Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/54

2 under one rule, as Aristotle teaches, Polit. 2: 7, 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—præsciti. 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