"There is the visible element of water, which is the sacrament; and these three are found in one: representation from similitude, significance from appointment, virtue from sanctification. The similitude is from creation, the appointment from dispensation, the sanctification from benediction. The first is imparted to it through the Creator, the second is added through the Saviour, the third is given through the administrator."[1]
Passing to the second consideration, Hugo finds that the sacraments were instituted with threefold purpose, for man's humiliation, instruction, and discipline or exercise. The man contemning them cannot be saved. Yet God has saved many without them, as Jeremiah was sanctified in the womb, and John the Baptist, and those who were righteous under the natural law. "For those who under the natural law possessed the substance (res) of the sacrament in right faith and charity, did not to their damnation lack the sacrament" And Hugo warns whoever might take a narrower view, to beware lest in honouring God's sacraments, His power and goodness be made of no avail. "Dost thou tell me that he who has not the sacraments of God cannot be saved? I tell thee that he who has the virtue of the sacraments of God cannot perish. Which is greater, the sacrament or the virtue of the sacrament—water or faith? If thou wouldst speak truly, answer, 'faith.'" One notes that the twelfth century had its broad-mindedness, as well as the twentieth.
While passing on discursively to consider the classification of the sacraments, Hugo considers many matters,[2] and then opens his treatment of the sacraments of the natural law with a recapitulation:
"The sacraments from the beginning were instituted for the
restoration and healing of man, some under the natural law, some- ↑ Here we see clearly that the works of the Creation have the sacramental quality of similitude and, in a way, the quality of institution, since their similitude to spiritual things was intended by the Creator for the instruction of man. They lack, however, the third quality of sanctification, which enables the material signum to convey its spiritual res.
- ↑ e.g. the material of the sacrament, which may consist in thins, as in bread and wine, or in actions (as in making the sign of the cross), or in words, as in the invocation of the Trinity. He also shows how faith itself may be regarded as a sacrament, inasmuch as it is that whereby we now see in a glass darkly and behold but an image. But we shall hereafter see clearly through contemplation. Faith then is the image, i.e. the sacrament, of the future contemplation which is the sacrament's real verity, the res.
