C. Whether Order is a Sacrament

38. About the third article [n.11] I say that, speaking properly of sacrament, order is not a sacrament, because every sacrament is a sensible sign, and order, as was said, is a certain spiritual rank. However, taking sacrament for an invisible sign, the way something is said to be ‘thing and sacrament’, it can in this way be called a sacrament, because it is a sign of the fitting execution of an act due to that rank, and also a sign of the act fitting that rank.

39. What then is the seventh sacrament? I say that it is ordination.

40. Whose description can be this: ‘Ordination is the instituting of someone in a preeminent rank of the Church, to which belongs some ministry as regard display of the Eucharist, carried out by a suitable minister speaking certain words and with due intention at the same time, representing with some visible sign the ranks of it, signifying by divine institution the preeminent grace whereby the ordained person may worthily carry out some ministry’.

41. And according to this universal idea of ordination can the special ideas of ordinations be proportionately taken, as for example the ordination of someone to the priesthood: ‘The instituting of him in a simply preeminent rank of the Church, disposing him who has it for consecrating the sacrament of the Eucharist, done by a bishop, speaking certain words with due intention’.

42. And if as to the parts of the universal description [n.40], and proportionally as to any particular description, you ask who the suitable minister is, I reply and say that the bishop and he alone is the minister in Holy Orders; but in the other non-sacred Orders, sometimes by commission some are ministers who have the privilege, as abbots.

43. But what words or what form?

I say that the words or the form that bishops have in episcopal books.

44. But in the priesthood it seems probable that there are two partial forms there, in one of which the power of confecting the Eucharist is conferred, in the other the power of absolving the penitent in penitential confession. And with these are conjoined two proper matters, that is, two visible signs: the matter of the first form is the handing over of the chalice and the paten with hosts: “Receive the power of celebrating etc.;” and of the second form the imposition of the bishop’s hands on the head, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” so that thus the bishop acts agreeably with the supreme bishop, Christ, who, as was said [n.15], conferred on the Apostles the power of confecting before that of absolving.

45. From these points is plain how there are seven ordinations, which are institutings in the case of orders; and the seven are said to be contained under the sacrament of order, or more properly under the sacrament of ordination, insofar as it is one sacrament.