CHAPTER TEN: Of the Sacraments
CHAPTER TEN
Of the Sacraments
We must now speak of the sacraments. It is greatly necessary that we should receive some definite teaching concerning them, so that we may learn for what purpose they were instituted and how they ought to be used.
First, we must understand what a sacrament is: an outward sign by which our Lord represents and testifies to us his goodwill toward us, in order to support and strengthen the weakness of our faith. It may also be defined as a testimony of God’s grace declared by an outward sign.
From this we see that a sacrament never exists unless God’s Word precedes it. Rather, it is added to the Word as an appendage appointed to seal and confirm it and to give us greater assurance of it, as our Lord sees to be necessary because of the dullness of our understanding and the weakness of our flesh. This is not because the Word is insufficiently firm in itself or can receive any better confirmation in its own nature. For it is nothing other than God’s truth, so sure and certain in itself that it can receive no better confirmation from elsewhere than from itself. Rather, the sacrament is given to confirm us in the Word.
Our faith is so small and feeble that unless it is supported on every side and sustained by every means, it is immediately shaken in every direction, agitated, and made to waver. And because we are so ignorant and so devoted and attached to earthly and carnal things that we neither consider nor can comprehend or conceive anything spiritual, the merciful Lord accommodates himself to the dullness of our understanding. Through these material elements he leads us to himself and causes us to contemplate even in the flesh what belongs to the Spirit. This is not because the things presented to us as sacraments naturally possess such quality and power, but because they have been sealed and marked by God to bear this signification.
We must not listen to those who argue with the following cavil: Either we know that the Word of God preceding the sacrament is God’s true will, or we do not. If we know it, we learn nothing new from the sacrament that follows. If we do not know it, the sacrament cannot teach it to us, since all its power and efficacy lie in the Word.
Let them be answered briefly that seals affixed to public letters and legal instruments are nothing when considered by themselves. If nothing were written on the parchment, they would serve no purpose and would be attached to it in vain. Nevertheless, when added to the letters, they confirm, certify, and render more authentic the writing contained in them.
Nor can they say that we recently invented this comparison to suit ourselves. Saint Paul employed it when he called the sacrament of circumcision by the Greek word sphragida, that is, a seal. In that passage he demonstrates that circumcision was not Abraham’s righteousness, but a seal of the covenant through faith in which he had already been justified.
And why, I ask, should it offend us if we teach that the promise is sealed by the sacraments, since it is evident that one promise is confirmed by another? For the clearer promise is better suited to assuring faith. The sacraments bring us exceedingly clear promises and possess this special advantage beyond the spoken Word: they represent those promises vividly to us, as in a picture.
Nor should we be troubled by the distinction alleged between sacraments and the seals affixed to official documents: that since both consist of material elements belonging to this world, sacraments cannot serve to seal God’s spiritual promises as seals authenticate the writings of princes concerning transitory and perishable things. For when a believer beholds the sacrament, he does not stop at its outward appearance, but by holy contemplation rises to behold the exalted mysteries hidden within it, according to the correspondence between the material figure and the spiritual reality.
And since our Lord calls his promises covenants and agreements, and the sacraments marks and tokens of those covenants, we may draw a comparison from human covenants and agreements. To confirm their agreements, the ancients were accustomed to slaughter a sow. What would a slaughtered sow have accomplished if the words of the agreement had not accompanied it and, indeed, preceded it? Sows are often slaughtered without signifying any mystery.
Likewise, what does clasping hands signify by itself, since people often seize the hands of their enemies in order to harm them? Yet when words of friendship and agreement have first been spoken, those words are confirmed by such a sign, even though the agreement had already been proposed, made, and settled.
The sacraments, therefore, are exercises given to make us more certain of God’s Word and promises. Because we are carnal, they are likewise given to us in material things, so that they may instruct us according to the capacity of our dullness and guide and lead us as tutors guide young children. For this reason Saint Augustine calls a sacrament a visible word, because it displays God’s promises to us as in a picture and represents them vividly before us.
