H. C. Vedder: “The church is a spiritual body, consisting only of those regenerated by the Spirit of God.” Yet the Westminster Confession affirms that the church “consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children.” This definition includes in the church a multitude who not only give no evidence of regeneration, but who plainly show themselves to be unregenerate. In many lands it practically identifies the church with the world. Augustine indeed thought that “_the field_,” in _Mat. 13:38_, is the church, whereas Jesus says very distinctly that it “_is the world_.” Augustine held that good and bad alike were to be permitted to dwell together in the church, without attempt to separate them; see Broadus, Com. _in loco_. But the parable gives a reason, not why we should not try to put the wicked out of the church, but why God does not immediately put them out of the world, the tares being separated from the wheat only at the final judgment of mankind. Yet the universal church includes all true believers. It fulfils the promise of God to Abraham in _Gen. 15:5_—“_Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said into him, So shall thy seed be_.” The church shall be immortal, since it draws its life from Christ: _Is. 65:22_—“_as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people_”; _Zech. 4:2, 3_—“_a candlestick all of gold ... and two olive‐trees by it_.” Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:242, 243—“A Spanish Roman Catholic, Cervantes, said: ‘Many are the roads by which God carries his own to heaven.’ Döllinger: ‘Theology must become a science not, as heretofore, for making war, but for making peace, and thus bringing about that reconciliation of churches for which the whole civilized world is longing.’ In their loftiest moods of inspiration, the Catholic Thomas à Kempis, the Puritan Milton, the Anglican Keble, rose above their peculiar tenets, and above the limits that divide denominations, into the higher regions of a common Christianity. It was the Baptist Bunyan who taught the world that there was ‘a common ground of communion which no difference of external rites could efface.’ It was the Moravian Gambold who wrote: ‘The man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of his empire, Would speak but love. With love, the bright result Would change the hue of intermediate things, And make one thing of all theology.’ ”