II. To the Initial Arguments

382. From these remarks the answer is plain to all the authorities adduced in argument on the principal point [nn.337-388]. For either they are speaking of the sacraments improperly so called of the Old Law or, if they are speaking of circumcision, which was properly a sacrament, they deny that it confers grace according to some aforesaid understanding [nn.372-381].

383. To the third argument [n.339], on the opening of the door [of heaven], I say that it was not a defect of circumcision that it did not open the door, but it was current at a time when the price was not paid. For, after the price was paid, the door could have been opened to anyone, not because he had been baptized, but only circumcised and in a state of grace. But for someone baptized but dead before the Passion the door would not have been opened at that time.

384. To the last argument [n.340] I say that even baptism, as to the exterior act, signifies only the removal of bodily uncleanness, and yet no one denies that something positive is its effect. I say then to the major of the argument that a sacrament signifies more properly the effect in the soul on which grace in the sacrament follows than that it signifies the grace itself. Hence, while grace is single in a single soul, yet the sacraments are distinguished according to the proper things they signify, which are diverse effects of the same grace, as will be said later [when speaking of each sacrament]. However the effect of grace, the one proper both to circumcision and to baptism, is the washing of the soul from sin, although there is another concomitant effect, namely ordination or acceptation to eternal life.