D. Solution of the Question

210. From the above three articles [nn.181-209] the solution of the question is plain.

For if the account [from Master Lombard] that is here being asked about [n.174] is rightly understood, and is completed through certain explicit words, one must say that it is the account properly definitive of a sacrament, in the way in which a sacrament is definable.

211. For that account [from the Master], thus understood and completed, is the same as the one before stated [n.207].

For what is posited there as ‘form’ must be understood as put for ‘sensible sign’, in the way that an image of Hercules is called the ‘form’ of Hercules.

Also what is added there as ‘visible’ must be understood as put for ‘sensible in general’, and to this extent ‘visible’ must be understood as put for the sensible object of any sense. For sight is more excellent than any other sense and has knowledge of more differences, as the Philosopher says, Metaphysics 1.1.980a25-28.

‘Visible’ there is put for ‘sensible in one or more ways’ and that whether in several ways pertaining to the same sense or to different senses.

‘Invisible grace’ there is puts for ‘gratuitous effect of God, interior, ordered to the salvation of man the wayfarer’.

But whether ‘grace’ is there taken universally for grace inhering in the soul as subject, or whether it signifies more generally (as I expressed it above) the gratuitous effect of God etc. [n.194], will be clear in the treatment of the Eucharist (d.8 q.1 nn.4-5, d.10 q.4 n.6), because in the Eucharist the ‘thing’ of the sacrament is not any grace inhering as an accident in the soul.

Now the differences specifying the sign need to be supplied, namely ‘by institution’ in distinction from a naturally signifying sign, and ‘efficaciously’ in distinction from an equivocal sign and a sign that naturally follows the thing signified.