The result of the proper use of the truth preached or read, is invariably the spiritual advancement of the sinner, whatever the stage of his progress may be.
And such appears to be the operation of the sacraments.

As it is absurd to affirm that each sermon preached, will convert or affect the pardon of every sinner who attentively hears it; so it were equally gratuitous to affirm the same of the sacraments.

If the sinner had been on the verge of regeneration and faith _before_ he heard the sermon in question, and the hearing of that discourse completed the change, the result might be affirmed of the last sermon which preceded his faith, but not of its predecessors; and so also of the sacraments as means of grace.

Every sermon attentively heard will benefit all who thus hear it.
But whether it will produce conviction, or penitence, or faith, or a sense of pardoned sin, depends on the recipient's previous stage of progress in the divine life.
5.

If the sacraments were possessed of a sin-forgiving power, in such a sense, as to be the _immediate_ conditions of pardon or justification, then the sinner would be dependent for pardon on the sacraments, and on the clergyman who administers them, and not immediately on the Spirit of God.