Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/393

 Luther, they are simple signs of divine promises for the sake of rousing our faith in Christ, who remits sins. According to Calvin and Zwingli, they are divine signs, by which the one who is chosen is confirmed in the faith into which he is received and in the divine promises, or, he still more confirms his church in his faith than he confirms himself. The Socinians and Arminians see in the sacraments mere external rites, by which the Christians differ from the Gentiles. The Anabaptists regard the sacraments as allegorical signs of spiritual life. The Swedenborgians regard them as symbols of a mutual union between God and man. The Quakers and our Dukhobors completely reject the visible side of the sacraments, and recognize them only as internal, spiritual actions of the heavenly light. All these and other similar conceptions about the sacraments, which are held by various Protestant sects, with all their differences, agree in this, that they equally reject the true conception about the sacraments as external sacramental actions, which actually communicate divine grace to the believers, and through it regenerate, renovate, and sanctify man. (2) Of the number of sacraments. As though not satisfied with the mere rejection of the true conception about the nature and efficacy of the sacraments, Protestantism has extended its sacrilegious hand upon this, in that it has diminished the number of sacraments, and, although in the beginning the Protestants showed a great diversity of opinions in this matter, they have finally agreed, of course each sect in its own way, to recognize only two sacraments: baptism and the eucharist. Of our dissenters, the so-called Popeless sectarians, though not denying that seven sacraments have been established, are satisfied with two only, saying, In need two of them are sufficient, baptism and repentance, and the others are not necessary.’ (3) Of the conditions for the performance and actuality of sacraments. According to Luther’s doctrine, no lawfully