Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus," Outside the Church, No Salvation, Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1874

Our Holy Father Pius IX, gloriously reigning though despoiled by liberal Catholics and a prisoner in the Vatican, has told France and other countries that their calamities are due to so-called liberal Catholics.  We are not wholly free from their influence in this country, either in politics, or in theology.  We have Catholics, or men that call themselves Catholics, who, without knowing it, defend in politics,  pure secularism, only another name for political atheism, and- not always the same individuals indeed- who defend in theology what, to our understanding, is a most destructive latitudinarianism.  It is seldom we meet a Catholic, man or woman, priest or layman, who will permit us to say that “out of the church no one can be saved,” without requiring us to qualify the assertion, or so to explain it as to make it meaningless to plain people who are ignorant of the subtleties, nice distinctions, and refinements of theologians.

How many of our Catholics, though holding Protestantism to be an error against faith and antagonistic to the church, hold that the mass of Protestants are out of the way of salvation, and can never see God in the beatific vision, unless before they die they become Catholics, united to Christ in the church, which is his body?  If we assert the contrary, are we not met with theological distinctions, logical refinements, subtle explanations and qualifications, which place us altogether in the wrong?  We are told, and told truly, that all validly baptized infants, by whomsoever baptized, dying in infancy or before arriving at the use of reason, are saved, enter the kingdom of heaven; next, we are told, not so truly, that all persons remaining in false or heretical sects, not knowing that they are false or heretical and invincibly ignorant of the true church, may be saved; and finally, that those who are prevented from seeking for and accepting the true church by the bitter prejudices against her, instilled into the minds by parents and teachers, are to be reputed invincibly ignorant.

The church teaches, as we have learned her doctrine, that the infant validly baptized, by whomsoever the baptism is administered, receives in the sacrament the infused habit of faith and sanctity, and that this habit (habitus) suffices for salvation till the child comes to the use of reason; hence all baptized infants dying in infancy are saved.  But when arrived at the use of reason, the child needs something beyond this infused habit, and is bound to elicit the act of faith.  The habit is not actual faith, and is only a supernatural facility, infused by grace, of eliciting the actual virtue of faith.  The habit of sanctity is lost by mortal sin, but the habit of faith, we are told, can be lost only by a positive act of infidelity.  This is not strictly true; for the habit may be lost by the omission to elicit the act of faith, which neither is nor can be elicited out of the Catholic Church; for out of her the credible object, which is Deus revelans et ecclesia proponens, is wanting.  Consequently, outside the church there can be no salvation for anyone, even though baptized, who has come to the use of reason.  The habit given in baptism, then, ceases to suffice, and the obligation to elicit the act begins.

We may be told that it may not be through one’s own fault that he omits to elicit the act, especially when born and brought up in a community hostile or alien to the church.  Who denies it?  But from that it does not follow either that the habit is not lost by the omission, or that the elicitation of the act is not necessary, in the case of every adult, to salvation.  Invincible ignorance excuses from sin, we admit, in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant, but it confers no virtue, and is purely negative.  It excuses from sin, if you will, the omission to elicit the act, but it cannot supply the defect caused by the omission.  Something more than to be excused from the sin of infidelity is necessary to salvation.

To us there is something shocking in the supposition that the dogma, Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, is only generally true, and therefore not a catholic dogma.  All Catholic dogmas, if catholic, are not generally, but universally true, and admit no exception or restriction whatever.  If men can come to Christ and be saved without the church or union with Christ in the church, she is not Catholic, and it is false to call her the one holy Catholic Church, as in the creed.  The latitudinarianism which explains away the dogma of exclusive salvation, and which is so widely prevalent, is a denial, in principle, of the catholicity of the church, and of the faith she holds and teaches, and seems to us to grow out of forgetfulness of the relation of the church to the Incarnation, her office in the economy of salvation, the teleological character of the Christian order, the religion of the end, and the disposition of the modern world to mistake liberality for charity.  The church grows, so to speak, out of the Incarnation, of which she is,  as Moehler well says is his “Symbolik,” in some sort, the visible continuation on earth, and from which she is inseparable.  St. Paul calls the church “the body of Christ.” She lives in Christ, and he in her; his life is her life, and individuals are joined to him and live his life by being joined to her and living his life in her.  To be separated from her is to be separated from him, is to be separated from the incarnate Word himself, the one Mediator of God and men, and from our end, as well as the medium of its attainment.

As we understand the teachings of our holy religion, it is teleological, is final, shows the way and supplies the means by which men are saved from sin, and return to God as their final cause.  Existences proceed, by way of creation- not emanation, generation, or evolution- from God as their first cause, and, in order to attain their end or perfection, must return to him, in the palingenesia, without absorption in him, to God as their final cause.  In this return, on which we enter by regeneration or the new birth in Christ, is our salvation, the complement, the fulfillment, or the perfection of our existence, and consequently our supreme beatitude.  The procession of existences from God, and their return to him as their beatitude, constitute two orders, or rather two parts of the one divine plan, which is a complete and dialectic whole.  The first part is initial, or the order of natural generation; the second is teleological, the order of generation, or palingenesia, as St. Paul calls it, after our Lord himself.  These two parts are termed in Holy Scripture, natural and supernatural, and are usually called natural and supernatural by modern theologians.  Of mankind, in the initial order, Adam is the progenitor, and all men descend from him by natural generation, and hence the unity of the human race; of mankind, in the second or teleological order, Christ the incarnate God, or the Word made flesh, is the progenitor; hence, as St. Peter says, his is “the only name given under heaven among men, whereby we must be saved.” He is the father of regenerated humanity, or humanity in the palingenesiac order, as Adam is of generated humanity, or of men in the natural or initial order, and is, therefore, called by St. Paul the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.

One thing is certain, namely, that no one can be saved, enter into the kingdom of God, or attain to beatitude, without being regenerated or born again of the incarnate Word, or if not united to regenerated humanity in Christ.  One can no more be a Christian without being born of Christ, begotten anew by the Holy Ghost in Christ Jesus, that one can be a man without being born of Adam by way of natural generation.  Without the Incarnation or union with it, there is never any salvation, for without it, there is no regenerated humanity, no teleological order, no fulfillment of man’s existence.  But the Church grows out of the Incarnation, and is inseparable from it.  Under one aspect, she is herself regenerated humanity, or the human race propagated by the election of grace, as humanity, in the initial order is propagated or explicated by natural generation.  Without being united to regenerated humanity, men remain forever in the initial order, below their destiny, inchoate existences, with their nature unfilled, devoured alike by an everlasting want which cannot be supplied, and an everlasting self-reproach for having by their own fault neglected the means of salvation once within their reach.  Hence the never-ending sufferings of those who die unregenerate.  Even infants dying unbaptized, that is, in the initial order, unregenerate, the holy Council of Florence defines, go to hell - in infernos; though they will not suffer for any actual sins of commission or omission, of which they were incapable.  Some tender-hearted theologians think they will not suffer at all, but no rational creature can remain forever below his destiny, with the purpose of his being unfilled, without experiencing a want, and therefore not without a greater or less degree of suffering.