We may also employ other comparisons to describe the sacraments fully, as when we call them pillars of our faith. For just as a building rests and stands upon its foundation, yet is rendered more secure and stable when supporting pillars are added beneath it, so our faith rests and stands upon God’s Word as upon its foundation. But when the sacraments are added, they serve as pillars upon which faith rests more securely and by which it is more firmly strengthened.
We may also call them mirrors in which we behold the riches of God’s grace that he bestows upon us. For through these sacraments, as has already been said, he manifests himself to us according to what our dull understanding is capable of knowing and testifies to us his goodwill toward us.
Nor do those argue well who contend that the sacraments are not testimonies of God’s grace because they are often received by the wicked, who nevertheless do not thereby perceive God to be any more favourable toward them, but instead incur still greater condemnation. By the same reasoning, the gospel would not be a testimony of God’s grace, since it is heard by many who despise it. Nor, finally, would Jesus Christ himself be such a testimony, since he was seen and known by many, very few of whom received him.
The same may be seen in the official letters of princes. Although a large portion of the people know that the authentic seal affixed to them comes from the prince, they nevertheless despise it. Some set it aside as something that does not concern them, while others even hold it in abhorrence. Thus, considering this correspondence, we cannot but approve the comparison made above.
It is therefore most certain that our Lord, both in his holy Word and in his sacraments, presents his mercy and gracious goodwill to all. Yet it is accepted only by those who receive both the Word and the sacraments with sure faith. In the same way, our Lord Jesus Christ was offered and presented by the Father to all for salvation, but he was not acknowledged and received by all. Saint Augustine, wishing somewhere to express this, said that the efficacy of the Word in the sacrament lies not in its being pronounced, but in its being believed and received.
We therefore conclude that the sacraments are rightly called testimonies of God’s grace and, as it were, seals of the favour he bears toward us. By sealing that favour within us, they console our faith, nourish it, strengthen it, and increase it. The arguments some have attempted to raise against this are exceedingly frivolous and feeble.
Some say that if our faith is good, it cannot be made better. For, they argue, it is not faith unless it rests and relies upon God’s mercy so firmly that it cannot be moved or drawn away from it. It would have been far better for them to pray with the apostles:
“Lord, increase our faith,”
than to boast of such perfection of faith, which no man has ever possessed or ever will possess in this life.
Let them answer what kind of faith they think was possessed by the man who said:
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”
For that faith, though only begun, was good, yet it could still be made better by the diminishing of unbelief. But they can be refuted by no surer argument than their own consciences. For if they confess themselves to be sinners—which, whether they wish it or not, they cannot deny—they must necessarily attribute the fault to the imperfection of their faith.
But they say that Philip answered the eunuch that, if he believed with all his heart, he was permitted to be baptized. What place, then, can there be here for the confirmation given by baptism when faith already occupies and fills the whole heart?
In reply, I ask them in turn: Do they not perceive that a considerable part of their own hearts is destitute and empty of faith? Do they not recognize within themselves some new increase of faith each day? A pagan boasted that he grew old while still learning.
We Christians, then, are exceedingly wretched if we grow old without making any progress. Our faith ought to pass through successive stages by which it continually advances until it grows into perfect manhood. Therefore, in this passage, to believe with all one’s heart does not mean to be perfectly established in Jesus Christ, but simply to embrace him willingly and with sincere zeal—not to be satisfied with what one has received of him, but to hunger and thirst for him with ardent affection and long after him.
This is Scripture’s customary manner of speaking: it says that something is done with the whole heart when it means that it is done willingly and without hypocrisy. Such are these passages:
“With my whole heart I have sought you.”
Again:
“I will praise you with my whole heart.”
On the contrary, when reproving hypocrites and deceivers, Scripture customarily charges them with possessing “a heart and a heart”—that is, a double heart.
They further add that if faith were increased by the sacraments, the Holy Spirit would have been given in vain, since it is his work and power to begin, strengthen, and perfect faith. I confess to them that faith is the proper and entire work of the Holy Spirit. Being enlightened by him, we acknowledge God and the great treasures of his goodness. Without his light, our minds are so blind that they can see nothing, and so devoid of all perception that they cannot discern anything of spiritual realities.
