Since the devil’s case against man was unjust, man might defeat his lordship; but he needed an advocate (patronus), which could be only God. God, angry at man’s sin, did not wish to undertake man’s cause. He must be placated; and man had no equivalent to offer for the injury he had done Him; for he had deserted God when rational and innocent, and could deliver himself back to God only as an irrational and sinful creature. Therefore, in order that 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.”
Having followed Hugo’s plan thus far, one sees why it is only at the commencement of the ninth Part of his first Book that he reaches the definition and discussion of those final and enduring sacraments which followed the Incarnation. He has hitherto been developing his theme, and now takes up its very essence. Laying out the matter scholastically, he says “there are four things to consider: first, what is a sacrament; second, why they were instituted; third, what may be the material of each sacrament, in which it is made and sanctified; and fourth, how many sacraments there are. This is the definition, cause, material, and classification.”
Proceeding to the definition, he says that the doctors have briefly described a sacrament as the token of the sacred substance (sacrae rei signum).
“For as there is body and soul in man, and in Scripture the letter and the sense, so in every sacrament there is the visible external which may be handled and the invisible within, which is believed and taught. The material external is the sacrament, and the invisible and spiritual is the sacrament’s substance (res) or virtus. The external is handled and sanctified; that is the signum of the spiritual grace, which is the sacrament’s res and is invisibly apprehended.”
Having thus explained the old definition, Hugo objects to it on the ground that not every signum rei sacrae is a sacrament; the letters of the sacred text and the pictures of holy things are signa rei sacrae, and yet are not sacraments. He therefore offers the following definition as adequate:
“The sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace.”[77]