the church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the
doctrine of Photius. So that Homyakov's assertion that
this church, united by love, and consequently holy,
is the same church as the Greek Orthodox priesthood
profess faith in, is even more arbitrary than the
assertions of the Catholics or the Orthodox. If we
admit the idea of a church in the sense Homyakov
gives to it--that is, a body of men bound together
by love and truth--then all that any man can predicate
in regard to this body, if such an one exists, is
its love and truth, but there can be no outer signs
by which one could reckon oneself or another as a
member of this holy body, nor by which one could put
anyone outside it; so that no institution having
an external existence can correspond to this idea.

For Lutherans the Church of God coincides with a body of men who
recognize the authority of the Bible and Luther's catechism.

Ordinarily, when speaking of the rise of Christianity, men
belonging to one of the existing churches use the word church in
the singular, as though there were and had been only one church.
But this is absolutely incorrect. The Church, as an institution
which asserted that it possessed infallible truth, did not make
its appearance singly; there were at least two churches directly
this claim was made.

While believers were agreed among themselves and the body was one,
it had no need to declare itself as a church. It was only when
believers were split up into opposing parties, renouncing one