But where they consider only one grace of God, we acknowledge three. First, our Lord teaches and instructs us by his Word. Second, he confirms us by his sacraments. Third, by the light of his Holy Spirit he enlightens our understanding and gives entrance into our hearts to both the Word and the sacraments. Otherwise, they would merely strike the ears and present themselves to the eyes, but would neither penetrate nor move the inward man.
I therefore wish readers to understand that when I attribute to the sacraments the office of strengthening and increasing faith, I do not imagine that they possess an inherent power always to accomplish this, but that God instituted them for this purpose. They produce their effect when the inward Master of souls adds his power to them, by which alone hearts are pierced and affections moved to grant entrance to the sacraments.
If he is absent, the sacraments can convey no more to the mind than sunlight can convey to blind eyes or a sounding voice to deaf ears. I therefore make this distinction between the Spirit and the sacraments: I acknowledge that the power resides in the Spirit, leaving nothing further to the sacraments than that they are instruments which the Lord employs toward us. Without the Spirit’s operation, these instruments would be useless and empty; nevertheless, they are full of efficacy when the Spirit works inwardly through them.
It is now evident how, in my judgment, faith is strengthened by the sacraments: just as the eyes see by the light of the sun and the ears hear through the sound of a voice. Certainly, light would accomplish nothing for the eyes unless they possessed the faculty of sight to receive it, nor would sound accomplish anything for the ears unless they had naturally been given the power of hearing.
Now, if it is true—as must be settled among us—that the Holy Spirit’s operation in engendering, sustaining, preserving, and establishing faith corresponds to the sight of the eye and the hearing of the ear, then both conclusions follow perfectly well: the sacraments profit nothing without his power, and yet nothing prevents faith from being strengthened and increased by the sacraments in hearts already instructed by him.
By this reasoning the objections customarily raised by some are also answered. They argue that if we attribute the increase or confirmation of faith to created things, we thereby wrong the Spirit of God, who alone must be acknowledged as its author. But in doing so we do not rob him of the praise that belongs to him, since his strengthening and increasing of faith consists in preparing our minds by his illumination to receive the light set before us in the sacraments.
If this is still stated too obscurely, it may be clarified by the following comparison. If someone wishes to persuade another person to do something, he will consider every argument by which that person may be drawn to agree and, as it were, compelled to comply. Yet nothing has been accomplished if the person being addressed does not possess a lively and keen judgment capable of comprehending the weight of the arguments presented to him; if he is not likewise teachable by nature and inclined to obey sound instruction; and finally, if he has not formed such an opinion of the faithfulness and prudence of his counsellor that it already disposes his judgment to receive what is proposed.
For there are many stubborn minds that could never be persuaded by any argument. When a counsellor’s integrity is suspected or his authority despised, nothing is accomplished, even among those who are otherwise easily led. On the contrary, when all these things are joined together, the counsel given will be willingly received, though it would otherwise have been despised.
God’s operation within us is similar. So that the Word may not strike our ears in vain or the sacraments be presented to our eyes without benefit, he declares that it is God who speaks there, softens the hardness of our hearts, and prepares us for the obedience due to his Word. Finally, he conveys both the Word and the sacraments to the inward ears of the spirit.
There is therefore no doubt that both the Word and the sacraments strengthen our faith by setting plainly before our eyes the goodwill of our heavenly Father toward us. In the knowledge of that goodwill consists the stability of our faith, and upon it all its strength rests. The Spirit likewise strengthens faith by impressing this confirmation upon our hearts and making it effectual there.
The Lord Jesus demonstrates that this property belongs to the outward Word when he calls it seed. For just as seed, if it falls upon some barren and uncultivated place, perishes without producing anything, but if cast into a well-cultivated field yields abundant fruit, so the Word of God, if it falls upon a hard and rebellious mind, remains barren, like seed cast upon the gravel of the sea. But if it finds a soul properly prepared by the operation of the Holy Spirit, it becomes fruitful and produces an abundant harvest.
Now, if there is so close a correspondence between the seed and the Word—just as we say that grain grows, springs forth, and reaches maturity from the seed—why should we not likewise say that faith takes its beginning, growth, and perfection from the Word?
