“In the very term ‘communion of saints’ there is great consolation; because we are assured that everything which God bestows on his members belongs to us and all the blessings conferred upon them confirm our hope. But in order to embrace the unity of the Church in this manner, it is not necessary to see it with our eyes or feel it with our hands. Rather, from the fact that it belongs to the realm of faith we are reminded that our thoughts are to dwell upon it as much when it escapes our perception as when it openly appears. Nor is our faith the worse for apprehending what is unknown, since we are not enjoined here to distinguish between the elect and the reprobate (this belongs not to us, but to God only), but to feel firmly assured in our minds, that all those who, by the mercy of God the Father, through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, have become partakers with Christ, are set apart as the proper and peculiar possession of God, and that as we are of the number, we are also partakers of this great grace.” ~John Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.3