Christian sacraments

“ The last way is the quickest and cleanest and best. So our Lord, when he became man, invented the sacraments; he established his church as the new and best way of obtaining the ripe fruit of the Holy Spirit, and that way he commands us to use. So the man who really loves his neighbor as himself learns to do it by using our Lord's methods, the sacraments, and he cannot get along without them. So, brethren, cultivate more and more this sweet Christian virtue of fraternal love ”

“ Baptism is the first of the seven sacraments which the Church confers upon man. It cleanses us from original sin (actual sin also if the recipient be guilty of any) , makes us Christians, children of God, and heirs of heaven. It prepares us for the reception of the other sacraments. By Baptism we all contracted the obligation of believing and practising the doctrines of Jesus Christ as taught us by the true Church. We fulfil this obligation by leading a truly Christian life. ”

“ The sacraments are the highest part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an extraordinary divine favour and grace. In the Lord's Supper earthly lips are to receive a divine Being embodied, and partake of an heavenly under the form of an earthly nourishment. This sense is just the same in all Christian churches; whether the Sacrament is taken with more or less submission to the mystery, with more or less accommodation as to that which is intelligible ”

“ The sacramental quality of the [Pg 69] material world lies in its correspondence to the unseen world. When Hugo speaks of the “sacramenta” in the creation of light and the waters divided by the firmament, he means that in addition to their material nature as light and water, they are essentially symbols. Their symbolism is as veritably part of their nature as the symbolical character of the Eucharist is part of the nature of the consecrated bread and wine. The sacraments are among the deepest verities of the Christian Faith. ”

“ The other is faith, which is produced by the gospel; which believes that pardon for sin is bestowed for Christ's sake; which tranquilizes the conscience, and liberates it from fear. Such repentance must be succeeded by good works as its fruits.
ARTICLE XIII. - OF THE USE OF THE SACRAMENTS. Concerning the use of the sacraments our churches teach, that they were instituted not only as marks of a Christian profession amongst men; but rather as signs and evidences of the divine disposition towards us, tendered for the purpose of exciting and confirming the faith of those who use them. ”

“ I answer that, As stated above ( [4407] Q [62] , A [5] ; [4408] Q [63] , A [1] ) , the sacraments of the Church were instituted for a twofold purpose: namely, in order to perfect man in things pertaining to the worship of God according to the religion of Christian life, and to be a remedy against the defects caused by sin. And in either way it is becoming that there should be seven sacraments.
For spiritual life has a certain conformity with the life of the body: just as other corporeal things have a certain likeness to things spiritual. ”

“ The sacrament of Baptism met us at our entrance into this world; the sacrament of Extreme Unction will be our guide at our departure to the other world. Religion, which rocked us in the cradle of life, will lull us to sleep in the cradle of death.
Go to the bedside of the dying Catholic and you will see the reasonableness of the practice of calling the priest to administer the last sacraments. After the sacraments have been administered, peace and joy and contentment are visible on the countenance of the sick person. He clings no more to the things of earth. ”

“ If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?
The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments. But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. ”

“ Those five commonly called sacraments—that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction—are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have partly grown out of the corrupt following of the apostles, and partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet have not the like nature of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, because they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God. ”

“ Intimately connected with the idea of the Church as an ark of salvation are the sacraments or means of grace. Already as early as the 2nd century the rite of baptism had come to be thought of as the sacrament of regeneration, by means of which a new divine nature is born within a man (cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. i. 21, 1, iii. 17, 1; and his newly discovered Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching, chap. 3) , and the eucharist as the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, feeding upon which one is endowed with immortality (cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. iv. 18, 5, v. 2, 2) . ”

“ Of the Sacraments As the fathers under the law (besides the verity of the sacrifices) had two chief sacraments ­ to wit, circumcision and the Passover, the despisers and contemners whereof were not reputed for God's people [1] ­ so do we acknowledge and confess that we now, in the time of the evangel, have two sacraments only, instituted by the Lord Jesus, and commanded to be used of all those that will be reputed members of his body: to wit, baptism and the supper, or table of the Lord Jesus, called the communion of his body and blood. ”

“ The most important thing in the book was its crystallization of the doctrine concerning the sacramental system, by the definite assertion of the doctrine of the seven sacraments, and the acceptance of a definition of sacrament, not merely as "a sign of a sacred thing," but as itself “capable of conveying the grace of which it is the sign”. ”