The sacraments are so truly confirmations of our faith that sometimes, when God wills to remove confidence in the things promised through them, he even removes the sacraments themselves. When he strips Adam of the gift of immortality and casts him out, he says:
“Let Adam not gather the fruit of life, lest he live forever.”
What is this that we hear? Could that fruit have restored to Adam the incorruption from which he had already fallen? Certainly not.
Rather, it is as though he had said: “Let the sign of my promise, which might give him some hope of immortality, be taken from him, so that he may no longer entertain a vain confidence.”
For the same reason, when the apostle exhorts the Ephesians to remember that they had been strangers to the promises, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, without God and without Christ, he says that they had not participated in circumcision. By this he signifies that they were excluded from the promise, since they had not received its token.
They raise another objection: that God’s glory is transferred to created things when so much power is attributed to them, and is thereby diminished. This is easily answered. We do not place any power in created things, but merely say that God employs such means and instruments as he himself sees to be appropriate, so that all things may serve his glory, since he is the Lord and Master of all.
Thus he nourishes our bodies with bread and other foods, enlightens the world by the sun, and warms it by fire. Yet neither bread, the sun, nor fire accomplishes anything except insofar as under these means he bestows his blessings upon us. In the same way, he spiritually feeds and nourishes faith through the sacraments, whose only office is to represent God’s promises before our eyes.
We must place no confidence in the other creatures which God in his goodwill has appointed for our use and through whose service he bestows the gifts of his goodness upon us. Nor must we admire or glorify them as the causes of our good. Likewise, our confidence must not rest in the sacraments, nor must God’s glory be transferred to them. Rather, turning away from all created things and leaving them behind, both our faith and our confession must rise and direct themselves toward him who is the author both of the sacraments and of every other good.
Finally, when they seek support for their error from the very word sacrament, they proceed far too cunningly. They say that although the word has many meanings among approved authors, only one of them is appropriate or applicable to signs: namely, the solemn oath a soldier makes to his prince or captain when he is enrolled and received into the ranks. For just as by this oath new soldiers pledge their fidelity to their prince or captain, promise themselves to him, and declare that they belong to his army, so by our signs we confess Jesus Christ to be our Captain and testify that we wage war beneath his banner.
They add comparisons to render their meaning clearer and more evident. Thus, in war the French and English distinguish one another because the French bear a white cross and the English a red one. Likewise, the Romans were distinguished from the Greeks by differences in clothing. Moreover, the ranks of Rome were distinguished from one another by their proper insignia: senators from knights by purple garments and rounded shoes, and knights from the common people by a ring. In the same way, we possess our signs by which we are distinguished and separated from unbelievers and those outside our religion.
But I can confidently affirm as true that the ancients who gave the name sacrament to our signs did not consider the sense in which Latin writers had used that word. Rather, for convenience they assigned it this new meaning, by which they simply designated sacred signs.
If we wish to examine the matter more subtly, it is reasonable to think that they transferred the word to this meaning by the same reasoning and analogy through which they gave the word faith the meaning in which we now use it. For although faith properly signifies the faithfulness by which a promise is kept, they employed it to signify the certainty or assured persuasion one possesses concerning that faithfulness.
In the same way, although a sacrament is the oath by which a soldier promises and binds himself to his captain, the ancients employed the word to signify the token by which the captain receives his soldiers into his ranks and service. For through his sacraments the Lord promises us that he will be our God and that we shall be his people.
But we leave aside such subtleties, since by many exceedingly clear arguments we can demonstrate and prove that the ancients, in calling our signs sacraments, intended nothing other than to signify that they are signs of holy and spiritual realities. Indeed, in the Latin translation of Scripture, this word is often used for mystery.
We readily accept the comparisons they propose, but we do not permit them to place first what is least important in the sacraments, much less to recognize nothing else in them. The principal consideration concerning the sacraments must be that they are given to minister to our faith toward God.
The second consideration is that the sacraments serve to testify to our confession before men. According to this latter purpose, the comparisons just mentioned are good and entirely appropriate.
