Invisible church

“ I call the community of all who have sought for salvation through loyalty the Invisible Church. What makes it invisible to us is our ignorance of the facts of human history and, still more, our narrowness in our appreciation of spiritual truth. ”

“ If Jesus built a church, and if He adds the members, and if all the members are saved, and if the Spirit puts them all into one body, and that body is the church, and if He named it, why then would it not be the right church? I do not see how anyone could be a Christian without being in this church," said Robert.
"Is not the church of God what Pastor Jones called the 'invisible church' and are not all the denominations together the visible church?" asked Mary. ”

“ Of such insight, whatever you may learn from communion with any form of the visible church, is an instance--a special embodiment. The invisible church, then, is no merely human and secular institution. It is a real and superhuman organisation. ”

“ Invisible church! Why, was all that early church invisible, Mary? Impossible! Paul persecuted the church, it says. There was something visible to persecute, was there not? Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. Surely there was something to write to. What puzzles me, though, is where this church is today. It is plain enough that the early New Testament church was visible, and that it was organized, and had ministers and government. It had power and grace also, and it grew rapidly, and spread over much of the Roman Empire even before the death of the apostles. ”

“ She holds, like the Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a divided church. But the Madonna can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be visibly “one,” are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an invisible church. That a visible church, of which oneness is a mark, need not be visibly one!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go further? ”

“ The Connection of the Visible Church with the State.
188. (1) What are the distinctive characters of the Invisible Church? That is to say, What is it which makes a person a member of this Church, and how is he to be known for such? Wide question—if we had to take cognizance of all that has been written respecting it, remarkable as it has been always for quantity rather than carefulness, and full of confusion between Visible and Invisible: even the Article of the Church of England being ambiguous in its first clause: "The Visible Church is a congregation of Faithful men." ”

“ The true church of Jesus Christ was lost sight of. It was spoken of as the invisible church, while the denominations were the visible churches. Men joined churches because they thought that it was the right thing to do.
"About the year 1880, or 350 years after the Augsburg Confession, A.D. 1530, a deep conviction seized a number of earnest, sanctified people that the denominational system was wrong, utterly unscriptural. They began to preach a pure Bible church of which salvation alone makes men members." ”

“ If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? ”

“ The popular Church, of which it was necessary to make the best, owing to the impracticability of the Church apart, apparently embraced all, yet, within it, according to Luther, the true believers formed an invisible Church, and this in a twofold manner, first, because they were themselves not to be recognised, and, secondly, because the Word and the Sacrament, from which they derived their religious life, concealed a whole treasure of invisible forces. ”

“ There was some talk about the infallibility of the Church, if I recollect right, in that letter of Mr. Bennett's to the Bishop of London. If any Church is infallible, it is assuredly the Invisible Church, or Body of Christ: and infallible in the main sense it must of course be by its definition. An Elect person must be saved, and therefore cannot eventually be deceived on essential points: so that Christ says of the deception of such, "If it were possible" implying it to be impossible. ”

“ It is bound together by the warmth of its own particles, and by nothing else.” This is a good illustration of the invisible church, and of its course through the world. But the visible church is bound to be distinguishable from unregenerate humanity, and its inner principle of association inevitably leads to organization. ”

“ An invisible church would imply a denial of any sacramental agency, and would be absolutely unfit for men, who are incarnate spirits. Hence, those sects which hold that the saints alone belong to the church have not the least idea of its essence. Holiness being altogether a spiritual and invisible quality, the saints could not know each other, nor, consequently, hold any communication with each other ”

“ As in most of the other Reformed or Calvinistic Confessions, greater prominence is assigned to the Invisible Church, consisting of the elect of all times and nations, than to the general visible church subsisting at any particular time in the world and embracing all who profess faith in Christ and submit to the godly discipline He has prescribed. ”

“ God is a spirit, and in spirit and truth he must be adored; that is, by having recourse to an invisible church, is the sense he attaches to those words. Of course, if the church is not a visible body, the mountain placed on the top of mountains, we must necessarily do away with the priesthood and sacraments, etc., 715for they can have no scope in an invisible, abstract thing. But in that case why not abolish Christ the Emmanuel, the God-man? ”

“ These dispositions mark a relapse from understanding. They are imitative. This time there has been no revelation here or there; there is no claim to a revelation but simply that God has become visible. Men have thought and sought until insensibly the fog of obsolete theology has cleared away. There seems no need therefore for special teachers or a special propaganda, or any ritual or observances that will seem to insist upon differences. The Christian precedent of a church is particularly misleading. The church with its sacraments and its sacerdotalism is the disease of Christianity. ”

“ Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. "I shall keep my hand on your shoulder" said the Voice, "all through the village. Go straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if you do."
"I know that," sighed Mr. Marvel, "I know all that."
The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows. ”

“ The church stood only a few steps away, for the garden and churchyard adjoined one another. As I went down carrying the lantern that Parker had lighted for me, I remember hearing far away to the south, beyond the village, the beat of a horse’s hoofs. The horse seemed to be in a gallop, but presently the noise died away behind a ridge. ”

