The Unity of the Church
As every earthly pilgrim1 ought faithfully to believe the holy catholic church just as he ought to love Jesus Christ, the Lord, the bridegroom of that church, and also the church herself, his bride; but as he does not love this, his spiritual mother, except he also know her by faith — therefore ought he to learn to know her by faith, and thus to honor her as his chief mother.2
Therefore, in order to reach a proper knowledge of her, it is to be noted, (i) That the church signifies the house of God, constituted for the very purpose that in it the people may worship its God, as it is written, I Cor. n : 22 : “Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?” Or, to speak with Augustine: “Do you despise the church of God, the house of prayer?” (2) The church signifies the ministers belonging to the house of God. Thus the clerics belonging to one material church call themselves the church. But according to the Greeks, a church — ecclesia — is a congregation — congregatio — held to-
1 Vialor, a current word. See Wyclif, de Eccles., 4, 42, 350. Gerson, Du Pin’s ed., 2 : 22.
2 See also chap. II, etc. The designation mother is nowhere given to the church in the N. T. It is derived from the relation the church bears to Christ as his bride. Later on in this chapter Augustine represents her as giving birth to children. So Wyclif, de Eccles., 117: “The church is a virgin since she is the bride of the virgin Jesus Christ, by whom as a mother we are born after a spiritual manner.” It followed that Christ was the spiritual father or “father by faith,” Wyclif, p. 1, and Grosseteste in this treatise, chap. IV. In his Com. on the Lombard, p. 469, Huss speaks of the church as “our most dear mother, the most worthy mother of the predestinate.”
gether under one rule, as Aristotle teaches, Polit. 2 : 7 l, when he says: “All have part in the church.” In view of this meaning, therefore, the congregation of all men is called the church — ecclesia. This appears in Matt. 25 : 31-33, which says: “When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all his angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be congregated all nations.” What a great congregation of all men under the rule of Christ the king that will be ! Because, however, the whole of that congregation is not the holy church it is added, “and he will separate them, the one from the other, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
From this it is evident that there is one church — ecclesia — of the sheep and another of the goats, one church of the righteous and another of the reprobate — prcesciti.2 Likewise the church of the righteous is on the one hand catholic, that is, universal, which is not a part of anything else. Of this I am now treating. On the other hand, it is particular, a part with other parts, as the Saviour said, Matt. 18 : 20: “Where two or three are congregated together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” From this it follows that two righteous persons congregated together in Christ’s name constitute, with Christ as the head, a particular holy church, and likewise three or four and so on to the whole number of the predestinate without admixture. In this sense the term church is often used in Scripture, as when the apostle says, I Cor. 1:1: “To the church which is in Corinth, to the sanctified in Jesus
1 Aristotle, the authority of the Schoolmen in philosophy, and called, in the Middle Ages, The Philosopher. So Huss in this treatise, chap. IV, and often in his Com. on the Lombard, p. 112, etc.
2 The foreknown, that is, those of whom God knows beforehand that they are not in a state of permanent grace. Their condition is not the result of an active decree, though it is a subject of God’s previous knowledge. The foreknown are in grace according to present righteousness and desire through merit at once eternal bliss and at the same time their damnation. This apparent contradiction Huss explains to lie in this, that they are not willing to use the means to the attainment of eternal bliss, just as a person may wish a coat and yet not possess it. Super IV. Sent., 188.
The Unity of the Church
Christ.” Likewise Acts 20 : 28: “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to feed the church which he hath purchased with his own blood.” And in this sense, all the righteous now living under Christ’s rule in the city of Prague, and more particularly the predestinate, are the holy church of Prague, and the same is true of other particular churches of saints of which Ecclesiasticus 24 : 2, speaks: “In the congregations — ecclesiis — of the Most High shall she [wisdom] open her mouth,” and also 31 : n: “All the congregation of the saints shall declare his alms.” 1