On the other hand, we must be warned that just as these people destroy the efficacy of the sacraments and abolish their use, so there are others who attribute to the sacraments certain mysterious powers which we nowhere read were ever given to them by God. Through this error the simple and ignorant are deceived and misled, being taught to seek God’s gifts and graces where they cannot possibly be found. Little by little, they are turned and drawn away from him to pursue mere vanities.
For the schools of the sophists have unanimously determined that the sacraments of the new law—that is, those now used by the Christian Church—justify and confer grace, provided that we place no obstacle of mortal sin in their way. It is impossible adequately to express how pernicious this opinion is, especially because it has been accepted for so many years, to the great injury of the Church, and still persists throughout a considerable part of the world.
It is indeed thoroughly diabolical. For by promising righteousness without faith, it casts consciences into confusion and condemnation. Moreover, by making the sacrament a cause of righteousness, it binds and entangles human minds in the superstition of resting in a bodily thing rather than in God, since they are naturally far more inclined toward earthly things than they ought to be. It would be desirable if we had not experienced these two evils so extensively; far from requiring any elaborate proof.
What is a sacrament received without faith but the ruin of the Church? For nothing should be expected from it except by virtue of the promise, which no less declares God’s wrath to unbelievers than it presents his grace to believers. Therefore, anyone who imagines that he receives from the sacraments any benefit other than what he accepts by faith, as it is presented to him by the Word, is greatly deceived.
From this we may also infer that confidence of salvation does not depend upon participation in the sacraments, as though righteousness were located in them. We know that righteousness resides in Jesus Christ alone and is communicated to us no less through the preaching of the gospel than through the testimony of the sacraments. Indeed, it can exist fully without that sacramental testimony.
Thus Saint Augustine’s statement is true: the visible sign often appears without the invisible sanctification, and conversely, the sanctification without the visible sign.
Let it therefore be certain to us that the sacraments have no other office than the Word of God: to offer and present Jesus Christ to us, and in him the treasures of his heavenly grace. They serve and profit none except those by whom they are taken and received in faith.
Moreover, we must beware of falling into a closely related error when we read the honourable language with which the ancients magnified the dignity of the sacraments. We must not imagine that some secret power is so attached and fastened to them that the graces of the Holy Spirit are distributed and administered through them as wine is dispensed in a cup or vessel.
Their whole office is merely to testify and confirm God’s benevolence and favour toward us. They profit us no further unless the Holy Spirit comes to open our minds and hearts and make us capable of receiving this testimony. Here the various and distinct graces of God also appear clearly.
For the sacraments, as we have touched upon above, perform on God’s behalf the same function that messengers bearing good news perform on behalf of men. They do not confer the benefit upon us, but merely announce and display the things given to us by divine generosity.
The Holy Spirit is not conveyed indiscriminately to everyone through the sacraments. Rather, God gives him particularly to his own. He is the one who brings God’s graces with him, gives the sacraments entrance within us, and causes them to bear fruit there.
Although we do not deny that the Lord attends his institution with the very present power of his Spirit, so that the administration of the sacraments which he has ordained may not be empty and unfruitful, we nevertheless teach that the inward grace of the Spirit, being distinct from the outward ministry, must also be considered separately from it.
When such doctrine is given concerning the sacraments, their dignity is sufficiently clarified, their use demonstrated, and their benefit commended. At the same time, a proper moderation is maintained: neither attributing to them more than we ought nor depriving them of anything that properly belongs to them.
The word sacrament, as we have used it thus far, comprehends generally all the signs God has ever appointed and given to men in order to certify and assure them of the truth of his promises. Sometimes he has chosen these signs from natural things; at other times he has presented them in miracles.
Examples of the first kind include his giving the tree of life to Adam and Eve as a pledge of immortality, so that they might remain assured of possessing it as long as they ate its fruit.
Likewise, he set the rainbow before Noah as a sign and token to him and his descendants that he would never again destroy the earth by a flood.
Adam and Noah possessed these things as sacraments—not because the tree gave them immortality, since it could not give immortality to itself, nor because the rainbow, which is merely the reflection of the sun’s rays against the clouds, possessed the power to restrain and hold back the waters. Rather, these things had a mark engraved upon them by God’s Word, making them tokens and seals of his promises.