Under one aspect, the Church consists of the regenerated race, as we have said, of all who have by the election of grace been born again, begotten anew by the Holy Ghost in Christ Jesus.  Out of the Church, in this sense, no can pretend that there is any salvation.  But the church, under another aspect, is the body of Christ, and is the medium through which the Incarnation reaches and practically instructs, regenerates, elevates, sustains, guides, and directs the soul in the palingenesiac order, or in reference to the end for which man is created and exists.  In a word, the church is the medium by which the soul is elevated above the natural order, introduced into the teleological order, united to Christ, and therefore to God, its final cause.  Without the church, in this sense, the Incarnation, it seems to us, would be to the soul, to mankind, as if it were not.  There would be no dialectic reason for it in the Creator’s plan.  Indeed, in all Protestant sects, the Incarnation is either denied outright or serves no purpose.  The Word could not have died to redeem us, or to make satisfaction for us, if he had not assumed human nature to be as really and as truly his nature as is the divine nature itself; for God could not die in his divine nature, since in the divine nature he is immortal.  He could die only in his human nature, hypostatically united to the divine person of the Word.  But even as incarnate, he could make satisfaction for us only as our head, and therefore, in actu, only for those who are actually members, or who become so by regeneration.  He is potentially the head of every man, and therefore is said to have died for all men, but he is actually the head only of those who are joined to him as his members.  The atonement is sufficient for all, but to receive its benefits, it must be applied, and it is applied, only to those who are born of him; for they only participate in it through their head as members.  Those who are separated from him do not suffer in his sufferings, or satisfy in his satisfaction; for they are not members of which he is the head, and his merits neither are nor can be theirs while they are separated from him, or until they are joined to him by the new birth, and made one with him.  They have no connection with him as their head; he is not their progenitor; has not begotten them; and they are simply natural men, children of Adam, in the order of generation, initial or inchoate existences, infinitely below the plane of their destiny.

If, as every Catholic must hold, or deny all office or significance to the Church in the economy of salvation, the Church is the medium by which men come to Christ, and by the Holy Ghost, who dwells and operates in her, are united to Christ as their head, and participate, through the union of the head and the members, in his sufferings, his work of atonement, and his merits, as living members participate in whatever is suffered or done by their living head, how then can we conceive the possibility of salvation out of the Church?  To admit it would deny her catholicity; would, it seems to us, deny the living connection of the church with the Incarnation, and in fact the Incarnation itself, and the whole teleological or palingenesiac order which it founds, or the God-Man creates.  We do not pretend that the doctrines of the church are demonstrable by natural reason from principles evident by the light of nature, for they are known only by divine or supernatural revelation, and are held only by faith; but we do contend that the Creator’s works are strictly dialectic; that his plan or design in creation and redemption, though known only as revealed, is logically coherent in all its parts and that the several parts are mutually related as parts of one complete and uniform whole.  To admit salvation to be possible to any not joined to Christ in his body, the Church, breaks, as it seems to us, the logic or dialectic consistency of the divine plan or design as revealed to us in the written and unwritten word of God, and reduces Catholicity to the level of the sects, all of which are founded on compromise, and are incoherent, made up of heterogeneous elements, like the feet of the image in Nabuchodonosor’s dream.  Hence the theologians, who by their explanations open wide the door of salvation, labor with all their might to prove that those who apparently die outside the Church, and whose salvation, they tell us, is not to be despaired of, do not really die out of her communion, but, in fact, in it, and as Catholics.  That is, men may be in the communion of the church while apparently out of it, and adhering to sects hostile to it, being excused through invincible ignorance.

Yet, if there is any truth in what we have said of the teleological character of the Christian order, and that it is and can be entered only by the new birth, or “new creation,” as St. Paul calls it, this invincible ignorance, even if really invincible, which it rarely is, though it excuses from the sin of heresy or infidelity, does not of itself leave the soul in a salvable state, for it confers no positive virtue, elevates not the soul to the teleological or supernatural order, nor places it on the plane of its destiny, Else, why are not unbaptized infants dying in infancy saved?  Why can they never see God in the beatific vision?  They are incapable of actual sin, and are assuredly invincibly ignorant.  The reason is that the teleological or supernatural order, though it presupposes the initial or natural order, is not developed or evolved from it.  We are not placed from our birth from Adam on the plane of our beatitude, but to reach it must be born again, created anew in Christ Jesus; a new and a higher life must be begotten in us, the life which flows out from the Incarnation, a life of which the Word made flesh is the author and fountain.  Salvation, or what is the same thing, heaven, beatitude, is not reached by any possible natural progress, for it does not lie in the plane of nature, or the natural order, that is, the order of generation, as the rationalists pretend.  They recognize no teleological order, no end or final cause of man’s existence, and their heaven is no higher than the Christian’s hell.

Now it is clear that one may be excused from the sin of infidelity, or the guilt of heresy, and yet not be in the way of salvation, for he may lack the positive supernatural virtues which place him on the plane of his supernatural end or beatitude, and which can neither be acquired nor lived without faith.  What we wish to impress upon the mind of the reader is, that the simple negation of sin does not suffice for heaven.  We do not say that , if man had not sinned, God would have become incarnate, but we do say that man cannot attain to his end without being not only discharged from guilt, but reconstituted in the supernatural justice in which Adam was originally constituted.  The two, the discharge from guilt and the restoration to justice, are, in hac providentia, coincident and inseparable, if we speak of original sin, and the one is never without the other; yet are they distinguishable, and the former does not suffice for glorification in heaven.  For that, the adult must be raised to and live a supernatural life.

In the case of poorly instructed or misinstructed Catholics, yet really in the visible communion of the church, who involuntarily err even in regard to very important matters, but are docile and willing to be set right, we not only regard them as inculpable, but as in the way of salvation; for they have or may have the positive supernatural virtues required.  The seed is in them.  But we are unable to extend the same rules to persons in communions, or sects rather, notoriously separated from the church, and under anathema.  To them the principle of invincible ignorance, it seems to us, does not apply, any more than it does to open and avowed infidels, pantheists, or atheists.  These have not the seed in them, and if they die as they are, must go in infernos, however invincibly ignorant.  If they received the seed in baptism, it has been lost, as we have seen, by their omission, or even inability, to elicit the act of faith, on coming to the use of reason.  The seed is choked and prevented from germinating, or the fowls of the air - evil spirits - gather it up as soon as sown.  The invincibly ignorant, may not be doomed to so severe a punishment as the invincibly ignorant, but ignorance itself is always either a sin or the penalty of sin, and is, as St. Augustine says, “just cause of damnation.”

