craments considered, the Eucharist, for holiness, and for the number and greatness of its mysteries, is eminently superior to all the rest. These, however, are matters which will be more easily understood, when we come to explain, in its proper place, what regards each of the Sacraments. [1]
We come, in the next place, to ask from whom we have received these sacred and divine mysteries: any boon, however excellent in itself, receives no doubt an increased value and dignity from him by whose bounty it is bestowed. The question, however, is not one of difficult solution: justification comes from God; the Sacraments are the wonderful instruments of justification; one, and the same God in Christ, must, therefore, be the author of justification, and of the Sacraments. [2] The Sacraments, moreover, contain a power and efficacy which reach the inmost recesses of the soul; and as God alone has power to enter into the sanctuary of the heart, he alone, through Christ, is manifestly the author of the Sacraments. That they are interiorly dispensed by him, is also matter of faith; according to these words of St. John: " He who sent me to baptize with water, said to me; he upon whom them shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining upon him, he it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost," [3]
But God, although the author and dispenser of the Sacraments, would have them administered in his Church by men, not by angels: and to constitute a Sacrament, as constant tradition testifies, matter and form are not more necessary than is the ministry of men.
But, representing as he does, in the discharge of his sacred functions, not his own, but the person of Christ, the minister of the Sacraments, be he good or bad, validly consecrates and confers the Sacraments; provided he make use of the matter and form instituted by Christ, and always observed in the Catholic Church, and intends to do what the Church does in their ad ministration. Unless, therefore, Christians will deprive them selves of so great a good, and resist the Holy Ghost, nothing can prevent them from receiving, through the Sacraments, the fruit of grace. [4] That this was, at all times, a fixed and well defined doctrine of the Church, is established beyond all doubt by St. Augustine, in his disputations against the Donatists; [5] and should we desire Scriptural proof also, we have it in the words of St. Paul; " I have planted, Apollo watered; but God gave the increase." [6] Neither he that plants, therefore, nor he that waters, is any thing, but God who gives " the increase." As, therefore, in planting trees, the vices of the planter do not impede the growth of the vine, so, and the comparison is suffi-
- ↑ Dionys. lib. de Eccles. Hier. c. 3.
- ↑ Ambr. lib. 4. de Sacr. cap. 6. D. Tho. p. 3. q. 62. Trid. Sess. 7. can. 1 de Sacr. in gen. lib. de Eccles. dog. & Cassian. collat. 7. 18.
- ↑ John i 33.
- ↑ Trid. Sess. 7. de Sac. in gen. c. 11 & 12. Greg. JNaz. in Oral, in S. bapt. Ambr de hisqui myst. init. cap. 5. Chrysost. horn. 8. in 1 Cor.
- ↑ A i. contra Crescen. lib. 4. c. 20. contra Dpnat. lib. 1. c. 4. & lib. 2. contra lib. til. c. 47.
- ↑ I Cor. iii. 6.
