Published with the kind permission of TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS Part I MISSION CHAPTER VI. ANSWER TO THE OBJECTIONS MADE AGAINST THE VISIBILITY OF THE CHURCH. SUCH are our reasons, sound under every test. But they have some counter-reasons, which, as they fancy, they draw from the Scriptures, but which are very easy of refutation to anyone who will consider what follows.   (1.) Our Lord had in His humanity two parts, Body and Soul; so the Church His spouse has two parts, the one interior; which is as her Soul, invisible----Faith, Hope, Charity, Grace,----the other exterior, as her Body, and visible----the Confession of Faith, Praises and Canticles, Preaching, Sacraments, Sacrifices. Yea, all that is done in the Church has its exterior and interior. Prayer is interior and exterior; Faith fills the heart with assurance and the mouth with confession; Preaching is made exteriorly by men, but the secret light of the Heavenly Father is required in it, for we must always hear Him and learn from Him before coming to the Son; and as to the Sacraments, the sign is exterior but the grace is interior, as everyone knows. Thus then we have the interior of the Church and the exterior. Its greatest beauty is within, the outside is not so excellent, as says the Spouse in the Canticles (iv.): Thy eyes are doves' eyes besides what is hid within . . . Honey and milk are under thy tongue, that is, in thy heart;----behold the interior. And the smell of thy garments as the odour of frankincense;----behold the exterior service. And the Psalmist (xliv.): All the glory of the King's daughter is within;----there is the interior. Clothed round in golden borders with varieties;----there is the exterior. (2.) We must consider that as well the interior as the exterior of the Church may be called spiritual, but differently. For the interior is spiritual purely and of its own nature; the exterior of its own nature is corporal, but because it has a reference and tendency to the spiritual, the interior, we call it spiritual, as S. Paul calls those who made the flesh subject to the spirit, although they were corporeal; and although each person be particular, of his own nature, still when he serves the public he is called a public man. Now, if one say that the Evangelical law was given on the hearts interiorly, not on tables of stone exteriorly, as Jeremias says (xxxi. 33), the answer is; that in the interior of the Church and in its heart is all the chief of its glory, but this fails not to shine out over the exterior, by which it is known and recognised. So when it is said in the Gospel (John iv. 23) that the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorer shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth;----we are taught that the interior is the chief thing, and that the exterior is vain if it do not tend and flow towards the interior to spiritualise itself therein. In the same way, when S. Peter calls the Church a spiritual house (1 Pet. ii. 5), it is because all that proceeds from the Church tends to the spiritual life, and because its greatest glory is interior; or again because it is not a house made with lime and sand, but a mystical house of living stones, to which charity serves as cement. The holy Word says (Luke xvii. 20), The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: but the kingdom of God is the Church, therefore the Church is not visible;----answer: the kingdom of God in this place is Our Lord with His grace, or, if you will, the company of Our Lord while He was in this world; whence it continues: for behold the kingdom of God is within you; and this kingdom did not come with the surroundings and glory of a worldly magnificence, as the Jews expected; besides, as we have said, the fairest jewel of this King's daughter is hidden within, and cannot be seen. As to what S. Paul says to the Hebrews (xii 18), that we are not come to the mountain that might be handled, like Mount Sina, but to the heavenly Jerusalem----he is not proposing to show that the Church is invisible: for S. Paul shows in this place that the Church is more magnificent and richly endowed than the Synagogue, and that she is not a natural mountain like that of Sina, but a mystical; from which it does not follow that it is in any way invisible. Indeed, it may reasonably be said that he is actually speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the triumphant Church; wherefore he adds the company of Angels, as if to say that in the Old Law God was seen on the mountain after a terrible manner, and that the New leads us to see Him in His glory there in Paradise above. Finally, here is the argument which everybody loudly asserts to be the strongest,----I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: if I believe in it, I do not see it, therefore it is invisible. Is there anything feebler in the world than this phantom of a reason? Did the Apostles not believe that Our Lord was risen again, and did they not see Him? Because thou hast seen Me, He says Himself to S. Thomas (John xx. 27): thou hast believed; and to make him believing He says to him, See My hands, and bring hither thy hand, and put it into My side, and be not faithless but believing. See how sight hinders not faith but produces it. Now Thomas saw one thing and believed another; he saw the body and he believed the spirit and the Divinity; for it was not his seeing which led him to say, My Lord and my God!----but his faith. So do we believe one Baptism for the remission of sins; we see the Baptism, but not the remission of sins. Similarly, we see the Church, but not its interior sanctity; we see its eyes as of a dove, but we believe what is hidden within: we see its richly broidered garments, in beautiful variety, with golden borders, but the brightest splendour of its glory is within, which we believe. In this royal Spouse there is wherewith to feed the interior and the exterior eye, faith and sense, and all for the greater glory of her Spouse. 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