Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/321

Rh of Calvin and Zuingli, it is this: that, according to Zuingli, Sacraments are testimonies to the Church; according to Calvin, to the Elect; but the essential character of the Sacraments as signs only, not means of grace, remains the same in both. The benefits, accordingly, of which Calvin supposes Baptism to be the instrument, are, 1st, that it is a sort of diploma to attest that all our sins are utterly done away; 2dly, that it shows us (ostendit) our dying in, and our new life in Him; 3dly, that it testifies (testificatur) that we are so united to , that we are partakers of all His benefits. Wherein the blessings indeed comprehend all which the ancient Church also attributed to Baptism: but Baptism itself is but the outward seal, to attest to the believer's soul, mercies already received. Wherever, namely, Calvin explains what he means by the grace of the Sacraments, it is "the sealing of the Covenant of ," an "assuring us of His promises," or "a sort of appendix added to God's promise to confirm and seal it, and to make it more attested, and after a sort established, as foresees to be needful, first for our ignorance and slowness, then for our weakness : they are props to our faith, mirrors, wherein we see the love of  more clearly ." This confirmatory influence of the Sacraments is set forth in a variety of forms and language; but all comes back to this. On the other hand, Calvin, (as strongly, although not so frequently, as Zuingli,) decries the efficacy of the Sacraments, "any hidden virtue of the Sacraments", as a pestilent error: the tenet of the "Schools of the Sophists that the Sacraments of the new law (i.e. those of the Christian Church) justify and confer grace, unless prevented by mortal sin," is condemned as "devilish ." The sayings of the ancient Church, as to the Sacraments, are termed "immoderate encomia ;" the language of St. Augustine, "that the Sacraments of the old law only promised a, ours impart health and salvation, (salus) and the like figures of speech" are designated as "hyperbolical."