CHURCH

(See Catholic .) The word church is derived from the Greek κυριακὸς ( belonging to the Lord )—the Teutonic nations having, at their first conversion, generally adopted the Greek ecclesiastical terms. The truth of this etymology is confirmed by the fact, that in the Sclavonic languages the names for the Church resemble the Teutonic, evidently because derived from a common Greek original. The Church, meaning by the word the Catholic or Universal Church, is that society which was instituted by our ble ed Lord , and completed by his apostles, acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit , to be the depository of Divine truth and the channel of Divine grace. Every society, or organized community, may be distinguished from a mere multitude or accidental concourse of people, by having a founder, a form of admi ion, a constant badge of membership, peculiar duties, peculiar privileges, and regularly appointed officers. Thus the Catholic Church has the Lord Christ for its founder; its prescribed form of admi ion is the holy sacrament of baptism; its constant badge of membership is the holy sacrament of the eucharist; its peculiar duties are repentance, faith, obedience; its peculiar privileges, union with God , through Christ its Head, and hereby forgivene of sins, present grace, and future glory; its officers are bishops and priests, a isted by deacons, in regular succe ion from the apostles, the first constituted officers of this body corporate. It has the Bible for its code of laws, and tradition for precedents, to aid its officers in the interpretation of that code on disputed points. It is through the ordinances and sacraments of the Church, administered by its divinely appointed officers, that we are brought into union and communion with the invisible Saviour ; it is through the visible body that we are to receive communications from the invisible Spirit ; and, says the apostle, in the fourth chapter to the Ephesians, “There is,” not merely one Spirit , “there is one body and one Spirit , even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” Again, (1 Cor. x. 17,) “We being many are one bread and one body.” And in the first chapter to the Colo i ans, the same apostle tells us that this body is the Church. And thus we must, if we are scriptural Christians, believe that there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Of this one Church there are many branches existing in various parts of the world, (not to mention the great division of militant and triumphant,) just as there is one ocean, of which portions receive a particular designation from the shores which they lave. But of this one society there cannot be two branches in one and the same place opposed to each other, either in discipline or in doctrine. Although there be two opposing societies or more in one place, both or all claiming to be Christ’s Church in that place, yet we are quite sure that only one of them can be the real Church. So here, in this realm of England, speaking nationally , there is but one Church, over which the archbishops of Canterbury and York, with their suffragans, preside: and in each diocese there is only that one Church, over which the diocesan presides, a branch of the national Church, as the national is a branch of the universal Church: and again, in each parish there is but one Church, forming a branch of the diocesan Church, over which the parochial minister presides. “Religion being, therefore, a matter partly of contemplation , partly of action , we must define the Church, which is a religious society, by such differences as do properly explain the e ence of such things; that is to say, by the object or matter whereabout the contemplation and actions of the Church are properly conversant; for so all knowledge and all virtues are defined. Whereupon, because the only object which separateth ours from other religions is Jesus Christ , in whom none but the Church doth believe, and whom none but the Church doth worship, we find that accordingly the apostles do everywhere distinguish hereby the Church from infidels and from Jews, accounting them which call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to be his Church.”— Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. Hooker’s a ertion as to the Church in this country must be so far modified, that now, by change of political circumstances, the Churches of England and Ireland are politically united, and form but one Church, over which two primates, that of Canterbury and Armagh, of co-ordinate jurisdiction, preside, with other archbishops and suffragans, .— Jebb.