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more deeply on the nature of the Church. On the one hand he shows himself to be the
predestinarian, who conceives of the Church as the company of the elect, the communio
sanctorum, who have the Spirit of God and are therefore characterized by true love. The
important thing is to be a living member of the Church so conceived, and not to belong to it in a
merely external sense. But on the other hand he is the Church-man, who adheres to the
Cyprianic idea of the Church at least in its general aspects. The true Church is the catholic
Church, in which the apostolic authority is continued by episcopal succession. It is the
depositary of divine grace, which it distributes through the sacraments. For the present this
Church is a mixed body, in which good and evil members have a place. In his debate with the
Donatists he admitted, however, that the two were not in the Church in the same sense. He
also prepared the way for the Roman Catholic identification of the Church and the Kingdom of
God.
b. In the Middle Ages.
The Scholastics have very little to say about the Church. The system of
doctrine developed by Cyprian and Augustine was fairly complete and needed but a few
finishing touches to bring it to its final development. Says Otten (Roman Catholic historian):
“This system was taken over by the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, and then was handed down
by them, practically in the same condition in which they had received it, to their successors who
came after the Council of Trent.”[Manual of the History of Dogmas, II, p. 214.] Incidentally a
few points were somewhat further developed. But if there was very little development in the
doctrine of the Church, the Church itself actually developed more and more into a close-knit,
compactly organized, and absolute hierarchy. The seeds of this development were already
present in the Cyprianic idea of the Church and in one aspect of the Church as represented by
Augustine. The other and more fundamental idea of that great Church Father, that of the
Church as the communio sanctorum, was generally disregarded and thus remained dormant.
This is not saying that the Scholastics denied the spiritual element altogether, but merely that
they did not give it due prominence. The emphasis was very definitely on the Church as an
external organization or institution. Hugo of St. Victor speaks of the Church and the State as the
two powers instituted by God for the government of the people. Both are monarchical in
constitution, but the Church is the higher power, because she ministers to the salvation of men,
while the State only provides for their temporal welfare. The king or emperor is the head of the
state, but the Pope is the head of the Church. There are two classes of people in the Church
with well defined rights and duties: the clerics, dedicated to the service of God, who constitute
a unit; and the laics consisting of people from every domain of life, who constitute a separate
class altogether. Step by step the doctrine of the papacy came to development, until at last the
Pope became virtually an absolute monarch. The growth of this doctrine was in no small
measure aided by the development of the idea that the Catholic Church was the Kingdom of
God on earth, and that therefore the Roman bishopric was an earthly kingdom. This