With regard to the several Protestant sects in whose good faith we know them too well to believe, we do not judge individuals, for judgment has not been committed to us; and we dare not say when a Protestant dies that he is assuredly lost, for we know not what passed between God and his soul at the last moment when the breath left the body; but this we do dare say, that, if one dies a Protestant, and the presumption, if he remains an adhering Protestant up to the last moment, is that he does so die, he is most assuredly damned, that is, forever deprived of heaven, and will never see God as he is.  Protestantism is an open and avowed revolt against the church of God, a total rejection, in principle, of Christ and his authority, therefore, of Christianity itself, and Protestants exhibit in their lives no virtues of a supernatural order, or that transcend our natural light and strength.  If, in infancy, they have been elevated above the natural order, they have fallen back to its level, and not seldom below it.  If they can be saved in their heresy, or apostasy, the divine plan, as we have learned it, is false and delusive.

But we discussed this whole question at the command, and under the direction, of that sound theologian, great man, and devoted son of the Church, the late Bishop of Boston, in the Review for October, 1847, chiefly from the point of view of authority, in an article entitled “The Great Question,” aimed at the latitudinarian tendency we found, or thought we found, prevailing even amongst Catholics.  The article itself was intended as an earnest and energetic plea for a strong, vigorous, and uncompromising presentation of Catholic truth against those soft, weak, timid, liberalizing Catholics, who labor to explain away all the points of Catholic faith offensive to non-Catholics, and to make it appear that there is no question of life and death, of heaven and hell, involved in the differences between us and Protestants.  We cannot do better, or better comply with a recent request made to us from a quarter we feel bound to heed, than by reproducing so much of it as bears on the question of, No Salvation out of the Church.

“But, if it be true, and as sure as God exists and can neither be deceived nor deceive, it is true, that there is no salvation out of the Church, what a fearful responsibility should we not incur, were we to forbear to proclaim it, or, by our mistimed or misplaced qualifications, to encourage the unbelieving, the heretical, or the indifferent to hope to the contrary!  And how much more fearful still, if we should go farther, and attempt in our publications to prove that he who firmly insists on it is harsh, unjust, uncharitable, running in his rash zeal to an unauthorized extreme!  No doubt, the truth is always and everywhere to be adhered to, let the consequences be what they may;  no doubt, he who errs by his rigor is to be rebuked, as well as he who errs by his laxity; but if, in our zeal to rebuke imaginary rigor, we should compel the missionary to prove the necessity of his Church against his own friends before he could be at liberty to assert it against infidels and heretics, if we run before him and intercept his arrows winged at the sinner’s conscience, or follow immediately after and bind up and assuage the wounds they may have inflicted, our zeal would but indifferently atone for the good we hinder, or the scandal we cause.  These poor souls, for whom our Lord shed his precious blood, for whom bleed afresh the dear wounds in his hands, his feet, his side, bound in the chains of error and sin, suspended over the precipice, ready to drop into the abyss below, admonish all who have hearts of flesh, or any bowels of compassion, to speak out, to cry aloud in awful and piercing tones to warn them of their danger, rather than by ingenious distinctions or qualifications to flatter them, or to have the appearance of flattering them, with the hope that, after all, their condition is not perilous.

“We speak not now in relation to other ages or countries.  We are discussing the question in its relation to our own countrymen, the great practical question of salvation, as it comes up here and now.  We have no concern with distant or merely speculative cases, or with scholastic distinctions and qualifications which have and can have no practical application here.  The question is, What are we authorized and bound by our religion to proclaim to all those of our countrymen who our words can reach?  Here are the great mass out of the Church, unbelieving and heretical, careless and indifferent, and it is idle to expect to make any general impression on them, unless we present the question of the Church, as a question of life and death, unless we can succeed in convincing them, that, if they live and die where they are, they can never see God.  This is the doctrine and the precise doctrine needed.  Is it true?  Is it denied?  By those out of the Church, certainly, and hence the great reason why they are content to live and die out of the Church.  Is it denied by those in the Church?  What Catholic dare deny it?  To what individual or class of individuals are we authorized by our holy faith to promise even the bare possibility of salvation, without being joined to the visible communion of the Church of God?

“Is it said that those without are simply bound to seek, and that we can deny them the possibility of salvation only on the condition that they do not seek?  Be it so.  But if they are bound to seek, it is because Almighty God commands them to seek, and gives them the grace which enables them to seek; and who is prepared to say, if they seek cauta sollicitudine, as St. Augustine makes it necessary for them to do, that they will not find?  If God commands them to seek, they can find; for he never commands one to seek in vain.  ‘Seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you…For everyone that seeketh findeth, and to everyone that knocketh it shall be opened.’  It is fair, then, to conclude, if there is one who does not find, to whom it is not opened, that he is one who does not seek; and if he does not seek, he is out of the Church by his own fault.  The grace of prayer is given unto everyone, and everyone can pray, and if he does, he shall receive; and it would impeach both the wisdom and the veracity of God to maintain the contrary.

“Those of our countrymen not in the Church may be divided into two classes, and each of these may be subdivided into two subordinate classes – infidels and sectarians- and each negative and positive; that is, infidels and sectarians who are such knowingly, and infidels and sectarians who are such through ignorance.  The first two subdivisions are formal infidels or heretics, and are condemned for their sin of infidelity or heresy.  Of these, there can be no question; not one of them can be saved, unless he becomes a member, truly a member, of the Church.  These know the will of God and do it not, and therefore ‘shall be beaten with many stripes.’  (St. Luke 12: 47)  But they who are infidels or sectarians through ignorance, what is to be said of them?  ‘The servant that knew not his master’s will, but did things worthy of stripes,’ shall he not escape?  Our Lord answers, not that he shall escape, but that ‘he shall be beaten with few stripes.’ The Holy Ghost represents the sinners in hell saying, ‘We have erred from the way of truth; and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us.  We wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the way of the Lord we have not known.’ (Wisdom 5: 6,7)  It is clear, then, that ignorance does not always excuse, and that the servant who knoweth not his master’s will, though he may be punished less than the one who does know it and doeth it not, will nevertheless be punished.

