One Popular Protestant Ecclesiology Voiced in Novel by Catholic Character

"The Church would still somehow exist in God"
on the blog G.K. Chesterton
http://gkcdaily.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-church-would-still-somehow-exist-in.html

MacIan burst out like a man driven back and explaining everything.

" ... If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God. ... "

Without being ardent Catholics like MacIan, Pentecostals and such often resort to this sort of thing.

They are correct that the Church does not depend on its members.

But they are not correct in thinking that once upon a time every real Christian in the Catholic Church died and it was left to Apostates, who then proceeded to remake the Church.

The Church which exists in God is the Church which CANNOT cease to exist visibly.

Obviously, when Chesterton put these words in the mouth of MacIan, he was not quite a Catholic himself:

The first chapters of the book were serialized from 1905 to 1906 with the completed work published in 1909.

The conversion was finally made in 1922./HGL