Opuscula Sacra 2

The authority of the New and Old Testaments sets forth the Christian faith; and although the very name of Christ was contained within the old instrument, and ever signified him to be about to come—whom we hand down as having already come through the birth of the Virgin—nevertheless it is proved to have flowed out into the whole world from the wondrous advent of our Saviour himself. Now this religion of ours, which is called Christian and Catholic, rests principally upon these foundations, asserting: that from eternity—that is, before the constitution of the world, before, namely, anything that can retain the name of time—there existed the divine substance of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; so that it calls the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God; yet not three Gods, but one.

And so the Father has a Son, begotten of his own substance and coeternal with himself by a manner known to him; whom the faith confesses to be the Son in this respect, that he is not the same as the Father, nor was the Father ever the Son—lest the human mind should again imagine the divine offspring to extend to infinity; nor that the Son, in that same nature in which he is coeternal with the Father, should ever become the Father—lest again the divine offspring should be stretched out to infinity; but the Holy Spirit, who is neither the Father nor the Son, and therefore by no nature either begotten or begetting, but proceeding also from the Father and the Son.

What precisely is the mode of this procession we are no more able to declare clearly than the human mind can estimate the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father. Now that these things may be believed, the old and the new instruction informs us: concerning which—as concerning the citadel of our religion—many, holding diverse opinions, and judging humanly, and, so to speak, carnally, have spoken adverse things. As Arius, who, although he calls the Son God, nevertheless confesses him to be in many ways lesser than the Father and outside the substance of the Father. The Sabellians too dared to affirm that there are not three existing persons, but one: saying that the same is the Father who is the Son; and the same the Son who is the Father; and that the Holy Spirit is the same who is the Father and the Son;

and through this they say there is one person, marked under a diversity of names. The Manichaeans too, who profess two principles coeternal and adverse to each other, do not believe the Only-begotten to be of God: for they judge it unworthy, if God should seem to have a son, thinking nothing else than carnally; so that, because this generation proceeds from the commingling of two bodies, they hold it likewise unworthy to apply an understanding of this kind to God: which matter makes them neither receive the Old Testament, nor the New in its entirety. For just as their error does not receive that one at all, so it is unwilling to admit the generation of the Son from a virgin, lest the nature of God should seem to have been defiled by a human body.

But concerning these, thus far; for they will be placed in their own proper place, as the necessary order shall require. Therefore the divine nature, being from eternity, and enduring unto eternity without any mutability, by a will known to itself alone, of its own accord willed to fashion the world, and made it to be when it in no way existed; nor did it bring it forth from its own substance, lest it should be believed divine by nature; nor did it construct it out of anything else, lest there should already have existed something which by the existence of its own nature assisted his will, and there should be something which was neither made by him and yet existed; but by his word he produced the heavens, created the earth, in such a way that he made natures worthy of a heavenly habitation for heaven, and composed earthly things for the earth.

But concerning the heavenly natures, which are universally called angelic, although there all things are beautiful in their distinct orders, yet a certain part, desiring more than the nature and the very Author of natures had bestowed upon it, was cast down from the heavenly seat. And since the Creator did not wish the number of the angels—that is, of that supernal city, of which angels are the citizens—to remain diminished, he formed man from the earth, and animated him with the spirit of life, composed him with reason, adorned him with freedom of choice, and, having appointed a law beforehand, established him in the delights of paradise, that, if he were willing to remain without sin, he might join both him and his offspring to the angelic companies:

so that, because the higher nature had sought the lowest things through the evil of pride, the lower substance might ascend to the things above through the good of humility. But that author of envy, not bearing that man should ascend thither where he himself had not deserved to remain, by employing temptation brought it about that even man himself and his consort—whom the Fashioner had brought forth from his side for the sake of generation—should lie subject to the punishments of disobedience, promising to him too that divinity would be at hand, which, while he arrogantly usurped it for himself, he forfeited. Now these things were learned by the revelation of God to Moses his servant, to whom he also willed to make known the condition and origin of the human race, as the books brought forth by him bear witness.