“But they who are merely negative infidels, or unbelievers purely through ignorance, in consequence of never having heard about the Gospel, are not guilty of the sin of infidelity?  Certainly not.  Every Catholic is presumed to know that the 68^th proposition of Baius, Infidelitas pure negativa in his, quibus Christus non est praedicatus, peccatum est, “Purely negative infidelity in those among whom Christ has not been preached, is a sin,” is a condemned proposition, and therefore that purely negative infidelity in those to whom Christ has not been preached is inculpable – as St. Augustine teaches, the penalty of sin, not sin itself.  But who therefore concludes that they are in the way of salvation, or that they can be saved without becoming living members of the body of our Lord?  ‘Infidels of this sort,’ says St. Thomas, ‘are damned, indeed, for other sins which without faith cannot be remitted, but they are not damned for the sin of infidelity.  Whence the Lord says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin”; that is, as St. Augustine explains it, would not have the sin of not believing in Christ.’  There is a considerable distance between being free from the formal sin of infidelity, and being in the way of salvation.  No infidel, positive or negative, in vincible or invincible ignorance, can be saved; ‘for without faith it is impossible to please God,’ and ‘he that believeth not shall be damned,’ and faith in voto not in re, is inconceivable.  Neither of the subdivisions of the unbelieving class of our countrymen are, then, in the way of salvation.

But may it not prove better with sectarians?  With those who are knowingly such, of course not, and nobody pretends that it can.  But may not those who are baptized in heretical societies through ignorance, believing them to be the Church of Christ, be regarded as in the way of salvation?  We will let the Brothers Walenburg answer for us from St. Augustine.  They are speaking de excusationibus simpliciorum among Protestants.  The first excuse they notice, the influence of tyrants, etc., is nothing to our present purpose, and we begin with the second.

“ ‘The second excuse they make is, That not they who are born and educated in Protestant churches have separated themselves from the unity of the Catholic Church, but their ancestors, Calvin, Luther, etc.  Let St. Augustine reply: “But those who through ignorance are baptized there [with heretics], judging the sect to be the Church of Christ, sin less than these [who know it to be heretical]; nevertheless they are wounded by the sacrilege of schism,  and therefore sin not lightly, because others sin more gravely.  For when it is said to certain persons, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of judgment than for you, it is not therefore said because the Sodomites will not be punished, but because the others will be more grievously punished.”

“ ‘The third excuse is, They say that they have been baptized, that they believe in Christ, apply themselves to good works, and therefore may hope for salvation, although they adhere to the party divided from the Church.  St. Augustine replies, “We are accustomed from these words to show men that it avails them nothing to have either the sacraments or the faith, if they have not charity, in order that, when you come to Catholic unity, you may understand what is conferred on you, and how great is that in which you were deficient.  For Christians charity cannot be kept out of the unity of the Church; and thus you may see that without it you are nothing, even though you have baptism and the faith, and by your faith are able to remove mountains.  If this is also your opinion, let us not detest and scorn either the sacraments which we acknowledge in you, or the faith itself, but let us maintain charity, without which we are nothing, even with the sacraments and the faith.  But we maintain charity, if we embrace unity; and we embrace unity when our knowledge is in unity through the words of Christ, not when through our own words we form a partial sketch.”

“ ‘The fourth excuse is, Some say that God is to be believed according to the measure of grace received from him; Catholics, indeed, believe many things which Protestants do not, but the former have received the five talents, the latter the two or three.  They do not condemn Catholics, but they hope to be saved in the small measure which they have themselves received.  But here may avail what we have just adduced from St. Augustine; for if even baptism and faith profit nothing without indispensable charity, much less will profit a mere portion which is held in division and schism.” (De Controversiis Tractatus Generales 9, de Unit. Eccl. Et Schism. Cap. 15)

“This is high authority, and express to the purpose.  It cuts off every possible excuse which our countrymen can allege, or which can be alleged for them.  They who are brought up in the Church, instructed in her faith, and admitted to her sacraments, if they break away from her, can be saved only by returning and doing penance; and all who knowingly resist her authority, or adhere to heretical and schismatical societies, knowing them to be such, are in the same category, and have no possible means of salvation without being reconciled to the Church, and loosened by her from the bonds with which she has bound them.  Thus far all is clear and undeniable.  But even they who are in societies separated from the Church through ignorance, believing them to be the Church of Christ, according to the authorities adduced, are wounded by sacrilege, a most grievous sin, are destitute of charity, which cannot be kept out of the unity of the Church, and without which they are nothing, and therefore, whatever may be the comparative degree of their sinfulness, are in the road to perdition, as well as the others, and no more than the others can be saved without being reconciled to the Church.  But these several classes include all of our countrymen not in the Church, and therefore, as every one of these is exposed to the wrath and condemnation of God, we have the right, and are in duty bound, to preach to them all, without exception, that, unless they come into the Church, and humbly submit to her laws, and persevere in their love and obedience, they will inevitably be lost.* 

“Into the Church, unquestionably; but not necessarily into the visible Church, some will answer.  We must distinguish between body or exterior communion of the Church, or the soul or interior communion.  The dogma of faith simply says, out of the Church there is no salvation, and you have no right to go farther and add the word visible or exterior. 

“We add the word exterior or visible to distinguish the Church out of which there is no salvation from the invisible Church contended for by Protestants, and which no Catholic does or can admit.  Without it the dogma of faith contains no meaning which even a Socinian or a Transcendentalist has any urgent occasion to reject.  Unquestionably, as our Lord in his humanity had two parts, his body and his soul, so we may regard the Church, his Spouse, as having two parts, the one exterior and visible, the other interior and invisible, or visible only by the exterior, as the soul of man is visible by his face; but to contend that the two parts are separable, or that the interior exists disconnected from the exterior, and is sufficient independently of it, is to assert, in so many words, the prevailing doctrine of Protestants, and, so far as relates to the indispensable conditions of salvation, to yield them, at least in their understanding, the whole question.  In the present state of the controversy with Protestants, we cannot save the integrity of the faith, unless we add the epithet visible or external.

