Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/432

 Then there comes a controversy about celibacy, but the question as to how it is proved that our hierarchy is the true successor of the apostles, and not one of the other hierarchies, which regard themselves as such, is not even mooted, so that of all the sacraments the one on which all the others are based not only fails to be proved or determined, but is also introduced quite arbitrarily and without the least sign by which it may be distinguished from anything resembling it. After that follows a division which is called Division VIII. General remarks on the sacraments. In these general remarks we find an exposition:

243. Of the nature of the sacraments. “The sacraments are not only signs of divine promises for the purpose of rousing faith in men, not merely simple rites, which distinguish Christians from Gentiles, not only symbols of spiritual life and so forth, as the heretics wrongly think (Art. 200), but sacramental actions, which under some visible form really impart to the believers an invisible grace of God; they are instruments which of necessity operate as grace on those who approach unto them.” (p. 505.)

244. On the septenary number of the sacraments. It is proved that there are precisely seven sacraments. From these proofs the very opposite is clearly demonstrated.

“After that we must not be misled by the fact that some ancient teachers, as the need arose, or in conformity with the purpose ose chosen by them, or for some other reasons, speak in their writings now of two, now of three, and now of four sacraments, without mentioning the rest. It is quite wrong to conclude from that, as the Protestants have concluded, that the ancient church recognized only two sacraments (why not three or four?), baptisım and the eucharist, for it is known that other teachers of the church at the same time or even earlier mentioned also all the rest; for it is known that the same teachers, mentioning baptism and the eucharist by name, at times point also to