This, he maintains, is a perfect definition, since all sacraments possess these three qualities, and whatever lacks them cannot properly be called a sacrament. As an example he instances the baptismal water:
“There is the visible element of water, which is the sacrament; and these three are found in one: representation from similitude, significance from appointment, virtue from sanctification. The similitude is from creation, the appointment from dispensation, the sanctification from benediction. The first is imparted to it through the Creator, the second is added through the Saviour, the third is given through the administrator.”[78]
Passing to the second consideration, Hugo finds that the sacraments were instituted with threefold purpose, for man’s humiliation, instruction, and discipline or exercise. The man contemning them cannot be saved. Yet God has saved many without them, as Jeremiah was sanctified in the womb, and John the Baptist, and those who were righteous under the natural law. “For those who under the natural law possessed the substance (res) of the sacrament in right faith and charity, did not to their damnation lack the sacrament.” And Hugo warns whoever might take a narrower view, to beware lest in honouring God’s sacraments, His power and goodness be made of no avail. “Dost thou tell me that he who has not the sacraments of God cannot be saved? I tell thee that he who has the virtue of the sacraments of God cannot perish. Which is greater, the sacrament or the virtue of the sacrament—water or faith? If thou wouldst speak truly, answer, ‘faith.’” One notes that the twelfth century had its broad-mindedness, as well as the twentieth.
While passing on discursively to consider the classification of the sacraments, Hugo considers many matters,[79] and then opens his treatment of the sacraments of the natural law with a recapitulation:
“The sacraments from the beginning were instituted for the restoration and healing of man, some under the natural law, some under the written law, and others under grace. Those which are later in time will be found more worthy means of spiritual grace. For all those sacraments of the former time, under the natural or the written law, were signs and figures of those now appointed under grace. The spiritual effect of the former in their time was wrought through the virtue and sanctification drawn from the latter. If any one therefore would deny that those prior sacraments were effectual for sanctification, he does not seem to me to judge aright.”[80]
The sacraments of the natural law were as the umbra veritatis; those of the written law as the imago vel figura veritatis; but those under grace are the corpus veritatis.[81] The written law, though given fully only through Moses, began with Abraham, upon whom circumcision was enjoined as a sacrament and sign of separation from the heathen peoples. In obedience to its precepts lies the merit, in its promises lies the reward, while its sacraments aid men to fulfil its precepts and obtain its reward. Hugo discusses the sacraments of circumcision and burnt-offerings which were necessary for the remission of sins; then those which exercised the faithful people in devotion—the peace-offering is an example; and again those which aided the people to cultivate piety, as the tabernacle and its utensils.
Hugo’s second Book, which makes the second half of his work, is devoted to the “time of grace” inaugurated by the Incarnation. It treats in detail the Christian sacraments and other topics of the Faith, down to the Last Judgment, when the wicked are cast into hell, and the blessed enter upon eternal life, where God will be seen eternally, praised without weariness, and loved without satiety. This blessed lot flows from the grace of the salvation brought by Christ, and is dependent on the sacraments, the enduring means of grace. On their part, the sacraments, whatever more they are, are symbols, in essence and function connected with the symbolical nature of God’s creation, with the prefigurative significance of the fortunes of God’s chosen people until the coming of Christ, with the import and symbolism of Christ’s life and teachings, and with the symbolism inherent in the organization and building up of Christ’s holy Church. Symbolism and allegory are made part of the constitution of the world and man; they connect man’s body and environment with his spirit, and link the life of this world with the life to come. Hugo has thus grounded and established symbolism in the purposes of God, in the universal scheme of things, and in the nature and destinies of man.[82]