Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/363



THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 357

under the whole heavens. . . - The Church is, therefore, the spiritual Sion in which Christ has been constituted King by God the Father, and which exists throughout the entire earth, on which there is but one Catholic Church,"^ And Augustine says: " What can be so manifest as a mountain, or so well known? There are, it is true, mountains which are unknown because they are situated in some remote part of the earth,. . . But this mountain is not unknown; for it has filled the whole face of the world, and about this it is said that it is pre- pared on the summit of the moimtains. " ^

Furthermore, the Son of God decreed that the Church should be His mystical body, with which He should be united as the head, after the manner of the human body which He assumed, to which the natural head is physio- logically united. As He took to Himself a mortal body which he gave to suffering and death in order to pay the price of man's redemption, so also He has one mystical body in which and through which He renders men par- takers of hohness and of eternal salvation. God hath made Him (Christ) head over all the Church, which is His hody.^ Scattered and separated members cannot possibly cohere with the head so as to make one body. But St. Paul says: All the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ.* Wherefore this mystical body, he declares, is compacted and fitly joined together. The head, Christ: from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the meas- ure of every part.^ And so dispersed members, separated one from the other, cannot be united with one and the same head. " There is one God, and one Christ; and His Church is one and the faith is one; and one the people, joined together in the solid unity of the body in the bond

> De Schism. Donatist. lib. iii. n. 2. ' Eph. i. 22, 23.

'In Ep. Joan., tract i., n. 13. M Cor, xii. 12.

"Eph. iv. 1.5. 16.