Thus in the union of the soul and body, in the constitution and authority of the human commonwealth, and in the race's natural unity, God holds before us three analogies, which each in some respect, and altogether very largely, illustrate His finished work, to which all natural productions of His providence are subordinate, His work of predilection, His work of unbounded love and sovereign magnificence, the creation of that which is at once the Body, the Kingdom, and the Family of the Incarnate Word.
From all that has gone before we gather this conclusion, that to become a Christian was to enter into a spiritual and physical(107) unity with Christ by incorporation into that Body which He had created as the result of His becoming man. This it was for the individual to become a Christian. But Christianity itself was neither a mere system of belief, nor an outward order representing that belief; but "the great and glorious Body of Christ,"(108) possessing and exhibiting the whole truth of doctrine, possessing and distributing all the means of grace, and presenting together to God those whom it had reconciled with Him, and made one, as the members of the Son by the indwelling of the Spirit.
Let us now trace the exact correspondence of the historical fact with the dogmatic statement just given.