Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/359



THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 353

is it living and energizing, because by the infusion of His power Christ guards and sustains it, just as the vine gives nourishment and renders fruitful the branches united to it. And as in animals the vital principle is unseen and invisible, and is evidenced and manifested by the move- ments and action of the members, so the principle of supernatural life in the Church is clearly shown in that which is done by it.

From this it follows that those who arbitrarily conjure up and picture to themselves a hidden and invisible Church are in grievous and pernicious error, as also are those who regard the Church as a human institution which claims a certain obedience in discipline and external duties, but which is mthout the perennial communication of the gifts of di_yine grace, and without all that which testifies by constant andTundoubted signs to the existence Qf_thatjife_ which is drawn fro m_Ggd. It is assuredly as impossible that the Church of Jesus Christ can be the one or the other as that man should be a body alone or a soul alone. The connection and union of both_ elements is as abso- lutely necessary to the true Cliurch as the intimate union of the soul and body is to human nature. The Church is not something dead: it is the body of ^hrist endoaxd^ "^!l^^P?I5Â£tllIlLiiÂ£^- As Christ, thehie^d and exemplar, is not wholly in His visible human nature, which Photin- ians and Nestorians assert, nor wholly in the in\dsible divine nature, as the Monophysites hold, but is one, from and in both natures, visible and invisible; so the mystical body of Christ is the true Church only because its visible parts draw life and power from the supernatural gifts and other things whence spring their very nature and essence. But since the Church is such by divine will and constitu- tion, such it must uniformly remain to the end of time. If it did not, then it would not have been founded as per- petual and the end set before it would have been limited to some certain place and to some certain period of time; both of which are contrary to the truth. The union