- Gabriel Biel Whether the sacraments of the New Covenant are effective causes of grace . . . Article 1. . . . Notabile 3. Third, for an understanding of the things that are going to be said it should be noted that a cause is commonly defined as follows: A cause is that whose being is followed by another , i.e., a cause is a thing which is such that when it is posited in being, some other thing ...www.nd.edu/~afreddos/translat/biel.htm