“But it is not true that by so doing we add to the dogma of faith.  The sense of the epithet is necessarily contained in the simple word Church itself, and the only necessity there is of adding it at all is in the fact that heretics have mutilated the meaning of the word Church, so that to them it no longer has its full and proper meaning.  Whenever the word Church is used generally, without any specific qualification, expressed or necessarily implied, it means, by its own force, the visible as well as the invisible Church, the body no less that the soul; for the body, the visible or external communion, is not a mere accident, but is essential to the Church.  The Church by her very definition is “the congregation of men called by God through the evangelical doctrine, and professing the true Christian faith under the regimen of their legitimate pastors.”  This definition may, perhaps, not be complete, but it certainly takes in nothing not essential to the very idea of Church.  The Church, then, is always essentially visible as well as invisible, exterior as well as interior; and to exclude from our conception of it the conception of visibility would be as objectionable as to exclude the conception of body from the conception of Man.  Man is essentially body and soul; and whosoever speaks of him- as living man- must, by all the laws of language, logic, and morals, be understood to speak of him in that sense in which he includes both.  So in speaking of the Church, if the analogy is admissible at all.  Consequently, when faith teaches that out of the Church there is no salvation, and adds herself no qualification, we are bound to understand the Church in her integrity, as body no less than soul, visible no less than invisible, external no less than internal.  Indeed, if either were to be included rather than the other, it would be the body; for the body, the congregation or society, is what the word primarily and properly designates; and it designates the soul only for the reason that the living body necessarily connotes the soul by which it is a living body, not a corpse.  We have, then, the right, nay, are bound by the force of the word itself, to understand by the Church, out of which there is no salvation, the visible or external as well as the invisible or internal communion.  Hence the Brothers Walenburg begin their Treatise on Unity and Schism by assuming, “1, Ecclesiam vocatorum esse visibilem; 2, Extra communionem externam cum vera Jesu Christi Ecclesia, non esse salutem; 3, Extare hoc tempore visibilem Ecclesiam Jesu Christi, cui se fideles debeant conjungere.”

“What Bellarmine, Billuart, Perrone, and others say of persons pertaining to the soul and yet not to the body of the Church makes nothing against this conclusion.  They, indeed, teach that there is nothing against this conclusion.  They, indeed, teach that there is a class of persons that may be saved, who cannot be said to be actu et proprie in the Church.   Bellarmine and Billuart instance catechumens and excommunicated persons, in case they have faith, hope, and charity; Perrone, as far as we have seen, instances catechumens only; and it is evident from the whole scope of their reasoning that all they say on this point must be restricted to catechumens, and such as are substantially in the same category with them; for they instance no others, an we are bound to construe every exception to the rule strictly, so as to make it as little of an exception as possible.  If, then, our conclusion holds true, notwithstanding the apparent exception in the case of catechumens and those substantially in the same category, nothing these authors say can prevent it from holding true universally.

“Catechumens are persons who have not yet received the visible sacrament of baptism in re, and therefore are not actu et proprie in the Church, since it is only by baptism that we are made members of Christ and incorporated into his body.  With regard to these ‘there is a difficulty,’ says Bellarmine, ‘because they are of the Faithful, and if they die in that state may be saved; and yet no one can be saved out of the Church, as no one was saved out of the ark, according to the decision of the fourth Council of the Lateran, C. 1: Una est fidelium Universalis Ecclesia, extra quam nullus omnino salvatur.  Still, it is no less certain that catechumens are in the Church, not actually and properly, but only potentially, as a man conceived, but not yet formed and born, is called man only potentially.  For we read, Acts 2: 41, “They therefore that received his word were baptized; and there were added to them that day about three thousand souls.”  Thus the Council of Florence in its Instructions for the Armenians, teaches that men are made members of Christ and the body of the Church when they are baptized; and so all the Fathers teach…Catechumens are not actually and properly in the Church.  How can you say they are saved, if they are out of the Church?

“It is clear that this difficulty, which Bellarmine states, arises from understanding that to be in the Church means to be in the visible Church, and that when faith declares, out of the Church no one can be saved, it means out of the visible communion.  Otherwise it might be answered, since they are assumed to have faith, hope, and charity, they belong to the soul of the Church, and that is all that faith requires. But Bellarmine does not so answer, and since he does not, but proceeds to show that they do in a certain sense belong to the body, it is certain that he understands the article of faith as we do, and holds that men are not in the Church unless they in some sense belong to its body.

“But Bellarmine continues, ‘The author of the book “De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus” replies, that they are not saved.  But this appears too severe.  Certain it is that St. Ambrose, in his oration on the death of Valentinian, expressly affirms that catechumens can be saved, of which number was Valentinian when he departed this life.  Another solution is therefore to be sought.  Melchior Cano says that catechumens may be saved, because, if not in the Church properly called Christian, they are yet in the Church which comprehends all the faithful from Abel to the consummation of the world.  But this is not satisfactory; for, since the coming of Christ, there is no true Church but that which is properly called Christian, and therefore, if catechumens are not members of this, they are members of none.  I reply, therefore, that the assertion, out of the Church no one can be saved, is to be understood of those who are of the Church neither actually nor in desire, as theologians generally say when treating of baptism.” (De Eccl. Milit. Lib. 3, cap. 3)

“ ‘I have said,’ says Billuart, ‘that catechumens are not actually and properly in the Church, because, when they request admission into the Church, and when they already have faith and charity, they may be said to be in the Church proximately and in desire, as one may be said to be in the house because he is in the vestibule for the purpose of immediately entering.  And in this sense must be taken what I have elsewhere said of their pertaining to the Church, that is, that they pertain to her inchoately, as aspirants who voluntarily subject themselves to her laws; and they may be saved, notwithstanding there is no salvation out of the Church; for this is to be understood of one who is in the Church neither actually nor virtually – nec re, nec in voto.’  In the same sense St. Augustine, Tract. 4 in Joan. N. 13, is to be understood, when he says, ‘Futuri erant aliqui in Ecclesia excelsioris gratiae catechumeni,’ that is, in will and proximate disposition, ‘in voto et proxima dispositione.’  

“It is evident, both from Bellarmine and Billuart, that no one can be saved unless he belongs to the visible communion of the Church, either actually or virtually, and also that the salvation of catechumens can be asserted only because they do so belong; that is, because they are in the vestibule, for the purpose of entering, have already entered in their will and proximate disposition.  St. Thomas teaches with regard to these, in case they have faith working by love, that all they lack is the reception of the visible sacrament in re; but if they are prevented by death from receiving it in re before the Church is read to administer it, that God supplies the defect, accepts the will for the deed, and reputes them to be baptized.  If the defect is supplied, and God reputes them to be baptized, they are so in effect, have in effect received the visible sacrament, are truly members of the external communion of the Church, and therefore are saved in it, not out of it. (Summa 3, Q. 68, a. 2 corp. ad 2 et ad 3)

“Bellarmine, Billuart, Perrone, etc., in speaking of persons as belonging to the soul and not to the body, mean, it is evident, not persons who in no sense belong to the body, but simply those who, though they in effect belong to it, do not belong to it in the full and strict sense of the word, because they have not received the visible sacrament in re.  All they teach is simply that persons may be saved who have not received the visible sacrament in re; but they by no means teach that persons can be saved without receiving the visible sacrament at all.  There is no difference between their view and ours, for we have never contended for anything more than this; only we think, that, in those times especially, when the tendency is to depreciate the external, it is more proper to speak of them as belonging in effect to the body, as they certainly do, than it is to speak of them simply as belonging to the soul; for the fact that most important to be insisted on is, not that it is possible to be saved without receiving the visible sacrament in re, but that it is impossible to be saved without receiving the visible sacrament at least in voto et proxima dispositione. 

