MORALITY 



parts of the cult which are known as sacraments. These 

 miraculous sacraments, by the mysterious action of 

 which man is supposed to be born again or regenerated, 

 very quickly became powerful instruments in the hand 

 of the Church and thorny problems for theologians, es- 

 pecially after Gregory the Great introduced the dogmas 

 of Purgatory and the relieving power of the Mass. Ac- 

 cording to St. Thomas of Aquin, the sacraments are 

 channels that convey the grace of God to sinful man. 

 The papal authorities fixed their number at seven (bap- 

 tism, eucharist, penance, confirmation, matrimony, or- 

 ders, and extreme unction) in the twelfth century. The 

 superstitious content of these sacraments was generally 

 lost sight of in the glamour of their ceremonious side, but 

 their authority was unshaken. Since the Reformation 

 the Protestants have retained only the two chief sacra- 

 ments which were founded by Christ himself — Baptism 

 and the Lord's Supper. 



Christian baptism is a continuation of the older ceremonies of 

 washing and purification that were in use thousands of years 

 before Christ among nations of the East and among the Greeks. 

 They combined the hygienic value of the bath with the idea of a 

 regeneration of the soul and spiritual purification. Augustine, 

 who founded the dogma of original sin, held that the baptism 

 of children was necessary for the salvation of their souls, and it 

 then became general. It has since given rise to a number of 

 superstitious ideas and unfortunate family troubles, but it is 

 still regarded as a sacred ceremony. Millions of Christians still 

 believe that the child's soul is saved (though it has no conscious- 

 ness whatever when baptized) and delivered from the power of 

 the devil and the curse of sin by baptism. 



The second sacrament that Luther retained is the Lord's 

 Supper, or the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. It 

 was instituted by Christ on the night before his death, and is a 

 continuation of the paschal supper of the Jews, in which the 

 head of the house shared bread and wine with his family with 

 certain ritual ceremonies. In this paschal supper the people of 

 Israel celebrated their release from the bondage of Egpyt and 

 their distinction as the "chosen people." By connecting his 



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