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worth, indeed, with relation to such matters is absurd. Who is worthy? Who is a fit dispenser of the gifts of the Holy Spirit? What, are, after all, the petty differences between sinner and sinner, when viewed in relation to Him, whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, and who charges His very angels with folly?"
This would have been the question to be considered, had you been in earnest; but it was an earnest question, and so afforded no room for pleasantry. You turn aside, then, to lay hold of the expression, "our definition of a sacrament," and make the Pope to say, (p. 13.):
"We do not blame you, beloved brethren, for its not coming perfectly within your Church's definition of a sacrament; but we feel convinced that, when opportunity may serve, you will so alter the definition as to increase the number of your sacraments."
Yet since the "layman" distinguished "orders" from the "proper sacraments," it was an ill pleasantry, which would represent him, as wishing to include them therein, although you need not have gone as far as Rome for a definition which would have included them. St. Augustine's definition of a sacrament, (with which Calvin wishes to show that his own agrees, Instit. iv. 14. I.) had sufficed: "a visible sign of a sacred thing," or "a visible form of invisible grace." The word "sacrament" has namely, (as every one knows,) a larger use, although the "two proper sacraments " have always had their distinct reverence, as not conveying grace only, but directly uniting men with their Redeemer. In this larger sense, however, even foreign reformers have not scrupled to call ordination not merely "a rite, partaking in a high degree of the sacramental character," but "a sacrament." Thus even Calvin says (Instit. iv. 14. 20.):
"I am speaking of the sacraments instituted for the use of the whole Church. For the imposition of hands, whereby the ministers of the Church are initiated to their office, as on the one hand I am not unwilling that it should he called a sacrament, so on the other I do not count it among the ordinary sacraments."
And again (iv. 19. 31.):
