The severance of light from darkness is the material example of how God executes judgment in dividing the good from the evil. In this visible work of God a “sacrament” is discernible, since every soul, so long as it is in sin, is in darkness and confusion. All the visible works of God offer spiritual lessons (spiritualia praeferunt documenta). They have sacramental qualities, and yet are not perfected and completed sacraments, as will hereafter appear from Hugo’s definition.
Following the order of creation, Hugo now speaks of the firmament which God set in the midst of the waters to divide them:
“He who believes that this was made for his sake will not look for the reason of it outside of himself. For it all was made in the image of the world within him; the earth which is below, is the sensual nature of man, and the heaven above is the purity of his intelligence quickening to immortal life.”
The rational and unseen are a world as well as the material and visible. The sacramental quality of the material world lies in its correspondence to the unseen world. When Hugo speaks of the “sacramenta” in the creation of light and the waters divided by the firmament, he means that in addition to their material nature as light and water, they are essentially symbols. Their symbolism is as veritably part of their nature as the symbolical character of the Eucharist is part of the nature of the consecrated bread and wine. The sacraments are among the deepest verities of the Christian Faith. And the same representative verity that exists in them, exists, in less perfected mode, throughout God’s entire creation. So the argument carries out the principles of the sacraments and the principles of symbolism to a full explanation of the world; and Hugo’s work upon the Sacraments presents his theory of the universe.
“Many other mysteries,” says Hugo, closing the first “Part” of his first Book, “could be pointed out in the work of the creation. But we briefly speak of these matters as a suitable approach to the subject set before us. For our purpose is to treat of the sacrament of man’s redemption. The work of creation was completed in six days, the work of restoration in six ages. The latter work we define as the Incarnation of the Word and what in and through the flesh the Word performed, with all His sacraments, both those which from the beginning prefigured the Incarnation and those which follow to declare and preach it till the end.”
It is unnecessary to follow Hugo through the discussion, upon which he now enters, of the will, knowledge, and power of the Trinity, or through his consideration of the knowledge which man may have of God. In Part V. of the first Book, he considers the creation of angels, their qualities and nature, and the reasons why a part of them fell. With Part VI. the creation of man is reached, which Hugo shows to have been causally prior, though later in time, to the creation of the world which God made for man. From love God created rational creatures, the angels purely spiritual, and man a spirit clothed with earth.[75] Hugo considers the corporeal as well as the spiritual nature and qualities of man, and his condition before the Fall. The seventh Part is devoted to the Fall itself, and discusses its character and sinfulness.
At length, in the eighth Part, Hugo reaches the true subject of his treatise, the restoration of man. Man’s first sin of pride was followed by a triple punishment, consisting in a penalty, and two entailed defects, the penalty being bodily mortality, the defects carnal concupiscence and mental ignorance.
“Regarding his reparation three matters are to be considered, the time, the place, the remedy. The time is the present life, from the beginning to the end of the world. The place is this world.[76] The remedy is threefold, and consists in faith, the sacraments, and good works. Long is the time, that man may not be taken unprepared. Hard is the place, that the transgressor may be castigated. Efficacious is the remedy, that the sick one may be healed.”
Hugo then sets forth the situation, the case in court as it were, to which God, the devil, and man, are the three parties. In this trial
“... the devil is convicted of an injury to God in that he seduced God’s servant by fraud and holds him by violence. Man also is convicted of an injury to God in that he despised His command and wickedly gave himself to evil servitude. Likewise the devil is convicted of an injury toward man, in first deceiving him and then bringing evil upon him. The devil holds man unjustly, though man is justly held.”