Number of the Sacraments.
The Nestorian rituals do not determine the number of the Church sacraments; but several of their best authors reckon them as seven, and so many are generally allowed by the Nestorians of the present day, viz. Orders, Baptism, the Oil of Unction, the Oblation of the body and blood of Christ, Absolution, the Holy Leaven, and the sign of the Cross. This discrepancy, however, which seems to remove the Nestorians as far from the teaching of the Church of England as is the doctrine of the Church of Rome on this article, is by no means so great as may appear at first sight. According to the more perfect definition contained in the Church Catechism, a sacrament consists of two parts, "the outward visible sign, and the inward spiritual grace;" and further, must be "ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof." Now if the seven sacraments of the Nestorians be tried by this rule, only two, viz. Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, will be found to comprise all these essential properties, as shall be shown presently when each comes under separate consideration. Hence from the bare fact of their being classed together we are not obliged to infer that the Nestorians regard the entire seven as of equal authority, efficacy, or necessity, or to conclude that they differ, in any essential point, from the doctrine of our Church on the sacraments. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that they use the term "sacrament," of the five ordinances over and above those which are so called by us, in the same sense in which marriage is styled a sacrament in the book of Homilies, and in which many of the primitive Christian authors applied it to other institutions of the New Testament, besides Baptism and the holy Eucharist. Thus Palmer, in his Origines Liturgicæ says, that "the Fathers gave the name of sacrament or mystery to every thing which conveyed one signification or property to unassisted reason, and another to faith."
Further, it is worthy of remark, that the Nestorians frequently speak of Baptism and the Lord's Supper in the plural number, as if each was made up of several mystical significations addressed to faith. Accordingly we find more than once in the Baptismal
