Hence, it is evident that the universal holy church is Christ's one and only bride, the virgin to be in the end most chaste, whom the Son of God bound to himself in matrimony out of eternal love and by the grace of adoption, and the church we firmly believe, saying with the Creed, "I believe one holy catholic church," and about which the word is added in the second Creed, "and apostolic [church]." It is called apostolic for the reason that the apostles are full participants of this same mother church, which is fully purified in the Spirit, and which they themselves planted with the teaching and blood of Christ; and by whose teaching (i. e., of the apostles) and authority their vicars now rule the young bride, who seeks only the bridegroom of the church. So runs the Decretal 24 [Friedberg, 1: 968] where pope Leo says: "Peter's authority has its seat wherever its just sentence is carried." For Peter himself dwells in heaven, seeing and looking after what God binds and looses. Hence Boniface VIII, Extravagante, says: "We are bound with living faith to believe and hold that the holy catholic and apostolic church is one."[1]
The unity of the catholic church consists in the unity of predestination, inasmuch as her separate members are one by predestination[2] and in the unity of blessedness, and inasmuch as her separate sons are finally united in bliss. For, in the present time, her unity consists in the unity of faith and the Christian virtues and in the unity of love, even as
- ↑ Boniface's famous bull, Unam sanctam, issued 1302 against Philip the Fair of France, which commands subjection to the Roman pontiff as the condition of salvation for every creature. The text goes on, "and we firmly believe it and sincerely confess that outside of it there is no salvation or remission of sins, as the bridegroom announced in the Canticles: 'My bride is one.'" See Schaff, Ch. Hist., V, part 2: 25 sqq. for the original and translation; Friedberg, 2: 1245; Mirbt, 162. In this treatise Huss quotes this bull a number of times, even to the last chapter.
- ↑ In his Reply to Palecz, Mon., 1: 321, Huss says again: "The grace of predestination is the chain by which the body of the church and every member of it are joined to Christ." He also speaks of the unity through love, faith, and hope, Mon., 1: 326.
