Breviloquium

After treating of the Trinity of God, the creation of the world, the corruption of sin, the incarnation of the Word, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, we must now treat, sixth, of sacramental medicine. Concerning it, seven things are to be considered. For we must treat of the origin, variation, distinction, institution, dispensation, repetition, and integrity of each of the Sacraments.

Concerning the origin of the Sacraments, therefore, this must be held: the Sacraments are sensible signs, divinely instituted as medicines, in which “under the covering of sensible things the divine power works more secretly”;¹ so that they themselves “represent from likeness, signify from institution, and confer some spiritual grace from sanctification.” Through this grace the soul is healed from the infirmities of vices, and to this they are principally ordered as their ultimate end; yet they avail for humiliation, instruction, and exercise as an end subordinate to that end.

The reason for understanding the foregoing is this: the reparative principle, which is Christ crucified, namely the incarnate Word, who most wisely disposes all things because he is divine,² and most mercifully heals because he is divinely incarnate, ought to repair and heal the sick human race in a manner suited to the sick person himself, to the sickness, to the occasion of falling sick, and to the cure of the sickness itself. The physician himself is the incarnate Word, namely, the invisible God in visible nature. The sick person is not only spirit or only flesh, but spirit in mortal flesh. The disease is original fault, which through ignorance infects the mind and through concupiscence infects the flesh. The origin of this fault, although it was principally from the consent of reason, nevertheless took its occasion from the senses of the flesh.³ Therefore, for the medicine to correspond to all the aforesaid, it was necessary that it be not only spiritual but also have something of sensible signs, so that, just as these sensible things had been an occasion for the soul to fall, they might be an occasion for it to rise. Since sensible signs, considered in themselves, have no efficacious ordination to grace, although by their nature they have a remote representation of it, it was therefore necessary that they be instituted by the author of grace for signifying and blessed for sanctifying, so that they might represent by natural likeness, signify by an attached institution, sanctify by an added blessing, and prepare for grace, through which our soul may be healed and cured.⁴

Again, since curative grace is not given to the proud, unbelieving, and fastidious, it was therefore necessary that these sensible signs be divinely given: they would not only sanctify, confer grace, and thereby heal, but also instruct by their signification, humble by their reception, and exercise by their diversification. Thus, through exercise, sloth is excluded from the concupiscible power; through instruction, ignorance from the rational power; and through humiliation, pride from the irascible power; so that the whole soul may become curable by the grace of the Holy Spirit, which reforms us according to these three powers into the image of the Trinity and of Christ.

Finally, since through such signs, divinely instituted, the grace of the Holy Spirit is received and found in them by those who approach, such Sacraments are consequently called vessels and causes of grace,⁵ not because grace is substantially contained in them or causally effected, since it must be placed in the soul alone and infused by God alone, but because in and through them the grace of healing must, by divine decree, be drawn from Christ, the highest physician, “although God has not bound his power to the Sacraments.”⁶

From the foregoing, therefore, it is clear not only what the origin of the Sacraments is, but also what their use and fruit are. Their origin is Christ the Lord; their use is an act of exercise, instruction, and humiliation; their fruit is the healing and salvation of human beings. It is also clear what the efficient cause is, namely divine institution; what the material cause is, namely the representation of a sensible sign; what the formal cause is, namely gratuitous sanctification; and what the final cause is, namely the medicinal healing of human beings. And because “denomination is made from form and end,”⁷ they are called Sacraments, as sanctifying medicines. Through them the soul is brought back from the foulness of vices to perfect sanctification. And therefore, although they are bodily and sensible, they are nevertheless to be venerated as holy, because they signify sacred mysteries, prepare for sacred gifts, are given by the most sacred God, divinely consecrated through sacred institution and blessing, and established for the most sacred worship of God in the holy Church, so that they ought deservedly to be called Sacraments.