The tree was certainly a tree before, and the rainbow was a rainbow. But after they had been marked by God’s Word, a new form was given to them, and they began to be what they had not been before.
Lest anyone imagine this to be said without reason, the rainbow remains even today a witness to the promise and covenant God made with Noah. Whenever we behold it, we recognize in it God’s promise that the earth will never again be destroyed by a flood.
Therefore, if some philosopher, wishing to mock the simplicity of our faith, says that the variety of colours forming the rainbow arises naturally from the reflection of the sun’s rays against the opposing cloud, we shall concede this to him. But we may rebuke his ignorance because he does not acknowledge that God is the Lord of nature, who according to his will employs all the elements as instruments of his glory.
If God had engraved and bestowed such marks and tokens upon the sun, the stars, the earth, or stones, all these would be sacraments to us. For why do uncoined silver and silver that has been stamped and minted not possess the same price and value, although both are precisely the same metal? It is because the first possesses nothing beyond its nature, while the other, having been stamped with the public die, becomes minted money and receives a newly assigned value.
And shall God not be able by his Word to seal and mark his creatures so that they become sacraments, though previously they were only bare and ordinary elements?
Examples of the second kind include his moistening the fleece while the ground received no dew, and afterward moistening the ground while the fleece remained dry, in order to promise Gideon victory. Likewise, he caused the shadow on the sundial to retreat ten degrees in order to promise Hezekiah recovery. Since these things were done to sustain, comfort, and strengthen the weakness of their faith, they were also sacraments to them.
But our present purpose is to treat particularly of those sacraments which our Lord instituted and willed to be ordinarily used in his Church, in order to nourish and preserve his people in one faith and in the confession of that faith.
These are given not only as signs but also as ceremonies—or, if someone prefers to express it this way, the signs given in them are ceremonies. Moreover, they are tokens of our profession by which we publicly acknowledge ourselves as belonging to God and pledge our fidelity to him.
Chrysostom therefore speaks very well when he calls them covenants by which the certificate of our debt is cancelled and, on the other hand, bonds by which we acknowledge ourselves indebted to live purely and holily. For just as our Lord remits in them the entire debt with which we are burdened because of the faults and offences we have committed, so we in turn bind ourselves to serve him in holiness and innocence of life.
Such sacraments may therefore be defined as ceremonies by which the Lord wills to exercise his people: first, to preserve, awaken, and strengthen faith within the heart; and second, to testify to their religion before men.
These sacraments have also differed according to the dispensation of the times, in which it pleased the Lord to reveal and manifest himself to men in various ways. Circumcision was commanded to Abraham and his descendants, and afterward the washings and sacrifices were added to it through the Mosaic law. These were the sacraments of the Jews until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
At his coming, those sacraments were abolished and two others instituted, which the Christian Church now uses: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Nevertheless, the ancient sacraments of the Jews tended toward the same end and purpose as our two sacraments do now: namely, to direct and lead men to Jesus Christ—or rather, as images, to represent him and make him known. For since, as we have already shown, sacraments are like seals by which God’s promises are sealed, and since it is certain that no promise of God has been made to men except in Jesus Christ, the sacraments, in order to teach and remind us of God’s promises, must necessarily show us Jesus Christ.
There is only one difference between these ancient and new sacraments: the former prefigured the promised Christ while he was still awaited as one who was to come, whereas our new sacraments testify and teach that he has already been given and revealed.
When each of these things has been explained separately, they will be understood much more clearly.
First, circumcision was a sign to the Jews, admonishing them that everything proceeding from the seed of man—that is, the whole nature of man—is corrupt and needs to be circumcised and cut away. Moreover, it served as an assurance and reminder to confirm them in the promise made to Abraham concerning the blessed seed in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed and from whom they themselves were also to expect their blessing.
This saving seed, as Saint Paul teaches us, was Jesus Christ, in whom alone they hoped to recover what they had lost in Adam. Circumcision was therefore to them what Saint Paul says it had been to Abraham: a seal of the righteousness of faith. By it they were increasingly assured that their faith, by which they awaited this blessed seed, was and always would be imputed to them by God as righteousness. But in another, more appropriate place we shall pursue the comparison between circumcision and baptism.