All divine authority appears to consist in these modes: either it is the historical mode, which sets forth nothing other than deeds done; or the allegorical, such that the historical order cannot stand together with it; or else one composed of both, such that it appears to abide both according to history and according to allegory. Now these things shine forth fully enough and abundantly to those who understand piously and hold them with a truthful heart. But let us return to our order. The first man, therefore, before sin was, together with his spouse, a dweller in Paradise:

but when he lent his ear to the tempter and neglected to heed the command of the Creator, he was made an exile, commanded to till the earth, and, shut out from the bosom of Paradise, he transferred the posterity of his kind into unknown regions, and by generation transmitted to his descendants the punishment which he, the first man, guilty of transgression, had received. Hence it came about that both the corruption of bodies and souls and the destruction of death should arise; and he first deserved to experience death in his son Abel, that he might prove in his offspring how great was the punishment which he himself had received. For if he himself had died first, he would in a manner not have known, and—if it be lawful to say so—would not even have felt his own punishment;

but for this reason he experienced it in another, that he, the despiser, might recognize what was justly owed to him, and, while he endures the punishment of death, might be the more strongly tormented by the very expectation of it. Now this evil of transgression, which the first man had naturally infused into his posterity, a certain Pelagius, not admitting it, dedicated a heresy of his own name; which the Catholic faith is shown soon to have repelled from its fellowship. And so the human race, proceeding from that first man, and increasing in manifold multitude, burst out into strifes, stirred up wars, and took possession of earthly misery—he who had lost the felicity of Paradise in the first father. Nor yet were there lacking from among these those whom the grace of the Creator set apart for himself, and who served his good pleasure;

whom, although the desert of nature condemned them, yet by making them partakers of the sacrament which was to come and to be brought forth long afterward, he willed to repair the ruined nature. The world, therefore, was filled with the human race, and man, who by the malice of his own obstinacy had despised the Creator, entered upon his own ways. Hence God, willing rather to repair the human race through a just man than to let the perverse multitude remain, by pouring out the inundation of the flood permitted the penal multitude to perish, save only Noah, a just man, with his children and with those things which he had brought with him into the ark. But why he willed to rescue the just through the wood of the ark, is known to minds instructed in the divine Scriptures;

and as it were a certain first age of the world was brought to an end by the avenging flood. And so the human race is restored, yet did not cease to embrace the vice of its own nature, which the first author of transgression had infused, and the obstinacy which the wave of the flood had a little before punished grew again; and whereas through a numerous series of years it had been permitted to live, the human age was now confined to a brevity of years; and God preferred no longer to punish the human race by a flood, but, that race remaining, to choose men through whose succession some lineage should pass, from which, at the end of the world, he might grant us his own Son clothed in a human body.

Of these the first is Abraham, who, when he was advanced in age and his wife decrepit, deserved in his old age, by the bounty of the promise, to have a son. This one was called Isaac, and he himself begot Jacob. The same also begot the twelve patriarchs, God not reckoning in their number those whom nature had brought forth after its own manner. This Jacob, therefore, together with his sons and his household, willed to dwell in Egypt for the sake of transacting business; and there, the multitude increasing through a series of years, they began to be an object of suspicion to the Egyptian governments, and Pharaoh had decreed that they be pressed down with a great mass of burdens, and afflicted them with heavy loads.

At length God, despising the dominion of the king of Egypt, having divided the Red Sea—which no nature had ever before known—led his army across, with Moses and Aaron as leaders. Afterward, therefore, for their departure Egypt was laid waste with grievous plagues, when it was unwilling to let the people go. And so, the Red Sea having been crossed, as has been said, he came through the wastes of the desert to the mountain which is called Sinai; and there God, the Creator of all, willing to instruct the peoples by the grace of the sacrament to come, by the law given through Moses, established in what manner both the rites of sacrifices and the customs of the peoples should be ordered;

and when through many years they had also subdued many nations along the way, they came at length to the river which is called Jordan, with Joshua the son of Nun now as leader; and at their crossing, just as the waters of the Red Sea, so likewise the streams of the Jordan were dried up; and they arrived through it at that city which is now called Jerusalem. And while the people of God lingered there, after the judges and the prophets, kings are read to have been instituted: of whom, after Saul, David of the tribe of Judah is read to have obtained the primacy. And so from him, through the several successions, the royal lineage descended, and was carried down even unto the times of Herod, who, first among the Gentiles, is read to have reigned over the aforesaid peoples.

