II. To the Initial Arguments

82. To the first argument [n.30] the answer is plain from the first article [nn.41-47] about what the form properly is here, and how the words are the form.

83. To the second argument [n.31] the answer is plain from the second article [nn.48-54] that Christ expressed the words that are the principal ones in the form (namely the act and the receiver). But it was in the power of the Church to determine what words of the first or third person in the indicative or optative mood would express the receiver and the act. And the Latin Church has chosen to express the receiver in the second person and the act in the indicative mood - and reasonably, in order to indicate that the minister is truly conferring the sacrament. But the Greek Church has chosen to express the receiver in the third person and the act in the optative mood - and reasonably for the time, as was said [nn.51-53], namely so as to take away the schism between those who were glorying in the ministers who baptized them.

84. To the third [n.32] one can say that the division [sc. into false and true] is not sufficient, for it is very possible that some words taken materially are the form in some sacrament; indeed, God could have instituted non-significative word-signs for the form.

85. In another way it can be said that the speech is true, not for the time of speaking it, but for the final instant that completes the speaking, as will be said below in the material about the Eucharist [d.8 q.2 n.16]. And then, when the argument is made that a statement, as true, follows the actuality of the thing, this is true: it follows the cleansing itself, and the cleansing is introduced there by the word ‘I baptize’; and then the sense will not be, ‘I baptize, that is, I confer the sacrament of baptism’, but it will be ‘I baptize, that is, I cleanse’.

86. To the fourth [n.34]Scotus does not respond to the third argument, n.33 (similar omissions happen elsewhere in the Ordinatio, e.g. I d.3 nn.337-338, 402, d.7 n.2, d.11 n.6, d.12 nn.4-5). ¹⁵, about the Greeks, the answer is plain from what was said above [nn.51-54].

87. To the fifth [n.35], about the pronoun ‘ego’, it is true that it does not belong simply to the form, neither as expressed nor as implied in a verb of the first person. But as to the Latin Church (at least after the time of Alexander III) it is necessary for the minister to express the pronoun ‘ego’; and the gloss with its proof can be understood of the time preceding the constitution of Alexander III.

88. To the one about the Trinity and Christ [nn.36, 38] the answer is plain from what was said about the first variation in words [nn.66-75].

89. To the one about ‘Begetter’ etc. [n.37] one must say that Augustine means there that ‘Begetter’ and ‘Father’ are the same as to their being said in relation to another, or as to importing the property of the same Person. But they are not the same as to the first signified concept in each case, because ‘Father’ signifies first and per se the supposit in the divine nature, while ‘Begetter’ signifies first and per se the property; and there is not the same force in a proper name and in the name of a property when one of the Persons is invoked for some effect.

90. To the last one [n.39] I say that the proposition of the Philosopher is true absolutely of transposed names, but it does not follow that the conception of the whole locution is the same when such names are transposed in this or that way. But the form [of baptism] does not consist only in the signification of single words but in the signification of the whole locution.