Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/384

Rh men should be linked together, so as to tend to a common end? I say it was, and in proving this I have proved the existence of the second, third and fourth elements required in the definition.

Christ said to Peter, that on him He would build His Church. The metaphor of building conveys the idea of parts bound together so as to form a whole. Apply this metaphor to a multitude of human beings and you have a society. Again, Christ calls His Church in that same text, a kingdom—"Upon thee will I build My Church, and to thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Now a kingdom is a society, and a perfect one. And St. Paul writing to the Ephesians in the fourth chapter, describes the Church as "a body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part," etc. And if these terms do not express the idea of a society, of a body politic, no language supplies words able to convey that idea.

The Church is then a society, and what I have said sufficiently indicates that she is a perfect one. But, moreover, if she be not perfect, then her end must form part of the end of the State. Is it so? Does the State ever aim at the sanctification of its members? Assuredly not. And if I charged the State with being wanting to itself, because, with the help of electric telegraphs and railways, with army and navy, with Royal societies and mechanics' institutes, etc., it has never formed a single saint, a single mortified and holy man, I should be called a fool, and rightly so. The end of the Church is distinct and independent of the