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90 the church as the nurse and home of the Christian life, and the saving virtue of her means of grace. The church to him is the society of the saints, the Kingdom of God on earth. With the whole drift of contemporary churchmanship, asceticism, miracles, relics the incipient cultus of saints (he believes in their intercession, but strongly dissuades from "placing our hope" in them: "noli facere"; if we pray to God alone, we shall be the more likely to benefit by their intercession: "non solum tibi non succensebunt; sed tunc amabunt, tunc magis favebunt"; but Augustine is evidently correcting a known tendency to invocation, Serm. 4617), he is in entire sympathy. It is unnecessary to multiply examples of what every page of his writings abundantly illustrates. But it must be noted that his interest throughout is in the spiritual life rather than in the external system; the latter is but the means to the former. Augustine, first of all extant Christian writers, identifies the Kingdom of God (so far as it exists on earth; its full realization, in common with all Christian antiquity, he reserves for the end) with the Catholic church: but not in respect of its government or organization. It is the Kingdom of Christ in so far as Christ reigns in His saints and they (even on earth, in a sense) reign with Him. From this point of view, we may trace the negative influence of Augustine's idealism (supra, a) upon his view of the church. We saw above (§ 15, e) his inability to complete his theory of church authority by the essential feature of an infallible organ of authority. Councils are authoritative, but earlier councils are subject to later ones, there is no final expression of absolute positive truth (of course there is relative truth; the church will never rehabilitate Arianism nor Pelagianism inferiora superiosibus praeponendo, see above, a). Truth is, ideally, perceived by the reason (de Util. Cred. 34); infallibility is an ideal attribute of the church, its realization now is subject to the semi-reality which is the condition of all things on earth. She has catholica veritas, but never as ultimate truth that man can explicitly grasp. To the church, as to the individual, it may be said, "ut et tu sis, transcende tempus." Ideally, authority is but the "door" to reason; authority is for the babes, the stulti, who are not the type of mature Christian growth. The intelligendi vivacitas is for the paucissimi, the credendi simplicitas is safest for the turba (c. Ep. Fund. 5). But Augustine does not press these thoughts to their full issue. "Alia est ratio verum tacendi, alia verum dicendi necessitas . . . ne pejores faciamus eos qui non intelligunt dum volumus eos qui intelligunt facere doctiores" (de Dono Persev. 40). Practically they operate negatively, by leaving in the vague the question of an infallible organ of authority, while the positive conception of the church is left unaffected. In the sphere of transcendent reality, the decrees of councils may be provisional only; but in practice any authoritative decision is final, even the appeal to a general council (supra, § 10, b, Julian) may be ignored, "causa finita est" (supra, 15, d). Medieval ecclesiasticism accepted Augustine's homage to the external fabric of the church, and concerned itself little with his

conception of Reality (see references to Gregory VII., in Reuter, pp. 499 seq.).

(c) Influence of his Doctrine of Grace.—Augustine's conception of the church, little as it was modified in practice by his transcendental theory of "Being" taken by itself, was more seriously affected by his predestinarian doctrine, which his transcendentalism certainly tended to reinforce. Augustine had first found salvation in the Catholic church (c. Ep. Fund. 6) in self-surrender to the authority of Christ (c. Acad. III. 43: "mihi autem certum est nusquam prorsus ab auctoritate Christi discedere," etc.). His whole religious thought, founded upon his experience of the Catholic church, turned upon Christ as its fountain-head and centre (see the passages collected by Reuter, pp. 19‒25). His whole being, and that of the church, was owing to the grace of Christ ("gratia Dei per Christum, propter Christum," etc.); the gratia Christi is the central idea of his theology. We saw above (§ 10) by what steps he was led, from the inward recognition of the sovereignty of grace in his personal life, to the logical conclusion that salvation depends upon the Divine will irrespective of merit or of anything which takes place on earth. Membership of the church, a holy life, use of the means of grace, may be indispensable to the predestined; but they are in no sense conditions of predestination, which is absolute. They depend on it, not it on them. Even the historical work of Christ is secondary to the Divine purpose to save some and "pass over" the rest of mankind. Hence, on the one hand, the doctrine of particular redemption (for none perish for whom Christ died, Ep. 1694, while those predestined ad interitum are "non ad vitam aeternam sui sanguinis pretio comparati"—in Joh. Tr. xlvii. 11, 4), on the other hand, a tendency to make the atonement not an efficient cause of redemption but a proof (to the elect) of God's love: "ut ostenderet Deus dilectionem suam," etc. (de Catech. Rud. 4; cf. Ep. 17715: "gratia Dei quae revelata est per passionem et resurrectionem Christi"). The number of the predestined is irrevocably fixed, and this certus numerus constitute the church as it will be in the perfect Kingdom of God. The church on earth, viewed as it is in God's sight, in its true "being," consists of the elect and of them alone. The old Catholic axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus thus acquires a new and unlooked-for meaning: out of the number of the elect there is no salvation. This is the Augustinian doctrine of the communion of saints, which stands in contrast with the externa communio or visible church as the invisible reality with the semi-real phenomenon. The distinction is not quite identical with the familiar distinction of wheat and tares, nominal and real Christians; for even real Christians have no certainty that they are "elect." The donum perseverantiae, which is as absolutely unmerited as that of faith, and is, in fact, the turning-point of the whole predestinarian scheme, may fail them (supra, § 10, c). In that case they are, after all, vessels of wrath; while again it may be vouchsafed to others who are now but nominal Christians, or not even that. When Augustine identifies the church with the Kingdom of 