The washings and purifications demonstrated to them their uncleanness, filth, and pollution, by which they were naturally defiled, stained, and infected. They also promised them another washing by which they would be purified and cleansed from their stains and corruption. That washing was Jesus Christ: by his blood we are purged and cleansed, and by his wounds we are healed.
The sacrifices accused and convicted them of their sins and iniquity and at the same time taught them that satisfaction had to be made to God’s justice for those sins. Therefore, there would be a great High Priest and Bishop, a Mediator between God and men, who would satisfy God’s justice by the shedding of blood and the offering of a sacrifice acceptable for the forgiveness of sins.
This great High Priest was Jesus Christ. The blood shed was his own, and he himself was the sacrifice. For he offered himself to the Father, becoming obedient unto death. By this obedience he abolished man’s disobedience, which had provoked and aroused God’s indignation.
As for our two sacraments, they present Jesus Christ to us all the more clearly because he has been manifested more nearly to men since he was truly given and revealed as the Father had promised him.
Baptism testifies to us that we are purged and washed, while the Supper of the Eucharist testifies that we are redeemed. In the water, washing is represented to us; in the blood, satisfaction. Both are found in Jesus Christ, who, as Saint John says, came by water and blood—that is, to cleanse and redeem.
The Spirit of God bears witness to this—or rather, three bear witness together: the water, the blood, and the Spirit. In the water and the blood we possess the testimony of our cleansing and redemption. The Holy Spirit, who is the principal witness, certainly confirms this testimony to us and causes us to believe, understand, and acknowledge it, for otherwise we could not comprehend it.
This exalted mystery was clearly shown to us when blood and water flowed from the sacred side of Jesus Christ as he hung upon the cross. For this reason Saint Augustine very aptly called Christ’s side the source and fountain from which our sacraments have flowed. We must treat these sacraments somewhat more fully.
Moreover, the great distinction the scholastic doctors make between the sacraments of the old and new laws—as though the former merely represented God’s grace from afar, while the latter actually bestow it—is to be rejected entirely. For the apostle speaks no more highly of the one than of the other when he teaches that our fathers under the Old Testament ate the same spiritual food as we do and explains that this food was Christ.
Who would dare call that sign empty and devoid of substance which demonstrated to the Jews the true communion of Jesus Christ? The context of the argument pursued by the apostle in that passage further supports this. In order that no one should despise God’s justice under the pretext of his grace, he sets forth examples of the rigour and severity God displayed toward the Jews. And lest anyone should prefer himself to them as though possessing some greater privilege, he anticipates this objection by making them altogether equal to us.
But someone may cite what he says concerning circumcision in Romans, where he appears to make it far inferior to baptism, although this is not the case.
For everything stated there could equally well be said of baptism—and indeed is said of it. First, Saint Paul teaches that God takes no account of outward washing unless the heart is inwardly cleansed and perseveres in purity to the end. Second, Saint Peter testifies that the truth of baptism does not consist in outward cleansing, but in a good conscience.
Nevertheless, because I reserve a fuller treatment of this subject for the place where I have determined to compare baptism with circumcision, I shall touch upon it only briefly here.
Perhaps these wretched sophists fell into this error because they were deceived and misled by the extravagant praises of the sacraments found in the ancient writers. Such is Saint Augustine’s statement that the sacraments of the old law merely promised salvation, whereas ours give it.
Failing to perceive that such expressions were hyperbolic—that is, deliberately heightened—they in turn sowed and spread their own exaggerated conclusions, but in a sense altogether different from that intended by the ancient writers.
For in that passage Saint Augustine meant nothing other than what he himself writes elsewhere: namely, that the sacraments of the Mosaic law announced Jesus Christ beforehand, whereas ours proclaim him. It is as though he had said that the former represented Christ while he was still awaited as one who was to come, but ours display him as present after he has already come and been given to us.
This may easily be judged by examining the passage more closely, and also from a homily in which he openly confesses that the sacraments of the Jews differed in their signs but were alike in the reality signified: different in visible appearance, but alike and one in spiritual power and efficacy.