“ Williams lifted his lantern and looked round the dusky church.
“‘No, sir; there is no one.’
“I crossed the chancel to go to the vestry, but as I was half-way, suddenly again in the quiet village there broke out the desperate gallop of a horse. ”

“ Death is represented as a departure—it is going from one house to another—it is a loosing from port, and launching into the ocean.—Death is the ship or boat which wafts us over to the shores of eternity. It is going the way of all the earth—going a journey to man’s long home—to an invisible world—through a dark valley, where we need a guide; and a Covenant God has promised to guide us through.—It is going to sleep in hope of waking again, sweetly refreshed in the morning of the resurrection ”

“ Is it reasonable to suppose that the Inquisition and the Catholic University of Paris, and all the clergy of England and France represented only a discredited section of the Church?
It is the pride of the Catholics that their church has never been divided or schismatic, and that it has been one and indivisible "always and everywhere." ”

“ So, in my judgment, nothing will destroy any church as certainly, and as rapidly, as for the members of that church to live squarely up to the creed. The church is indebted to its hypocrisy to-day for its life. No orthodox church in the United States dare meet for the purpose of revising the creed. They know that the whole thing would fall to pieces.
Nothing could be more absurd than for a Roman Catholic priest to teach a public school, assisted by nuns. The Catholic Church is the enemy of human progress; it teaches every man to throw away his reason, to deny his observation and experience. ”

“ Aloysius, reputed to be dangerously “High,” because its curates wear coloured scarves; the Baptist Chapel, where the minister maintains the old doctrines of hell and heaven, and wrestles with the sinner for his immortal soul; the Congregational Church, where the minister is abreast with modern culture, and proclaims a less exacting gospel, and faintly trusts the larger hope. But the whole apparatus of worship seems archaic and unreal to those who have never seen the shaking of the solid ground beneath their feet, or the wonder and terror of its elemental fires. ”

“ Every monastery had its master magician, who sold incense and salt and tapers and consecrated palms and relics. Every science was regarded as an enemy; every fact held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were regarded as dangerous; thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power to prevent the intellectual progress of man.
There was no real liberty, no real education, no real philosophy, no real science—-nothing but credulity and superstition. The world was under the control of Satan and the church. ”

“ Then the abiding eternal soul knows its own reality and its oneness with the Divine and eternal, and the sacrifice of Christ is a real living thing—and in the men's sacrifice they are very near to Him.
So the Churches are being tested, too, in this great crisis, and in a reconstructed world we shall want Churches that carry the message of Christianity with a clearer and firmer voice, but that is the task of all believers. We cannot cast the duty of making the Church a living witness on our priests alone—it is our work, and unless our faith goes into everything we do, it is no use. ”

“ If, like the Catholic church, they had the world to themselves for "a thousand years and more," what abominations would their spurious churches have not only tolerated, but have instituted and approved? If they have produced Mormons, Transcendentalists, Universalists, and spiritual rappers, in the nineteenth century, what monsters would they not have produced in the ninth? ”

“ Its organization of Head and Body is of divine creation, divinely guarded by the Holy Ghost, who quickens it by His indwelling, and guides it by His light. It is in itself incorrupt and incorruptible in the midst of corruption, as the light of heaven falls upon all the decay and corruption in the world, unsullied and unalterably pure. We are never concerned to deny or to cloak the sins of Christians or of Catholics. They may destroy themselves, but they cannot infect the Church from which they fall. ”

“ In her Homily on the Perils of Idolatry she declares: "Clergy and laity, learned and unlearned, men, women and children, of all ages, sects and degrees, of whole Christendom, a most horrible and dreadful thing to think, have been at once buried in the most abominable idolatry, and that for eight hundred years or more." That being true, how is it possible to believe that the Church of Christ had any existence on earth after that long continued darkness and apostacy? How could there be any remnant left of the divine authority held by the Apostles and Priesthood of the original Christian Church? ”

“ That church has no basis for organization; no reason, because no hell is threatened, and heaven is but faintly promised. Just as the churches have lost their belief in eternal fire, they have lost their influence, and the reason they have lost their belief is on account of the diffusion of knowledge. That doctrine is becoming absurd and infamous. Intelligent people are ashamed to broach it. Intelligent people can no longer believe it. It is regarded with horror, and the churches must finally abandon it, and when they do, that is the end of the church militant. ”

“ The darkness of ignorance is still hiding the truth. The church is doing its utmost to train the young in the pernicious doctrine of superstition and falsehood of antiquity. The clergy would stop our public school system, if they could drag humanity back into the mire of brutality.
The sooner the Bible, with its God, Jehova, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, the prophets and the apostles, with all the angels, heaven, and hell, are placed under a glass case to be viewed and admired as a matter of antique curiosity the better. ”

“ It means that churches are shambles in which are bought and sold the souls of men. It means that the church is still guilty of the barbarity of opposing thought with force. It means that if it had the power, the mental horizon would be bounded by a creed; that it would bring again the whips and chains and dungeon keys, the rack and fagot of the past. ”