Under whom there arose the blessed Virgin Mary, who had come of the Davidic stock, who bore the Creator of the human race. Now this came to pass for this reason: because the world, infected with many crimes, lay in death, one nation was chosen, in which the commands of God might shine forth; and thither were sent prophets and other holy men, by whose admonition at least that people might be recalled from the swelling of stubbornness; but they, slaying those same men, willed to remain in the perversity of their own wickedness. And now in the last times God appointed neither prophets nor others well-pleasing to himself, but his own Only-begotten to be born through a virgin, that the salvation of mankind, which had perished through the disobedience of the first man, might through the God-man be repaired anew;

and because there had been a woman who had persuaded the first man to the cause of death, there should be this second woman who should bring the cause of life to human bodies. Nor let it seem of small account that the Son of God was born of a virgin, since beyond the mode of nature he was conceived and brought forth. And so a virgin conceived the incarnate Son of God by the Holy Spirit, a virgin bore him, after his bringing-forth she remained a virgin, and he was made man and is the same Son of God; so that in him both the splendour of the divine nature might shine forth, and the assumption of human frailty might appear. But against this faith, so sound and most true, there had arisen many who held diverse opinions; and, besides others, Nestorius and Eutyches arose as inventors of heresy:

of whom the one thought to assert that he was man only, the other that he was God only, and that the human body which Christ had put on had not come from a partaking of human substance. But of these, thus far. And so Christ grew according to the flesh; he was baptized, that he who was about to bestow upon others the form of baptizing might himself first receive what he taught. After his baptism he chose twelve disciples, of whom one was his betrayer; and because the people of the Jews did not bear sound doctrine, they, laying hands upon him, slew him with the punishment of the cross. Christ, therefore, is killed, he lies three days and three nights in the sepulchre; he rises again from the dead, just as, before the constitution of the world, he had decreed together with the Father;

he ascended into the heavens, where, in that he is the Son of God, he is known never to have been absent; that the Son of God might raise up with himself to the heavenly habitation the assumed man, whom the devil had not permitted to ascend to the things above. He gives, therefore, to his disciples the form of baptizing, of teaching things salutary, the power also of working miracles, and commands them to enter into the whole world unto life, that the saving proclamation might be preached not now only to one nation, but to the whole world. And because the human race had been wounded by the darts of eternal punishment by the desert of nature which it had contracted from the first transgressor, and was not fit for its own salvation, since it had lost it in its parent, he bestowed certain medicinal sacraments:

that it might recognize that one thing was owed to it through the desert of nature, and another through the gift of grace; so that nature should submit to nothing other than punishment, but grace, which is attributed to no merits—since it would not be called grace if it were bestowed for merits—should bring the whole of what belongs to its salvation.

That heavenly doctrine, therefore, is diffused through the world, the peoples are gathered into one, churches are instituted, and there is made one body which should occupy the breadth of the world; whose head, Christ, ascended into the heavens, that of necessity the members should follow their own head. This doctrine, then, both informs the present life with good works, and, after the consummation of the age, promises that our bodies, about to rise again, shall, free from corruption, be brought to the heavenly kingdoms; so that he who has lived well here, by his own gift, should be most blessed in that resurrection; but he who has lived ill should be present, wretched, after the gift of resurrection.

And this is the principal point of our religion: that we believe not only that souls do not perish, but that the very bodies also, which the coming of death had dissolved, shall be restored to their pristine state in future blessedness. This Catholic Church, therefore, diffused throughout the world, is proved to exist in three modes. Whatever is held in it is either the authority of the Scriptures, or the universal tradition, or else its own particular instruction; but it is wholly bound by authority, no less wholly by the universal tradition of the elders, while by private constitutions and proper instructions each particular church subsists and is governed, whether according to the variety of places, or as has seemed good to each.

This, then, is now the sole expectation of the faithful: whereby we believe that, at the future end of the world, all corruptible things shall pass away, that men shall rise again to the scrutiny of the future judgment, that each shall receive according to his merits, and shall abide forever and unto eternity within their appointed bounds; and that the sole reward of blessedness is the contemplation of the Creator—such only, however, as can be attained from the creature toward the Creator: so that out of these, the angelic number being repaired, that supernal city may be filled, where the king is the Son of the Virgin; and there shall be everlasting joy, delight, food, work, and perpetual praise of the Creator.