“The case of catechumens disposes of all who are substantially in the same category.  The only persons, not catechumens, who can be in the same category, are persons who have been validly baptized, and who stand in the same relation to the sacrament of Reconciliation that catechumens do to the sacrament of Faith.  Infants, validly baptized, by whomsoever baptized, are made members of the body of the lord, and, if dying before coming to the age of reason, go immediately to heaven.  But persons having come to the age of reason, baptized in a heretical society, or persons baptized in such society in infancy, and adhering to it after having come to years of understanding- for there can be no difference between the two classes- whether through ignorance or not, are, as we have seen, out of unity, and therefore out of charity, without which they are nothing.  Their faith, if they have any, does not avail them; their sacraments are sacrilegious.  The wound of sacrilege is mortal, and the only possible way of being healed is through the sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance.  But for these to stand in the same relation to this sacrament that catechumens do to the sacrament of Faith, they must cease to adhere to their heretical societies, must come out from among them, seek and find the Church, recognize her as the Church, believe what she teaches, voluntarily subject themselves to her laws, knock at the door, will to enter, stand waiting to enter as soon as she opens and says, Come in.  If they do all this, they are substantially in the same category with catechumens; and if prevented by death from receiving the visible sacrament in re, they may be saved, yet not as simply joined to the soul of the Church, but as in effect joined or restored to her external communion.  By their voluntary renunciation of their heretical or schismatic society, by their explicit recognition of the Church, by their actual return to her door, by their disposition and will to enter, they are effectually, if not in form, members of the body as well as of the soul.  Persons excommunicated stand on the same footing as these.  They are excluded from the Church, unless they repent.  If they repent and receive the visible sacrament of Reconciliation in re, vel voto, they may be saved, because the Church in excommunicating them has willed their amendment, not their exclusion from the people of God; but we have no authority to affirm their salvation on any other conditions.

“The apparent exception alleged turns out, therefore, to be no real exception at all; for the persons excepted are still members of the body of the Church in effect, as the authorities referred to labor to prove.  They are persons who have renounced their infidel and heretical societies, and have found and explicitly recognized the Church.  Their approach to the Church is explicit, not constructive, to be inferred only from a certain vague and indefinite longing for truth and unity in general, predicable in fact, we should suppose, of nearly all men; for no man ever clings to falsehood and division, believing them to be such.  Their desire for truth and unity is explicit.  Their faith is the Catholic faith; the unity they will is Catholic unity; the Church as whose door they knock is the Catholic Church; the sacrament they solicit, they solicit from the hands of her legitimate priest.  They are in effect Catholics, and though not re et proprie in the Church, nobody ever dreams of so understanding the article, out of the Church no one can be saved, as to exclude them from salvation.  These being in effect members of the external communion, the distinction between the soul and the body of the Church does not at all affect the assumption of the Brothers Walenburg, ‘out of external communion with the true Church of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.’ 

“The Church is always and everywhere, at once and indissolubly, as the living Church, interior and exterior, consisting, like man himself, of soul and body.  She is not a disembodied spirit, nor a corpse.  The separation of the soul and body of the Church is as much her death, as the separation of the soul and body of man is his.  She is the Church, the living Church, only by the mutual commerce of soul and body.  There may be grave sinners in her body who have no communion with her soul; there are indeed members, but not living members, and are in the body rather than of it, as vicious humors may be in the blood without being of it, for they must have communion with the soul in order to be living members; and some theologians maintain that they who are in the body of the Church, without pertaining to the soul, at least by faith, though a dead faith, are not, strictly speaking, members at all.  On the other hand if, as all our theologians teach, and Moehler and Perrone especially, the life of the Church is in the mutual commerce of the exterior and the interior, the body and the soul, no individual not joined to her body can live her life.  Indeed, to suppose the communion alone with the body will suffice, is to fall into mere formalism, to mistake the corpse for the living man; and, on the other hand, to suppose that communion with the soul out of the body and independent of it is practicable is to fall into pure spiritualism, simple Quakerism, which tapers off into Transcendentalism or mere sentimentalism, a doctrine which Fr. Perrrone expressly controverts. Either extreme is the death of the Church, which is, as we have said, to be regarded as always, at once and indissolubly, soul and body.  To assume real or virtual communion with the body is not necessary, or that we may be joined to the spirit without being joined to the body is to make the body only occasionally or accidentally necessary to salvation;  and, in fact, some modern speculations imply, perhaps expressly teach, that it is necessary only in the case of those who recognize it to be necessary, as if its necessity depended on the state of the human intellect, and not on the appointment of God, or as if a man’s disbelief could excuse of make up for his want of faith,- a doctrine not to be extracted from the Holy Scriptures, taught by no Father or Medieval Doctor, and from which we should suppose every Catholic would instinctively turn with loathing and disgust.  The Church is the living Temple of God, into which believers must be builded as so many living stones.  It is his body, and his body is no more to be dispensed with than his soul; otherwise we could not call her always visible, for to some she would be visible, to others only invisible, and then there would be no visible Catholic Church.  

“There is no name given under heaven among men but the name of Jesus Christ by which we can be saved.  There is salvation in none other; and what Catholic needs to be told that Christ, as the Savior, is in the Church, which is his body, and that it is in the Church, and nowhere else, that he does or will save?  True, though in the Church, he is also out of her, by his grace operating in the hearts of those not yet within; but he operates ad Ecclesiam, to bring them within, that he may save them there, not that he may save them without.  He loves his Church; she is his Chosen, his Beloved, his Spouse, and he gave his life for her.  In her, so to speak, center all his affections, his graces, and his providences; and all creatures and events are ordered in reference to her.  Without her all history is inexplicable, a fable, and the universe itself meaningless and without a purpose.  The salvation of souls itself is in order to her, and God will have no children who are not also hers.  As there is but one Father, so can there be but one Mother, and none are of the Father who are not of the Mother.  Clear and explicit are all the Fathers and Saints as to this, and they plainly teach that it would dishonor her, and make God an adulterer, to suppose the salvation of a single soul of which she is not the spiritual mother.

