Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 417

UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCiriUM

393

special principium, but not the special principium

from the

Chap.

II]

§ 72.

—

But what is true on the other hand and this is the position which we defend is, that faitli in this special principium is supported and maintained by the churchly community, i.e. by the wow-instituted but organically present communion mutual among believers. churchly institute.

—

It is unhistorical, therefore, to imagine that every person, taking the Bible in hand from his own impulse, should formulate the truth from it for himself. This is simply absurd,

for actual experience

shows that one either grows up in, or which confessions of the truth

in later life enters, a circle in

already exist

;

and

that, in vital

communion

Avith this circle,

reached in his consciousness of what was potentially given in regeneration, but which only from this communion can draw the life-sap needed for its development. clearness

As one

is

tree of the forest protects another against the vio-

communion of saints does one protect the other against the storm-wind of doubt. This fellowship of believers, carefully distinguished from lence of the storm, so in the

instituted Churches, exhibits

its

universal

human

character

in the fact that it continues its life in successive generations

and extends first is

across

itself to all

concerned,

many

it

peoples and nations.

has a history back of

it

So far as the

which extends

and by its confession it ever preserves Not merely in the sense in which ancestors in sacred memory, for in national

centuries,

communion with a nation holds its

the past.

the dead are gone. He who dies loses his nationality, and belongs no more to his people. This fellowship of believers, on the other hand, knows that its departed ancestors still live and always stand in organic connection \vith it. life

Moreover, while a people changes its public opinion from age to age, in this ecclesiastical fellowship the same world of thought remains constant for all time. Hence the tie to the special principium

not maintained by those alone who are and subscribe to the same confession as ourselves, but much more by those millions upon millions

now

who now rejoice is

is

alive with us

before the throne. And so far as the second concerned, the outcome shows that the Christian religion.

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