Augustine of Hippo - Church Quotes

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What is the Church? She is the body of Christ. Join to it the Head, and you have one man: The Head and the body make up one man. Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary. … And what is His body? It is His Spouse, that is, the Church.... The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man. All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of the Christians constitutes but one man. And this man is all men, all men are this man; for all are one, since Christ is one.

Augustine of Hippo
So the Church imitates the Lord's mother — not in the bodily sense, which it could not do — but in mind it is both mother and virgin. In no way, then, did Christ deprive his mother of her virginity by being

Augustine of Hippo
I would not have believed the gospel had not the authority of the Church moved me.

Augustine of Hippo
In this one man, the whole Church has been assumed by the Word.

Augustine of Hippo
In order to understand the Scriptures, it is absolutely necessary to know the whole, complete Christ, that is, Head and members. For sometimes Christ speaks in the name of the Head alone … sometimes in the name of His body, which is the holy Church spread over the entire earth. And we are in His body … and we hear ourselves speaking in it, for the Apostle tells us: We are members of His body (Eph. 5:30). In many places does the Apostle tell us this.

Augustine of Hippo
There is no salvation outside the church.

Augustine of Hippo
So the Church too, like Mary, enjoys perpetual virginity and uncorrupted fecundity.

Augustine of Hippo
What has the Church done to thee, that thou shouldst wish to decapitate her? Thou wouldst take away her Head, and believe in the Head alone, despising the body. Vain is thy service, and false thy devotion to the Head. For to sever it from the body is an injury to both Head and body.

Augustine of Hippo
O sons of Peace, sons of the One Catholic [Church], walk in your way, and sing as you walk. Travelers do this in order to keep up their spirits.

Augustine of Hippo
What is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by authority.

Augustine of Hippo
At the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the Cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up.

Augustine of Hippo