“God, in establishing his Church from the foundation of the world, in giving his life on the cross for her, in abiding always with her, in her tabernacles, unto the consummation of the world, in adorning her as a Bride with all the graces of the Holy Spirit, in denominating her his Beloved, his Spouse, had taught us how he regards her, how deep and tender, how infinite and inexhaustible his love for her, and with what love and honor we should regard her.  He loves us with an infinite love, and has died to redeem us; but he loves us and wills our salvation, only in and through his Church.  He would bring us to himself, and he never ceases as a lover to woo our love; but he wills us to love, and reverence, and adore him only as children of his Beloved.  Our love and reverence must redound to his glory as her Spouse, and gladden her maternal heart, and swell her maternal joy, or he wills them not, knows them not.  O, it is frightful to forget the place the Church holds in the love and providence of God, and to regard the relation in which we stand to her as a matter of no moment!  She is the one grand object on which are fixed all heaven, all earth, ay, and all hell.  Behold her impersonation in the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother of God, the glorious Queen of Heaven.  Humble and obscure she lived, poor and silent, yet all heaven turned their eyes toward her; all hell trembled before her; all earth needed her.  Dear was she to all the hosts of heaven; for in her they beheld their Queen, the Mother of grace, the Mother of mercies, the channel through which all love, and mercies, and graces, and good things were to flow to men, and return to the glory and honor of their Father.  Humblest of mortal maidens, lowliest on earth, under God she was highest in heaven.  So is the Church, our sweet Mother.  O, she is no creation of the imagination!  O, she is no mere accident in human history, in divine providence, in divine grace, in the conversion of souls!  She is a glorious, a living reality, living the divine, the eternal life of God.  Her Maker is her Husband, and he places her, after him, over all in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth.  All that he can do to adorn and exalt her he has done.  All he can give he gives; for he gives himself, and unites her in indissoluble union with himself.  Infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite power, can do no more.  All hail to thee, dear and ever-blessed Mother, thou chosen one, thou well-beloved, thou Bride adorned, thou chaste, immaculate Spouse, thou Universal Queen!  All hail to thee!  We honor thee, for God honors thee;  we love thee, for God loves thee; we obey thee, for thou ever commandest the will of thy lord.  The passers-by may jeer thee; the servants of the prince of this world may call thee black; the daughters of the uncircumcised may beat thee, earth and hell rise up in wrath against thee, and seek to despoil thee of thy rich ornaments and to sully thy fair name; but all the more dear art thou to our hearts; all the more deep and sincere the homage we pay thee; and all the more earnestly do we pray thee to receive our humble offerings, and to own us for thy children, and watch over us that we never forfeit the right to call thee our Mother.

“Did we reflect on what the Church is, did we consider her rank in the universe, her relation to God, the place she holds, so to speak, in his affections, the bare thought of the salvation of a single soul not spiritually begotten of her would make us thrill with horror.  It would give the lie to all God’s providences, and subvert the whole economy of his grace.  We need not start at this.  All may have the Church for their mother, if they choose.  Christ is in the Church, but he is also out of the Church.  In his Church he is operating by his grace to save those who enter; out of her he operates also by his grace, or is ready to operate, in the hearts of all men, to supply the will and the ability to come in.  Do not imagine that God has only done half his work, that he has merely prepared his Church, fitted her up as a palace, filled her with all good things, all things necessary for our salvation, when once we have entered, but that he has left us without the ability to find her out, or, having found her out, without ability to enter.  He leaves nothing undone.  No man has the natural ability to come into the Church, any more than he has the natural ability to save himself after he has come in.  All before and all after is the work of God.  We can do nothing of ourselves alone- make not even the first motion without his grace inciting and assisting us.  Of no use would have been his Church- it would have been a mere mockery, or a splendid failure- if he had not provided for our entrance as well as for our salvation afterwards.

“But he has provided for our entrance.  He give sufficient grace to all men.  The grace of prayer, gratia orationis, is given freely, gratuitously unto every one.  All receive the ability to ask; all, then, can ask, and if they do ask, as sure as God cannot lie they shall receive the grace to seek; and if they seek, the same divine veracity is pledged that they shall find; and if they find, they may knock; and if they knock, it shall be opened to them.  God has said it.  Christ is in the Church; he is out of it.  In it and out of it he is one and the same, and operates ever ad unitatem.  He is out of the Church to draw all men into the Church; all have, then, if they will, the assistance of the Infinite God to come in, and if they do not come in, it is their own fault.  God withholds nothing necessary.  He gives to all, by his grace, everything requisite, and in superabundance.  If we come not at his call, on our own heads lies the blame.  We have no excuse, not the least shadow of an excuse.  The reason why we come not can be only that we did not choose to come, that we resist his grace, and scorn his invitations, and will not yield to his inspirations.  No nice theological distinctions, no scholastic subtilty, no latitudinarian ingenuity, can relieve us of the blame, or make it not true that we could have come, had we been so disposed.  If, then, we stay away, and are lost, it is we who have destroyed ourselves.

“Here are the great mass of our countrymen aliens from the Church of God.  Why do they not come and ask to be received as children and heirs?  Is it lack of opportunity?  It is false.  There is no lack of opportunity.  God does not deny them, not one of them, the needed grace.  The Church is here; through her noble and faithful pastors, her voice sounds out from Maine to Florida, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  How can they hear without a preacher?  But they have heard.  Verily the voice of the preacher has gone out into all the earth.  They have no need to say, Who shall ascend into heaven to bring Christ down?  Or, Who shall descend into hell to bring Christ up from the dead?  The word is nigh to them.  It sounds in every ear; it speaks in every heart.  We all know they might come, if they would.  From all sections, and from all ranks and conditions, some have come, and by coming proved that it is possible for all to come; and in so proving rendered invalid the plea of ignorance or inability.  Those who have not come can as well come as those who have come; and their guilt in not coming is aggravated by their knowledge of the fact that some of their own number have come; for they are no longer in ignorance. (St. Aug. Lib 1, “de Bap. Contra Donat.” Cap. 5. Etiam S. Joan. Chrysos. In Epistle ad Rom. 26.)  The fault is their own.  They stay away because they do not will to come.  “Ye will not come to me that ye may have life, because your deeds are evil.”  They disregard divine grace, they disdain the Church, they contemn her pastors, they scorn her sacraments.  For what Catholic can doubt, if they were to seek the truth, cauta sollicitudine, as St. Augustine says they must, even to excuse them from formal heresy or infidelity, that they would find, and, finding and knocking, that they would be admitted?

