INVISIBLES

A distinguishing name given to the disciples of Osiander, Flacius Illyricus, Swenkfeld, ., being so denominated because they denied the perpetual visibility of the Church. Palmer remarks, that the reformed seem generally to have taught the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, until some of them deemed it nece ary, in consequence of their controversy with the Romanists, who asked them where their Church existed before Luther, to maintain that the Church might sometimes be invisible. This mistaken view appears in the Belgic Confe ion, and was adopted by some of the Protestants; but it arose entirely from their error in forsaking the defensive ground which their predece ors had taken at first, and placing themselves in the false position of claiming the exclusive title of the Church of Christ , according to the ordinary signification of the term. Jurieu, a minister of the French Protestants, has shown this, and has endeavoured to prove that the Church of Christ is e entially visible, and that it never remained obscured, without ministry or sacraments, even in the persecutions, or in the time of Arianism. The same truth has been acknowledged by several denominations of di enters in Britain.