Word Finder - sacraments

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A sacred act or ceremony in Christianity. In Catholic theology, a sacrament is defined as "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace."

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(in particular) The Eucharist.

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The consecrated Eucharist (especially the bread).

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A thing which is regarded as possessing a sacred character or mysterious significance.

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The oath of allegiance taken by soldiers in Ancient Rome; hence, any sacred ceremony used to impress an obligation; a solemn oath-taking; an oath.

The less deprived of participation in the sacraments, and made a clerk incapable of taking a benefice.

At the same time a class of men arose interested in these forms for their own sake, professional lawyers Bence, but also "poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth," and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord's Supper, a piece of religious materialism of which "the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality."

While we have elsewhere no connected account of this, Justin's Apology contains a few paragraphs (61 seq.), which give a vivid description of the public worship of the Church and its method of celebrating the sacraments (Baptism and the Eucharist).

Autour consists of seven letters, on the origin and aim of L'Evangile et l'Eglise; on the biblical question; the criticism of the Gospels; the Divinity of Christ; the Church's foundation and authority; the origin and authority of dogma, and on the institution of the sacraments.

The decision was thus reached that the sacraments should not be administered that year.

It is a curious inversion of terms that in recent years has led to the name Sacramentarians being applied to those who hold a high or extreme view of the efficacy of the sacraments.

Tabor soon became the centre of the advanced Hussites, who differed from the Utraquists by recognizing only two sacraments - Baptism and Communion - and by rejecting most of the ceremonial of the Roman Church.

The Inquisition, by its decree Lamentabili sane (2nd of July 1907), condemned sixty-five propositions concerning the Church's magisterium; biblical inspiration and interpretation; the synoptic and fourth Gospels; revelation and dogma; Christ's divinity, human knowledge and resurrection; and the historical origin and growth of the Sacraments, the Church and the Creed.

The abbe's central position, that our Lord himself held the proximateness of His second coming, involves the loss by churchmen of the prestige of directly divine power, since Church and Sacraments, though still the true fruits and vehicles of his life, death and spirit, cannot thus be immediately founded by the earthly Jesus himself.

Besides the administration of sacraments and the celebration of offices on special occasions, the priest kept alight the eternal fire on the altar, addressed prayers to the Sun at dawn, midday and twilight, turning towards east, south and west respectively.

These are subdivided into pastors, who administer the word and sacraments, doctors, who teach and expound the Bible, elders pure and simple, who exercise rule and discipline.

The keys, as he believed, were entrusted to the church as a whole, and from the church as a whole the " ministers of the word and sacraments " are to derive their institution and authority.

The latter make "the three notes or marks" by which a true church is known "pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments administered according to Christ's holy institution, and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline."

In the Theodosian Code the various crimes which are accounted sacrilege include - apostasy, heresy, schism, Judaism, paganism, attempts against the immunity of churches and clergy or privileges of church courts, the desecration of sacraments, &c. and even Sunday.

Vestments are worn only at the ministration of the sacraments; incense is used invariably at the Eucharist and frequently at other services.

Of special interest is the fact that Walafrid, in his exposition of the Mass, shows no trace of any belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation as taught by his famous contemporary Radbertus (q.v.); according to him, Christ gave to his disciples the sacraments of his Body and Blood in the substance of bread and wine, and taught them to celebrate them as a memorial of his Passion.

The particularities of the worship, its minute and truly ingenious re-adaptations of sacraments, prayers, reverent signs, down even to the invocation of a New Trinity, need not detain us.

The Church is defined as "a divinely-instituted community of men, united by the orthodox faith, the law of God, the hierarchy and the sacraments."

In 1537 he attended a convocation of the clergy, and at the request of Cromwell conducted a controversy with Stokesley, bishop of London, on the nature of the sacraments.

His argument was afterwards published under the title Of the Auctorite of the Word of God concerning the number of the Sacraments.

Tertullian (c. 160-240) uses it in both senses, of an oath, as in the passage of his treatise About Spectacles, where he says that no Christian " passes over to the enemy's camp without throwing away his arms, without abandoning the standards and sacraments of his chief."

The stick with which Elisha made the iron to swim in that passage, and the wood which Isaac carried up the mountain for his own pyre " were sacraments reserved for fulfilment in the time of Christ."

In his work On the Soul, chap. xviii., the aeons and genealogies of the Gnostics are " the sacraments of heretical ideas."

Elsewhere he speaks of " the sacraments of water, oil, bread."