“No; let us love our countrymen too much to be ingenious in inventing excuses for them, to strain the faith in their behalf till it is nearly ready to snap.  Let us, from a deep and tender charity, which, when need is, has the nerve to be terribly severe, thunder, or, if we are no Boanerges, breathe in soft but thrilling accents, in their ears, in their souls, in their consciences, those awful truths which they will know too late at the day of judgment.  We must labor to convict them of sin, to show them their folly and madness, to convince them that they are dead in trespasses and sins, and condemned already, and that they can be restored to life, and freed from condemnation, only by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we, and we only, preach, which is dispensed through the Church, and the Church only.”

Brownson’s Quarterly Review, Oct., 1847, pp. 437-456

 

*Vide Bishop Hay, “Sincere Christian,” 2^nd American edition, Philadelphia, pp. 345-390.  This is a work of high authority, second to none in our English language.  It has fallen into our hands for the first time since the present article was written, or we should have drawn largely from its pages.  We have small space left for extracts, but we cannot resist the temptation to quote an authority which the Rt. Reverend author cites from St. Fulgentius.  St. Fulgentius in the sixth century speaks thus: ‘Hold most firmly, and without any doubt, that no one who is baptized out of the Catholic Church can partake of eternal life, if before the end of this life he be not restored to the Catholic Church and incorporated therein.’ – Lib. De Fide cap. 37…and it is worthy of especial notice, that those recent theologians who seem unwilling to assent to this doctrine cite no authority from a single Father or Medieval doctor of the Church, not strictly compatible with it.

Unquestionably, authorities in any number may be cited to prove- what nobody disputes- that pertinacity I rejecting the authority of the Church is essential to formal or culpable heresy, that persons may be in heretical societies without being culpable heretics, and therefore that we cannot say of all who live and die in such societies, that they are damned precisely for the sin of heresy.  Father Perrone, and our own distinguished theologian, the erudite Bishop of Philadelphia, whose contributions have so often enriched our pages, cite passages in abundance to this effect, which, as Suarez asserts, is the uniform doctrine of all the theologians of the Church; but they cite not a single authority of an earlier date than the seventeenth century, which even hints anything more than this.  But this by no means militates against St. Augustine, St. Fulgentius, the Brothers Walenburg, or Bishop Hay; because it by no means follows from the fact that one is not a formal heretic, that he is, so long as in a society alien to the Church, in the way of salvation.  A man may, indeed, not be damned for his erroneous faith, and yet be damned for sins not remissible without the true faith, and for the want of virtues impracticable out of the communion of the Church.  Father Perrone very properly distinguishes material heretics from formal heretics; but when treating the question ex professo, he by no means pronounces the former in the way of salvation; he simply remits them to the judgment of God, who, he assures us- what nobody questions- will consign no man to endless tortures, unless for a sin of which he is voluntarily guilty. 

Moreover, Father Perrone, when refuting those who contend that salvation would be attainable if the visible Church should fail, that is, by internal means, by being joined in spirit to the true Church, maintains that in such case there would be no ordinary means of salvation; that when Christ founded his Church, he intended to offer men an ordinary means, or rather a collection of means, which all indiscriminately, and at all times, might use for procuring salvation; that if God had been willing to operate our salvation by the assistance of internal means, there would have been no reason for instituting the Church; that what is said of being joined to the Church through the spirit, and of invincible ignorance, or of material heretics, could be admitted only on the hypothesis that God should provide no other means; that, since it is certain that God has willed to save men by other means, namely, by the institution of the Church visible and external, and which is at all times easily distinguished from every sect, it is evident that the subterfuge imagined by non-Catholics is altogether unavailable…This says all we wish to say; for we are not discussing what is possible by a miracle of grace, but what is possible in the order of grace.  Nor does the admission of an extraordinary interposition for our salvation, when the ordinary means, through no fault of ours, fail us, necessarily imply the possibility of salvation without the medium ordinarium; for it may be to bring us to it, or it to us, so that we may be saved by it, and not without it.  That there may be persons in heretical and schismatical societies, invincibly ignorant of the Church, who so perfectly correspond to the graces they receive, that Almighty God will by extraordinary means bring them to the Church, is believable and perfectly compatible with the known order of his grace, as is evinced by the case of the eunuch of Queen Candace, that of Cornelius, the captain of the Italian band, and hundreds of others recorded by our missionaries, especially the missionaries of the Society of Jesus.  In all the instances of extraordinary or miraculous intervention of Almighty God, whether in the order of nature, or in the order of grace, known to us, he has intervened ad Ecclesiam, and there is not a shadow of authority for supposing that he ever has miraculously intervened or ever will intervene otherwise.  To assume that he will, under any circumstances, intervene to save men without the medium ordinarium is perfectly gratuitous, to say the least.  To bring men in an extraordinary manner to the Church is easily admissible, because it does not dispense with the revealed economy of salvation, nor imply its inadequacy; but to intervene to save them without it appears to us to dispense with it, and to imply that it is not adequate to the salvation of all whom God’s goodness leads him to save.

That those in societies alien to the Church, invincibly ignorant of the Church, if they correspond to the graces they receive, and persevere, will be saved, we do not doubt, but not where they are, or without being brought to the Church.  They are sheep, in the prescience of God Catholics, but sheep not yet gathered into the fold.  “Other sheep I have,” says our Blessed Lord, “that are not of this fold; them also I must bring; they shall hear my voice; and there shall be made one fold and one shepherd.”  This is conclusive; and that these must be brought, and enter the fold, which is the Church, in this life, St. Augustine expressly teaches in the words cited in the beginning of this note.  See also “Sincere Christian,” pg. 366.  Almighty God can be at no loss to save by the medium ordinarium all who are willing to be saved, and that, too, without contradicting himself, departing from, or superseding the order of his grace; and, till better informed, we must believe it sounder theology to trust to his extraordinary grace to bring men to the Church than it is to invincible ignorance to save them out of it; “quia et ipsa ignorantia in eis qui intelligere noluerunt, sine dubitatione peccatum est; in eis autem qui non potuerunt, poena peccati. Ergo in utriusque non est justa excusatio, sed justa damnatio.” [Trans. because ignorance itself in those who refused to understand is without doubt a sin; but in those who could not, the penalty of sin. Therefore in both there is no just excuse, but just condemnation.]  Those who think otherwise we hope will not go so far as to say with Rousseau, “quiconque ose dire, hors de l' Eglise point de salut, doit etre chasse de l' etat.” [trans. Anyone who dares to say, outside the Church there is no salvation, must be driven out of the state.]