System of Sacred Theology · §4.11.2 · Ludwig Crocius

II. Rules for understanding the sacrament definition (1–3)

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II. These rules help understand the definition. 1. Divine institution alone makes a Sacrament; remove it and the sacrament is removed, change it and it is changed. In the essentials of a sacrament, nothing is to be changed

2. Though sacraments are signs, they are not empty signs, but exhibitive of the thing signified—namely spiritual grace—as veiled under them.

3. Sacramental union is not essential-natural but mystical, not feigned but true and real: the closest conjunction of earthly and heavenly thing, so that in lawful use, when one is named and exhibited, the other is truly exhibited to the believer according to the promise's formula.

Latin

II. Ad sacramenti definitionem rectius intelligendam observandae sunt hae regulae. 1. Sola divina institutio Sacramentum efficit, qua sublata tollitur & mutata mutatur. IN SUBSTANTIALIBUS SACRAMENTI NIHIL MUTANDUM EST. 2. Etiamsi sacramenta sint signa, tamen non sunt vacua signa, sed rei signatae, gratiae nimirum spiritualis, tanquam ad ea velate exhibitiva. 3. Unio sacramentalis non est essentialis naturalis, sed mystica, non ficta sed vera & realis, coniunctio rei terrenae & caelestis arctissima, qua fit ut in legitimo usu una earum dicta & exhibita una vere etiam secundum formulam promissionis credenti exhibeatur altera.

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About this text

Ludwig Crocius's System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636), all four books: theology and its rule in Scripture; man's last end, death and the resurrection; God, the Trinity, creation, providence and sin; and the grace of Christ, the Word and sacraments, faith, the Christian life and prayer.

Ludwig Crocius (1586–1655) taught theology and philosophy at Bremen and sat as a delegate at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). A Calvinist of the irenic school, he spent his career seeking common ground between the Reformed and Lutheran churches.

His System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636) is a full Reformed dogmatics in the high-orthodox style: precise definitions, ordered questions, objections raised and answered.

Date1636 AD (Bremen; Reformed professor)

EditionSyntagma sacrae theologiae (Bremen: Berthold Villerian, 1636)

English follows the 1636 Bremen Latin (Berthold Villerian), read chapter by chapter from the SLUB Dresden page images, with a machine reading of the same pages as a check. No modern English was copied. The author index at the end of the volume is not translated.

Reference

VD17 14:684303C. SLUB id335860389.

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