Breviloquium

Now, in the seventh place, there remains to consider the integrity of each Sacrament; and since they are seven in number, we must first speak of the integrity of baptism, which is the door of the other Sacraments¹.

Concerning the integrity of the Sacrament of baptism, therefore, this is to be held: for one to be baptized truly and fully, there is required the utterance of the vocal form instituted by the Lord², which is this: I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen; without omitting the word and, without inserting another word, without reversing the aforesaid order, and without changing the name specified. — There is also required immersion or washing through the element of water over the whole body, or at least over the more noble part, so that the utterance and the immersion be performed by one and the same person, at one and the same time. When these concur, if there is no dissimulation in the one being baptized, regenerating, rectifying, and purifying grace is given to him from every fault. — So that this may be done more efficaciously, catechism and exorcism are prefaced as preparations, both for infants and for adults; yet in adults personal faith is required, while in infants another's faith suffices³.

The reason for understanding the foregoing is this: since our reparative principle, namely, the incarnate Word, as the most perfect and sufficient principle, has to repair the human race through the medicines of the Sacraments, so that nothing in them be superfluous, disordered, or even deficient⁴, it ought to arrange that the Sacrament of baptism and the others be made integral, according as its virtue, our salvation, and also our sickness require. Since, then, the virtue that repairs us is the virtue of the whole Trinity, which the holy mother Church believes in the soul, confesses in the word, and professes in the sign, under the distinct persons and properties of the Trinity, in their natural order and origin; and since it is also the virtue of Christ's passion, who died and was buried and rose again on the third day⁵, hence, for the expression of these in the Sacrament which is first of all the Sacraments, and in which this virtue operates first and principally, the Trinity had to be expressed in a distinct, proper, and ordered naming, so far as concerns the common form, although in the time of the primitive Church it could have been expressed in the name of Christ⁶, in which the understanding of the Trinity is contained. There also had to be a proper and ordered naming of the word of baptism, together with triple immersion, for the expression of Christ's death and burial and of the resurrection that took place after three days, so far as fittingness requires. And since both virtues operate together and in the one Christ the Savior, both had to be performed by one and the same person, together and at the same time, to preserve unity in the Sacrament and signify unity in our Mediator⁷.

Again, since our salvation had to begin through regeneration or renewal in the being of grace that confers spiritual being—by wiping away impurity, driving away darkness, and cooling concupiscence, which universally weakens every human being descended seminally from Adam⁸—hence the first Sacrament, which is regenerative, had to be conferred in an element that would naturally represent the aforesaid threefold effect of the grace that begins our salvation. Since, therefore, water cleanses by its purity, is light-bearing through its translucence, and cools by its coldness, and is especially common to all liquids, the Sacrament of our regeneration had to be perfected indifferently in the element of water; because "all water is of the same species as every other water"⁹, and also lest anyone incur the peril of salvation because of a lack of the element.

Lastly, since our sickness, against which baptism is principally directed, is original sin, which deprives the soul of the life of grace and of the rectitude of all the virtues that enable it and render it in a certain way prone to every kind of fault¹⁰, and is transmitted from elsewhere and "makes the little one concupiscible and the adult actually concupiscent", and also reduces the person to diabolic servitude and the power of the prince of darkness:¹¹ hence, so that through that Sacrament a sufficient medicinal remedy may be applied by contraries, it is fitting that it give regenerating grace against the privation of gratuitous life, rectifying grace in a sevenfold virtue against the privation of the enabling virtue, and purifying grace from every fault against the proneness to every vicious disorder.

And since original sin is transmitted from elsewhere and makes the little one concupiscible and the adult actually concupiscent, personal faith and penitence are necessary for the adult, while another's faith suffices for the little one, namely, the faith that is in the universal Church. But since baptism ought to draw both little ones and adults out of the devil's servitude and the power of the prince of darkness, both must be exorcized for the expulsion of the opposing power, and both must also be catechized: adults, so that, once the darkness of error has been expelled, they may be formed in faith; but little ones, so that the godfathers may know what they ought to teach them, lest through human deficiency the Sacrament of baptism be hindered from attaining its end.