The Sacraments of the Church

We shall now consider the Sacraments of the Church. We shall treat them 

under one heading, since they all pertain to the effect of grace. First of 

all, that must be known which St. Augustine wrote in the tenth book of "The 

City of God": "a Sacrament is a sacred thing" or "the sign of a sacred 

thing." Even in the Old Law there were certain sacraments, that is, signs 

of a sacred thing--for example, the paschal lamb and other legal sacred 

signs or "sacraments" which, however, did not cause grace but only 

signified or indicated the grace of Christ. The Apostle calls these 

"sacraments" "weak and needy elements." They were needy because they did 

not contain grace, and they were weak because they could not confer grace. 

In them, as St. Augustine says, the merits of Christ brought about 

salvation in a more hidden manner under the cover of visible things. The 

Sacraments of the New Law, on the other hand, both contain grace and confer 

it. A Sacrament of the New Law is a visible form of invisible grace. Thus, 

the exterior washing which takes place when the water is poured in Baptism 

represents that interior cleansing which takes away sin by virtue of the 

Sacrament of Baptism.

There are seven Sacraments of the New Law: Baptism, Confirmation, the 

Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Orders, and Matrimony. The first five 

of these Sacraments are intended to bring about the perfection of the 

individual man in himself; whereas the other two, Orders and Matrimony, are 

so constituted that they perfect and multiply the entire Church.