ons.

III. MEANS OF GRACE, BAPTISM, and EUCHARIST. That which the Western
Church of post-Augustinian times calls sacrament in the specific sense
of the word (means of grace) was only possessed by the Church of the
third century in the form of baptism.[279] In strict theory she still
held that the grace once bestowed in this rite could be conferred by no
holy ceremony of equal virtue, that is, by no fresh sacrament. The
baptised Christian has no means of grace, conferred by Christ, at his
disposal, but has his law to fulfil (see, e.g., Iren. IV. 27. 2). But,
as soon as the Church began to absolve mortal sinners, she practically
possessed in absolution a real means of grace that was equally effective
with baptism from the moment that this remission became unlimited in its
application.[280] The notions as to this means of grace, however,
continued quite uncertain in so far as the thought of God's absolving
the sinner through the priest was qualified by the other theory (see
above) which asserted that forgiveness was obtained through the
penitential acts of transgressors (especially baptism with blood, and
next in importance _lamentationes, ieiunia, eleemosynae_). In the third
century there were manifold holy dispensations of grace by the hands of
priests; but there was still no theory which traced the means of grace
to the historical work of Christ in the same way that the grace bestowed
in baptism was derived from it. From Cyprian's epistles and the
anti-Novatian sections in the first six books of the Apostolic
Constitutions we indeed see that appeal was not unfrequently made to the
power of forgiving sins bestowed on the Apostles and to Christ's
declaration that he received sinners; but, as the Church had not made up
her mind to repeat baptism, so also she had yet no theory that expressly
and clearly supplemented this rite by a _sacramentum absolutionis_. In
this respect, as well as in regard to the _sacramentum ordinis_, first
instituted by Augustine, theory remained far behind practice. This was
by no means an advantage, for, as a matter of fact, the whole religious
ceremonial was already regarded as a system of means of grace. The
consciousness of a personal, living connection of the individual with
God through Christ had already disappeared, and the hesitation in
setting up new means of grace had only the doubtful result of increasing
the significance of human acts, such as offerings and satisfactions, to
a dangerous