For let it be supposed that there be upon earth one particular defined Divine Authority--such is the Church’s claim--how would it necessarily act and be? What would of necessity be its structure? The reply is no _positive_ argument in favour of that claim, but it is a conclusive _negative_ argument in proof of the contention that _if_ such a claim be true, then organisation and, as time proceeded, more and more minute and detailed organisation, would be an absolutely inevitable condition of action by such an authority. For consider carefully what the implications of such an authority are? Here we are on earth, possessed of certain general instincts of right and wrong--instincts commonly proceeding to very warped effects in action. We are surrounded by an infinity of varying circumstances; our lives are brief; our power of intercommunication between individual minds is limited. Granted that there be some _Corpus_--some definable get-at-able person, place, or thing--from which absolute conclusions may be accepted; then that thing must be in the form of a society or otherwise it could not be continuous; it could not survive among ephemeral beings; it must have rules, or it could not bind beings imperfectly communicating; it must have habits, for it must be a living organism. Societies cannot live without differentiation of function and definition thereof; separation of one activity from another; subordination in command; laws more and more defined; known symbols; ritual. If anything were designed to act as an institution with divine authority among men--there might be no such design nor any such institution--but, I say, _supposing_ there be such, then whatever was to act in this fashion must be a society, for it must be continuous; must be corporate, in order to overcome the imperfect connection between individual minds; must tend to more and more complete definition in its character and being as time proceeds: for otherwise it would not have a human framework consonant to the human world for which it would be designed. Leave men in doubt as to who is and who is not a member of such a society; let it be uncertain by what tests membership may be recognised, acquired or lost, and the whole character and personality of the divinely appointed Thing disappears: with personality disappears the faculty of diction, of affirmation, for which (by definition) it was conceived. And, indeed, so you find the Church from its origins: sacraments at once appearing, communion and excommunion, doctrine more and more defined as the generations pass and doubts or controversies arise, ritual embryonically present at its very outset and rapidly stabilised: from the beginning you have it certainly hierarchic, disciplined, bound in a strict framework: and still more certainly (if that be possible) it shows limitation or outline, a frontier, a boundary--whereby any man may test who is within and who is without the Church.