholic church, although very closely allied to it, and usually identified with it. But we cannot anticipate modern discussions. The Reformers were concerned first of all to settle their relation to the Roman Church as they found it, and to reconcile the idea of a truly catholic church which they could not and would not sacrifice, with the corruptions of the papacy on the one hand, and with their sepa- _ ration from it on the other.
Luther received a copy of Hus’s treatise De Ecclesia from Prague in 1519.1 He was driven to a defense of the Bohemian martyr in the disputation at Leipzig, and ventured to assert that Hus was unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance for holding doctrines derived from Augustin and Paul. Among these was his definition of the universal church as the totality of the elect (universitas predestinatorum).
Luther developed this idea in his own way, and modified it in application to the visible church. He started from the article of the Creed, “I believe in the holy catholic church,” but identified this article with the “communion of saints,” as a definition of the catholic church! He explained the
1 Under the date of Oct. 3, 1519, he informed Staupitz that he had received from Prague letters of two priests, “‘una cum libello Joannis Hus.” De Wette, I. 341. An edition of the Tractatus de Ecclesia was published at Mainz and Hagenau in 1520.
2 This identification may be questioned. The holy catholic church corresponds rather to the church visible, the communion of saints to the church invisible. The communion of saints means that inward and spiritual fellowship of true believers on earth and in heaven which is based on their union with Christ. It is their fellowship with God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (comp. 1 John 1:3; 1 Cor. 1:9; Phil. 2:1), and with each other, a fellowship not broken by death, but extending to the saints above. A most precious idea.
‘* The saints in heaven and on earth But one communion make; All join in Christ, their living Head, And of his grace partake.”’
The article of the communio sanctorum (as well as the epithet catholica) isa later insertion, and not found in the creeds before the fifth century. See