Chapter I. Of the Name of Sacrament

This word Sacrament is explicitly used in Scripture in the meaning which it has in the Catholic Church, since S. Paul, speaking of marriage, calls it clearly and precisely Sacrament.* But we shall see this by and by. It is enough now, against the insolence of Zwinglet and others who would reject this name, that the whole ancient Church has used it. For it is not by any greater authority that the words Trinity, consubstantial, person, and a hundred others, have been received in the Church as holy and legitimate. But it is a most unprofitable and foolish rashness to

• Eph. V. t De verd etfals. relig.

attempt to change the Ecclesiastical words which antiquity has left us: to say nothing of the danger that there might be, after changing the words, of going on to the change of the meaning and belief, — as we see to be ordinarily the aim of these innovators on words. Now since the pretended reformers for the most part, though not without grumbling, leave this word in use in their books, let us enter into the difficulties we have with them over the causes and effects of the Sacraments, and let us see how they in this point despise the Scripture and the other rules of faith.