CHAPTER XIV.07

XIX. But our present design is to treat particularly of those sacraments which the Lord has appointed to be ordinarily used in his Church, to keep his worshippers and servants in one faith and in the confession of the same. “For,” to use the language of Augustine, “men cannot be united in any profession of religion, whether true or false, unless they are connected by some communion of visible signs or sacraments.” Our most merciful Father, therefore, foreseeing this necessity, did, from the beginning, institute for his servants certain exercises of piety, which Satan afterwards depraved and corrupted in a variety of ways, transferring them to impious and idolatrous worship. Hence those initiations of the heathen into their mysteries, and the rest of their degenerate rites, which, though fraught with error and superstition, at the same time furnish an evidence that such external signs are indispensable to a profession of religion. But as they were neither founded on the word of God, nor referred to that truth which ought to be the object of all religious emblems, they are unworthy of notice, where mention is made of the sacred symbols which have been instituted by God, and which have never been perverted from their original principle, which constitutes them aids of true piety. Now, they consist not of mere signs, like the rainbow and the tree of life, but in ceremonies; or, rather, the signs which are here given are ceremonies. And, as we have before observed, as they are testimonies of grace and salvation on the part of the Lord, so on our part they are badges of our profession, by which we publicly devote ourselves to God, and swear obedience and fidelity to him. Chrysostom, therefore, somewhere properly calls them compacts, by which God covenants with us, and we bind ourselves to purity and sanctity of life; because a mutual stipulation is made in them between God and us. For as the Lord promises to obliterate and efface all the guilt and punishment that we have incurred by sin, and reconciles us to himself in his only begotten Son, so we, on our parts, by this profession, bind ourselves to him, to serve him in piety and innocence of life; so that such sacraments may justly be described as ceremonies by which God is pleased to exercise his people, in the first place, to nourish, excite, and confirm faith in their hearts; and in the next place, to testify their religion before men.

XX. And even the sacraments have been different according to the varieties of different periods, and corresponding to the dispensation by which it has pleased the Lord to manifest himself in different ways to mankind. For to Abraham and his posterity circumcision was commanded; to which the law of Moses afterwards added ablutions, sacrifices, and other rites. These were the sacraments of the Jews till the coming of Christ; which was followed by the abrogation of these, and the institution of two others, which are now used in the Christian Church; namely, baptism and the supper of the Lord. I speak of those which were instituted for the use of the whole Church; for as to the imposition of hands, by which the ministers of the Church are introduced into their office, while I make no objection to its being called a sacrament, I do not class it among the ordinary sacraments. What opinion ought to be entertained respecting those which are commonly reputed the five other sacraments, we shall see in a subsequent chapter. Those ancient sacrifices, however, referred to the same object towards which ours are now directed, their design being to point and lead to Christ, or rather, as images, to represent and make him known. For as we have already shown that they are seals to confirm the promises of God, and it is very certain that no promise of God was ever offered to man except in Christ,—in order to teach us any thing respecting the promises of God, they must of necessity make a discovery of Christ. This was the design of that heavenly pattern of the tabernacle and model of the legal worship, which was exhibited to Moses in the mount. There is only one difference between those sacraments and ours: they prefigured Christ as promised and still expected; ours represent him as already come and manifested.

XXI. All these things will be considerably elucidated by a particular detail. In the first place, circumcision was a sign to the Jews to teach them that whatever is produced from human seed—that is, the whole nature of man—is corrupt, and requires to be pruned: it was likewise a testification and memorial to confirm them in the promise given to Abraham respecting the blessed seed, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, and from whom their own blessing was also to be expected.

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Now, that blessed seed, as Paul informs us, was Christ, on whom alone they relied for recovering that which they had lost in Adam. Wherefore circumcision was the same to them as Paul declares it to have been to Abraham, even “a seal of the righteousness of faith;”

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that is, a seal for the further assurance that their faith, with which they expected that seed, would be imputed by God to them for righteousness. But the comparison between circumcision and baptism we shall have more suitable occasion for pursuing in another place. Ablutions and purifications placed before their eyes their uncleanness and pollution, by which they were naturally contaminated, and promised another ablution, by which they would be purified from all their defilement; and this ablution was Christ, washed in whose blood we bring his purity into the presence of God to cover all our impurities.

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Their sacrifices accused and convicted them of their iniquity, and, at the same time, taught the necessity of some satisfaction to be made to the Divine justice, and that, therefore, there would come a great High Priest, a Mediator between God and men, who was to satisfy the justice of God by the effusion of blood and the oblation of a sacrifice, which would be sufficient to obtain the remission of sins. This great High Priest was Christ; he shed his own blood, and was himself the victim; was obedient to his Father even unto death, and by his obedience obliterated the disobedience of man, which had provoked the indignation of God.

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XXII. Our two sacraments present us with a clearer exhibition of Christ, in proportion to the nearer view of him which men have enjoyed since he was really manifested by the Father in the manner in which he had been promised. For baptism testifies to us our purgation and ablution; the eucharistic supper testifies our redemption. Water is a figure of ablution, and blood of satisfaction. These things are both found in Christ, who, as John says, “came by water and blood;”

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that is, to purify and redeem. Of this the Spirit of God is a witness; or, rather, “there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood.”

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In the water and the blood we have a testimony of purgation and redemption; and the Spirit, as the principal witness, confirms and secures our reception and belief of this testimony. This sublime mystery was strikingly exhibited on the cross, when blood and water issued from Christ’s sacred side; which, on this account, Augustine has justly called “the fountain of our sacraments;” of which we are yet to treat more at large. And there is no doubt, if we compare one time with another, but that the more abundant grace of the Spirit is also here displayed. For that belongs to the glory of the kingdom of Christ; as we gather from various places, and especially from the seventh chapter of John. In this sense we must understand that passage where Paul, speaking of the legal institutions, says, “which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.”

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His design in this declaration is, not to deny the efficacy of those testimonies of grace, in which God was formerly pleased to attest his veracity to the fathers, as he does to us now in baptism and the sacred supper, but to represent the comparative superiority of what has been given to us, that no one might wonder at the ceremonies of the law having been abolished at the advent of Christ.