Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/327

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—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIGNS AND INSTRUMENTS.
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mean instruments[1] of conveying grace: they deny that Bap-

  1. "Signs and real instruments, properly speaking, are widely different. For signs, such as are Sacraments, contribute nothing towards the effect, but they only attest and seal that which the Holy Spirit effects and works in us; and that they do most truly and certainly." Danæus adv. Bellarm. t. ii. contr. 2. l. 2. c. 14; ad arg. 2; ap. Gat. 103; and, again, adv. Bellarm. de Bapt. c. 4. rat. 4. "He is deceived, who thinks that the application of Christ and His benefits takes place through the sign of water, which is only the sealing up of that application;" and p. 324, "The water of baptism is not needed, either as the efficient or the instrumental cause, but only as the seal sealing up." Zuingli (ad Luther, confess, resp. fol. 477. ap. Gat. 96.) "There never was any Sacrament which can realize to us that which was signified by it: but this is the office of every Sacrament, to signify and attest that that which it denotes is present." Whitaker de Bapt. q. 2. c. 3. arg. 3. (ap. Gat. p. 123.) "Bellarmine denies that Baptism is a seal of grace received, but says, it is an instrument conferring grace, which we have above refuted." Voestius, Anti-Bellarm. ad t. iii. contr. 1. Thes. 6. § 1., assigns this argument to the first place against the belief that "Sacraments are effective instruments, or, so to speak, vessels or vehicles of justifying grace." "Signs and seals have no other effects, for the most part, than that of signifying, or declaring, or sealing, &c., as not being antecedent causes, or operative instruments of grace promised by God, but certain adjuncts consequent; as also is known from philosophy, as to the general nature of signs." Peter Martyr, loci 4. 8. 17. approaches to a concession that grace may be given with the Sacraments, but is careful to guard against the idea that they are given through them. "Yea, it is to be thought that God in His goodness, when His promises and gifts are sealed, does of his own mere mercy render them fuller; not, indeed, by the work of the Sacrament, but of His own goodness and Spirit, whereby He is wont, when we have the outward word of Divine Scripture, to inflame our hearts, and recruit them to holiness." Again, he uses as an argument against the ancient custom of exorcising those about to receive Baptism, (i.e. adjuring the evil spirit, from whose kingdom they were about to be removed, to leave them,) "that thus we should have many Sacraments for one, since they multiply signs, which they regard sacred;" as if a holy and significant rite was in the same sense a Sacrament, as those instituted by our Lord, or as if Sacraments were only sacred signs. Beza (Letter to Grindall, in Adm. 5. ap. Hooker, b. v. p. 632. ed. Keble.) "They sinned righte grievously, as often as they brought any Sacramentalles (that is to say, any ceremonies) to import signification of spiritual things, into the "Church of God." Hooker (b. v. c. 2, § 4.) notices that at times these writers distinguished significant ceremonies, which were Sacraments, and others which were as Sacraments only. "Sacraments," he adds, "are those,