enumerating; and amongst the rest, speaking of Novatian's schism, he writes thus distinctly: "But if there is one Church, which is beloved by Christ, and alone is cleansed in His laver, how can he who is not in the Church," (that is, in communion with that particular external assembly which makes a part of the external Catholic Church,) "be loved by Christ, or washed and cleansed in His laver? Wherefore as the Church alone possesses the water of life, and the power of baptizing and washing a man, let him who asserts that any one can be baptized and sanctified with Novatian, first show and teach that Novatian is in the Church, or [64]_presides over the Church_. For the Church is one, which, being one, cannot be at once within and without. For if it is with Novatian, it was not with Cornelius. But if it was with Cornelius, who succeeded the Bishop Fabian in regular order, and whom the Lord hath glorified with martyrdom over and above the rank of his high priesthood, Novatian is not in the Church."[65] It is the precise thing which we have been stating." But where did Vitringa and the supporters of his doctrine get courage to contradict the whole line of Fathers and their unbroken tradition? You would surely expect from them decisive arguments, and expressions from Holy Writ distinctly laying down no other than a _hypothetical_ necessity of visible and external unity. But you may search in vain all over the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts, for any such. Not only is there no mention in them of such a distinction as that invisible unity is absolutely necessary, while external and visible unity is but hypothetically so, but this latter is plainly enjoined and set forth as the note which the mystical body of Christ, the true Church, cannot be without; and its violation is reckoned among those works of the flesh which exclude from the kingdom of God. How, besides, can that be deemed necessary only under hypothesis, without holding and faithfully maintaining which you cut yourself off from the very fountain of blessing, and transgress and subvert the order appointed by God for attaining salvation? Such an assertion would be senseless. Yet in most of the Protestant confessions,--the Helvetic, art. xiv., the Galliean, art. xvi., the Scotch, art. xxvii., the Belgian, art. xxviii., the Saxon, art. xii., the Bohemian, art. viii., and that of the Remonstrants, art. xxii.,--it is laid down as an indisputable principle, "That the heirs of eternal life are only to be found in the assembly of those called." What then do those who violate outward and visible unity, and withdraw from the outward and visible body of the Church? They stop up the very way which Providence has opened for their obtaining "the inheritance of sons."