Hus it passed to Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, who agreed in denying the claims of the papacy to
exclusive catholicity, and in widening the limits of the church so as to include all true believers in
Christ. But they distinguished more clearly between the invisible and visible church, or rather
between one true invisible church and several mixed visible churches.^683 The invisible church is
within the visible church as the soul is in the body, and the kernel in the shell. It is not a Utopian
dream or Platonic commonwealth, but most real and historical. The term, "invisible" was chosen
because the operations of the Holy Spirit are internal and invisible, and because nobody in this life
can be surely known to belong to the number of the elect, while membership of the visible church
is recognizable by baptism and profession.
Important questions were raised with this distinction for future settlement. Some eminent
modern Protestant divines object to the term "invisible church," as involving a contradiction,
inasmuch as the church is essentially a visible institution; but they admit the underlying truth of an
invisible, spiritual communion of believers scattered throughout the world.^684 As Protestantism has
since divided and subdivided into a number of denominations and separate organizations, the idea
of the church needs to be further expanded. We must recognize a number of visible churches, Greek,
Latin, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and all the more recent Christian denominations which
acknowledge Christ as their Head, and his teaching and example as their rule of faith and duty. The
idea of denominations or confessions, as applied to churches, is of modern date; but is, after all,
only an expansion of the idea of a particular church, or a contraction of the idea of the universal
church, and therefore authorized by the double Scripture usage of ecclesia. The denominational
conception lies between the catholic and the local conception. The one invisible church is found
in all visible denominations and congregations as far as true Christianity extends. Another distinction
should also be made between the church, and the kingdom of God, which is a more spiritual and
more comprehensive idea than even this invisible catholic church, although very closely allied to
it, and usually identified with it. But we cannot anticipate modern discussions. The Reformers were
concerned first of all to settle their relation to the Roman Church as they found it, and to reconcile
the idea of a truly catholic church which they could not and would not sacrifice, with the corruptions
of the papacy on the one hand, and with their separation from it on the other.
Luther received a copy of Hus’s treatise De Ecclesia from Prague in 1519.^685 He was driven
to a defense of the Bohemian martyr in the disputation at Leipzig, and ventured to assert that Hus
was unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance for holding doctrines derived from Augustin
and Paul. Among these was his definition of the universal church as the totality of the elect
(universitas praedestinatorum).
England, but became known in Bohemia in 1407 or before, and the reproduction of it by Hus created a great sensation. The arrangement,
the ideas, and arguments of the two books are the same, and often the very language. Comp. Loserth’s Introduction to Wiclif’s De Ecclesia.(^683) Luther first used the term "invisible." Zwingli first added the term "visible" in his Expositio christianae. fidei (1531): "Credimus et
unam sanctam esse catholicam, h.e. universalem ecclesiam. Eam autem esse aut visibilem aut invisibilem." Zwingli was the only one
among the Reformers who included the elect heathen in the invisible church. The clearest symbolical statement of the Protestant doctrine
of the invisible and visible church is given in the Westminster Confession, ch. xxv. (Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, III. 657).
(^684) Rothe (Anfänge der christl. Kirche, I. p. 101) says that the idea of a moral and spiritual union and communion of all believers in
Christ, or of the communion of saints, is in the highest sense real (ist nach unsrer innigsten Ueberzeugung eine im höchsten Sinne reale),
but cannot be called a church. He resolves and dissolves the church ultimately into the kingdom of God, which he identifies with the ideal
state.
(^685) Under the date of Oct. 3, 1519, he informed Staupitz that he had received from Prague letters of two priests, "una cum libello Joannis
Hus." De Wette, I. 341. An edition of the Tractatus de Ecclesia was published at Mainz and Hagenau in 1520.