s or opinions: it is independent" (_Modern Painters_, vol. ii.
chap. iii.).]

[Footnote 324: Cf. Harnack, _History of Dogma_, vol. ii. p. 144: "What
we nowadays understand by 'symbols' is a thing which is not that which
it represents; at that time (in the second century) 'symbol' denoted a
thing which, in some kind of way, is that which it signifies; but, on
the other hand, according to the ideas of that period, the really
heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without
being identical with it. Accordingly, the distinction of a symbolic
and realistic conception of the Lord's Supper is altogether to be
rejected." And vol. iv. p. 289: "The 'symbol' was never a mere type or
sign, but always embodied a mystery." So Justin Martyr uses [Greek:
symbolikos eipein] and [Greek: eipein en mysterio] as interchangeable
terms; and Tertullian says that the name of Joshua was _nominis futuri
sacramentum_.]

[Footnote 325: So some thinkers have felt that "the Word" is not the
best expression for the creative activity of God. The passage of
Goethe where Faust rejects "Word," "Thought," and "Power," and finally
translates, "In the beginning was the _Act_," is well known. And
Philo, in a very interesting passage, says that Nature is the language
in which God speaks; "but there is this difference, that while the
human voice is made to be _heard_, the voice of God is made to be
_seen_: what God says consists of acts, not of words" (_De Decem
Orac_. II).]

[Footnote 326: Aquinas says of the sacraments, "efficiunt quod
figurant." The Thomists held that the sacraments are "causae" of
grace; the Scotists (Nominalists), that grace is their inseparable
concomitant. The maintenance of a real correspondence between sign and
significance seems to be essential to the idea of a sacrament, but
then the danger of degrading it into magic lies close at hand.]

[Footnote 327: In the case of irregular Baptism, the maxim holds:
"Fieri non debuit; factum valet." Cf. Bp. Churton, _The Missionary's
Foundation of Doctrine_, p. 129. The reason for this difference
between the two sacraments is quite clear.]

[Footnote 328: It is, of course, difficult to decide how far such
statements were meant to be taken literally. But there is no doubt
that both Baptism and the Eucharist were supposed to _confer_
immortality. Cf. Tert. _de Bapt._ 2 (621, Oehl.), "nonne mirandum est
lavacro dilui mortem?"; Gregory of Nyssa, _Or. cat. magn._ 35, [Greek:
me