refer, however, not to any local and visible community, but to the “Church of the first-born which are written in heaven;” [641:1] and the Catholics, by misapplying them, were led to form very extravagant notions of the advantages of the position which they occupied.  The ascription of the attributes of the Church invisible to their own association was, in fact, the fundamental misconception on which a vast fabric of error was erected.  By reason of the indwelling of the Spirit in all believers the Church invisible is catholic, or universal, that is, it is to be found wherever vital Christianity exists; for the same reason it is holy, every member of it being a living temple of Jehovah; it is also one, as one Spirit animates all the saints and unites them to God and to each other; and it is perpetual, or indestructible, for the Most High has promised never to leave Himself without witnesses among men, and all His redeemed ones shall remain as trophies of His grace throughout all eternity.  But these attributes were represented as belonging to the Church visible, and this radical mistake became the parent of monstrous delusions.  The ecclesiastical writers who flourished towards the end of the second and beginning of the third century exhibit a considerable amount of inconsistency and vacillation when they touch upon the subject; [641:2] but, half a century afterwards, the language currently employed is much bolder and more decided.  At that time Cyprian does not hesitate to express himself in the strongest terms of high-church exclusiveness. “All,” says he, “are adversaries of the Lord and antichrist who are found to have departed from the charity and unity of the Catholic Church.” [641:3] “You ought to know that the bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop, and if any be not with the bishop, that he is not in the Church.” [641:4] “The house of God is one, and there cannot be salvation for any except in the Church.” [641:5] “He can no longer have God for a Father, who has not the Church for a mother.” [642:1]

Though the Catholics were a compact body, forming the bulk of the Christian population, their system failed to absorb all the professors of the gospel, or perhaps even greatly to check the tendency towards ecclesiastical separation.  In their controversies with seceders and schismatics, their own principles were more distinctly defined; and, as they soon found that they were quite an overmatch for any individual sect, their tone gradually became more decided and dictatorial.  But the theological position from which they started was a sophism; and, like the movements of a traveller who has mistaken his way, every step of their progress was an advance in a wrong direction.  Some of the more prominent errors to which their theory led may here be enumerated.