Augustine speaks of the salt administered to catechumens before baptism and of their exorcism as sacraments; and as late as 1129 Godefrid so calls the salt and water, oil and chrism, the ring and pastoral staff used in ordinations.

Hugo de St Victor, c. 1120, in his work On the Sacraments, distinguishes six, but of different grades of importance.

Lastly come those needful to the hallowing and instituting of other sacraments, those which concern the conferring of orders or of monkish habit.

In his Summa he declares that as there are seven chief sins, either original or of act, so there must be seven sacraments to remedy them; but he only enumerates six, namely baptism and the sacraments of confirmation, of the altar, of penance, last unction and matrimony.

In this article it is impossible to attempt a history of the sacraments and of the controversies which in every age have arisen about them.

To begin with, it is obvious that the number of sacraments must vary according to the criterions we use of what constitutes a sacrament.

Thus a drunkard's or a madman's sacraments would only be mockery, even though the recipients received them in good faith and devoutly.

On the other hand, sanctity of life on the part of the minister is not necessary in order to the validity of the sacraments which he confers, although this was held to be the case by the Donatists in the 4th century, and following them by the Waldensians and Albigenses in the 12th, and by the followers of Hus and Wycliffe in the 14th.

Certain of the sacraments can obviously only be once conferred, e.g.

The distinction, be it noted, of form and matter seems more appropriate to the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist, confirmation and last unction, than to those of orders, penance and matrimony.

All will admit who study the post-Nicene Church, that the Christian sacraments have stolen the clothes of the pagan mysteries, dethroned and forbidden by the Christian emperors.

Gregory's position was almost inexpugnable at a time when it was conceded by practically all that spiritual concerns were incalculably more momentous than secular, that the Church was rightly one and indivisible, with one divinely revealed faith and a system of sacraments absolutely essential to salvation.

So salvation was to him not a painful progress toward a goal to be reached by the sacraments and by right conduct, but a state in which man found himself so soon as he despaired absolutely of his own efforts, and threw himself on God's assurances.

This reaffirmed the seven sacraments, transubstantiation and the invocation of saints, and declared the pope head of the Church, but adopted Luther's doctrine of justification by faith in a conditional way, as well as the marriage of priests, and considerably modified the theory and practice of the Mass.

A conservative Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies after the Use of the Church of England - commonly called the First Prayer Book of Edward VI.

Long before the Protestant revolt, simple, obscure people, under the influence of leaders whose names have been forgotten, lost confidence in the official clergy and their sacraments and formed secret organizations of which vague accounts are found in the reports of the 13th-century inquisitors, Rainerus Sacchoni, Bernard Gui, and the rest.

When the Lambeth articles put forward as a basis of union were discussed, it was evident that all the free churches were agreed in accepting the three articles dealing with the Bible, the Creed and the Sacraments as a basis of discussion, and were also agreed in rejecting the fourth article, which put the historic episcopate on the same level as the other three.

He heard from this same teacher bold criticisms of Romish teaching concerning the sacraments, monastic vows and papal indulgences, and unconsciously he was thus trained for the great remonstrance of his maturer life.

In 1110 an apostate monk in Zeeland, Tanchelm, carried their views still farther, and asserted that the sacraments were only valid through the merits and sanctity of the ministers.

It would appear that its members received the sacraments of baptism and the holy communion from the regular priesthood, at all events sometimes, but maintained a discipline of their own and held services for their own edification.

In point of doctrine they acknowledged the seven sacraments, but gave them a symbolical meaning; they prayed to the Virgin and saints, and admitted auricular confession, but they denied purgatory and the sacrifice of the mass, and did not observe fasts or festivals.

In both respects the reflex action of the Novatianist and Donatist controversies upon Catholicism was disastrous to the earlier idea of church-fellowship. Formal and technical tests of membership, such as the reception of sacraments from a duly authorized clergy, came to replace Christ's own test of character.

During the Protectorate, with its practical establishment of Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists, the position of Congregationalism was really anomalous, in so far as any of its pastors became parish ministers,' and so received " public mainfenance " and were expected to administer the sacraments to all and sundry.

According to the Roman use the stole is now only worn at mass, in administering the sacraments and sacramentalia, when touching the Host, &c., but not e.g.

It is a series of metrical homilies on the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Sacraments, illustrated by a number of amusing stories from various sources.

Intimately connected with the idea of the Church as an ark of salvation are the sacraments or means of grace.