“ For what is not necessary seems to be superfluous. But no sacrament is superfluous, because "God does nothing without a purpose" (De Coelo et Mundo i) . Therefore all the sacraments are necessary for salvation.
Obj. 2: Further, just as it is said of Baptism (John 3:5) : "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter in to the kingdom of God," so of the Eucharist is it said (John 6:54) : "Except you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink of His blood, you shall not have life in you." Therefore, just as Baptism is a necessary sacrament, so is the Eucharist. ”

“ It is true that over the doctrine of sacraments men have fought and wrangled, forgetting the name by which they were called. But it is true, too, that to countless souls it has seemed that through the sacraments the Church has offered them help which has come as in no other way to their lives. ”

“ There are Seven Sacraments of the Church, the power of administering which is committed to the clergy. Five of these Sacraments ought to be received by all Christians in general; that is, Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, the Holy Eucharist, and Extreme Unction, which last is only for one who seems to be in danger of death; it should be given, if it may be, before a man is so far spent as to lose the use of his reason ”

“ Now just as sanctifying grace is necessary in order that man receive the sacraments worthily, so is it that he may dispense them worthily. Wherefore as in Baptism, whereby a man is adapted to receive the other sacraments, sanctifying grace is given, so is it in the sacrament of Order whereby man is ordained to the dispensation of the other sacraments. ”

“ The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them, but only by the blessing of Christ, and the working of his spirit in them that by faith receive them. ”

“ Through this last, the element of the supernatural, i.e., the invisible germ of the Church, must be originally planted or gradually strengthened in individual souls. But this is effected by the sacrament as the organ and in the name of the Church, though in particular cases outside of her communion.
The continuous existence of Catholicity is essentially the self-building of the body of Christ. It produces its own increase through the instrumentality of the sacraments. ”

“ There is also an absurd notion which is maintained by some Protestants, as well as the Papists, viz. that the sacrament of baptism, administered to infants, washes away the guilt of original sin, and gives them a right and title to heaven, so that by virtue thereof they are saved, if they happen to die before they commit actual sin: But this account of the manner in which the sacraments become effectual to salvation, is absurd to the last degree; for it puts a sanctifying and saving virtue into that which is no more than an outward and ordinary means of grace. ”

“ The sacraments do not belong to Christianity alone, as sometimes Christians think; every religion has its sacraments, some more numerous than others, but all have some. For what is a sacrament? It is the earthly, the physical representative of a real correspondence in nature ”

“ I answer that, As the ancient Fathers were saved through faith in Christ's future coming, so are we saved through faith in Christ's past birth and Passion. Now the sacraments are signs in protestation of the faith whereby man is justified ”

“ The sacraments are tremendous realities to me, just because they are a living protest against all Popish, High Church, Low Church schemes of thought—because they are a protest that man does nothing, God does all—that everything is a sacrament of the grace of God. ”

“ For example, if a man would be saved he must receive Holy Baptism and Holy Communion where these Sacraments are to be had; but for his salvation it is not necessary that he should be married, or ordained to the Sacred Ministry, and yet Marriage and {236} Ordination are thoroughly sacramental in character in that they are grace conferring, and therefore, in her book of Homilies the Church calls them Sacraments, The great English divines generally take this position in regard to the Sacraments and the Sacramental System of the Church. ”

“ There is a great deal more in the pamphlet that might be touched on as showing the either absolute or wilful ignorance under which writers of this stamp labor when speaking of Catholics. He speaks of the Catholic doctrine with regard to sacraments in this loose way: “They are useful to infants and the dying. Men come to them for grace apart from the state of their own hearts.” ”

“ We esteem for an abomination, and as antichristian, all those human inventions which are a trouble or prejudice to the liberty of the spirit. (12.) We do believe that the sacraments are signs of the holy thing, or visible forms of the invisible grace; accounting it good that the faithful sometimes use the said signs or visible forms, if it may be done. However, we believe and hold, that the above-said faithful may be saved without receiving the signs aforesaid, in case they have no place nor any means to use them. (13.) We acknowledge no other sacrament than baptism and the Lord’s Supper. ”

“ With respect to the sacraments of the Church, it is to be noted that, according to Gregory, there is a sacrament in any celebration when an outward act is so performed as that we receive inwardly some degree of the thing signified; the which is to be received holily and worthily. Also a mystery is that which the Holy Ghost worketh secretly, and invisibly, so as to sanctify by His operation, and bless by His sanctification. A mystery is said to exist in sacraments; a ministry only in ornaments. ”