holy catholic church is! And, in the same place and in a similar way, he speaks of the church of the wicked. This, he says, "brought forth Cain, Ham, Ishmael, and Esau, and also Dathan and other like persons of that people. And she, which brought forth these, also brought forth Judas, the false apostles, Simon Magus, and other pseudo-Christians, down to these days—all obstinately hardened in fleshly lusts, whether they are mixed together[1] in a union or are clearly distinguished the one from the other." So much, Augustine.
From this statement it appears that the holy universal church is one, the church which is the totality of the predestinate, including all, from the first righteous man to the last one to be saved in the future. And it includes all who are to be saved who make up the number, in respect to the filling up of which number all the saints slain under the altar had the divine assurance that they should wait for a time until the number should be filled up of their fellow servants and brethren, Rev. 6:9–11. For the omniscient God, who has given to all things their weight, measure and number, has foredetermined how many shall ultimately be saved. Therefore, the universal church is also Christ's bride about whom the Canticles speak, and about whom Isaiah, 61:10, "as a bridegroom decked with a crown, and as a bride adorned with jewels." She is the one dove of which Christ said: "My dove is one, my excellent one," Canticles 6:9.[2] She is also the
- ↑ Permixti, which the Decretum has instead of proximi, Huss's text.
- ↑ This text una est columba, una perfecta mea, was a chief biblical proof used by the Schoolmen for the unity of the church. The Song of Solomon had a great fascination for the Schoolmen—the book upon which, one after another, they exercised their allegorical skill. It was regarded as an inspired anthology of the bodily and spiritual excellences of the Virgin Mary, and the perfections of the church. They found in it a storehouse of devotional meditation, as did Bernard, whose sermons on the Canticles are full of tropical effusions to Christ and to Mary, and the chief source of his mystical theology. Paschasius Radbertus, de corpore et sanguine, Migne 120: 1295, says, "The Canticles treat of the holy church of God, which is called in the Canticles the paradise of delights." Damiani represented God as inflamed with love for Mary, singing
