s man-made and
external, let us call a bodily, external Christendom: not as if
we would part them asunder, but just as when I speak of a man,
and call him, according to the soul, a spiritual, according to
the body, a physical, man; or as the Apostle is wont to speak of
the inner and of the outward man. [Rom. 7:22] Thus also the
Christian assembly, according to the soul, is a communion[37] of
one accord in one faith, although according to the body it cannot
be assembled at one place, and yet every group is assembled in
its own place. This Christendom is ruled by Canon Law and the
prelates of the Church.[38] To this belong all the popes,
cardinals, bishops, prelates, monks, nuns and all those who in
these external things are taken to be Christians, whether they
are truly Christians at heart or not. For though membership in
this communion[37] does not make true Christians, because all the
orders mentioned may exist without faith; nevertheless this
communion is never without some who at the same time are true
Christians, just as the body does not give the soul its life, and
yet the soul lives in the body and, indeed, can live without the
body. Those who are without faith and are outside of the first
community, but are included in this second community, are dead in
the sight of God, hypocrites, and but like wooden images of true
Christians. And so the people of Israel were a type of the
spiritual people, assembled in faith.

[Sidenote: The Church as a Building]

The third use of the term applies the word Church, not to
Christendom, but to the edifices erected for purposes of worship.
And the word "spiritual" is so stretched as to cover temporal
possessions, not the possessions which are truly spiritual
because of faith, but those which are in the second or external
Church,[39] and such possessions are called "spiritual" or Church
possessions.[40] Again, the possessions of the laity are called
"worldly," although the laymen who are in the first or spiritual
Church[39] are much better than the worldly clergy and are truly
spiritual. After this fashion it now goes with almost all the
works and the government of the Church;[39] and the name
"spiritual possessions" has been so exclusively applied to
worldly possessions that now no one understands it to mean
anything else, and this has gone so far that men regard neither
the spiritual nor the external Church any more, and they squabble
and quarrel about temporal possessions l