Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/83

71 man might have wherewithal to placate God, God through mercy gave man a man whom man might give in place of him who had sinned. God became man for man and as man gave himself for man. Thus He who had been man's Creator became also his Redeemer. God might have redeemed man in some other way, but took the way of human nature as best suited to man's weakness.

After our first parent had been exiled from Paradise for his sin, the devil possessed him violently. But God's providence tempered justice with mercy, and from the penalty itself prepared a remedy.

"He set for man as a sign the sacraments of his salvation, in order that whoever would apprehend them with right faith and firm hope, might, though under the yoke, have some fellowship with freedom. He set His edict informing and instructing man, so that whoever should elect to expect a saviour, should prove his vow of election in observance of the sacraments. The devil also set his sacraments, that he might know and possess his own more surely. The human race was at once divided into opposite parties, some accepting the devil's sacraments and some the sacraments of Christ.… Hence it is clear, that from the beginning there were Christians in fact, if not in name."

Hugo proceeds to show that the time of the institution of the sacraments began when our first parent, expelled from Paradise, was subjected to the exile of this mortal life, with all his posterity until the end.

"As soon as man had fallen from his first state of incorruption, he began to be sick, in body through his mortality, in mind through his iniquity. Forthwith God prepared the medicine of his reparation through His sacraments. In divers times and places God presented these for man's healing, as reason and the cause demanded, some of them before the Law, some under the Law and some under grace. Though different in form they had the one effect and accomplished the one health. If any one inquires the period of their appointment he may know that as long as there is disease so long is the time of the medicine. The present life, from the beginning to the end of the world, is the time of sickness and the time of the remedy. When a sacrament has fulfilled its time it ceases, and others take its place, to bring about that same health. These in turn have been succeeded at last by others, which are not to be superseded."