Anti-Arian Works 11

PROLOGUE. — 1. I have received the letter of your charity, my son Peter, in which you signified that you wished to journey to Jerusalem, and asked to be instructed by our writings as to what rule of the true faith you ought to hold in those parts, so that no sense of heretical falsehood might be able to creep upon you. I rejoice indeed that you bear such solicitude for guarding the true faith without any vice of perfidy, without which no conversion can profit, nay, cannot even exist. For the apostolic authority says that 'without faith it is impossible to please God' (Heb. 11:6). For faith is the foundation of all good things. Faith is the beginning of human salvation. Without it no one can belong to the number of the sons of God:

for without it no one in this world attains the grace of justification, nor in the world to come shall possess eternal life; and if anyone here does not walk by faith, he will not arrive at the sight [of God]. Without faith all the labor of man is empty. For it is just as if, without true faith, someone should wish to please God through contempt of the world: like someone who, journeying toward the homeland in which he knows he will live blessedly, abandons the straightness of the road and, being improvident, pursues the wandering path, by which he arrives not at the blessed city but falls into a precipice; where not joy is given to one arriving, but destruction is brought upon one falling. 2.

Nevertheless, that a sufficient discourse on faith may be brought forth, neither does the span of time favor it, since you desire quickly to have our answer, and so great is the work of this discussion that it can scarcely be fulfilled even by lengthy discourses. For you have not asked that you ought to be instructed on faith in such a way as to designate any one particular heresy, against which the intent of our discussion should specially keep watch:

but since you ask indefinitely for a definition of the faith, and desire it also to be concluded in brevity, you see beyond doubt how impossible it is for us to comprehend so great a matter fully in brief, for which we are not sufficient, even if we had so great a span of time and such genius that we could make many volumes on that which you require of us. But since God is near to all who call upon him in truth (Ps. 144:18), who making a full end and shortening [his word] has made it upon the earth (Rom. 9:28), I hope that, just as he has given you this holy solicitude for the faith, so also he will grant to me sufficient ability to serve your so good and so laudable desire:

so that even if I shall not be able to say all things by which every heretical error may be recognized, and, once recognized, may be either refuted or avoided, nevertheless, in the name and with the help of the holy Trinity, which is the one, sole, true, and good God, I shall say those things in which, at least in great part, it may be established that the reason of the catholic faith is contained without any fog of error. And these things being retained, you will also be able to detect and flee those which, even if in this work they are not seen to be refuted by special disputation, nevertheless from those things which here are set down generally and absolutely, may appear to be what unfaithful men wish (or are wont)

to whisper into the ears of the faithful, [things] not handed down by the rule of divine truth, but invented by the wickedness of human error. CHAPTER I. — 3. In whatever place, therefore, you shall be set, since, according to the rule promulgated by the command of our Savior, you know that you have been baptized in the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, hold principally and without doubt, with all your heart, that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, that is, that the holy and ineffable Trinity is by nature one God; concerning whom it is said in Deuteronomy: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (or, one Lord)' (Deut. 6:4). And, 'You shall adore the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve' (Ibid., 13).

Nevertheless, since we have said that this one God, who alone is by nature the true God, is not the Father alone, nor the Son alone, nor the Holy Spirit alone, but at once the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, care must be taken lest, just as we truly say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, as regards natural unity, so we should dare to say—which is altogether wicked—that he who is the Father is the same as either the Son or the Holy Spirit; or that he who is the Son is either the Father or the Holy Spirit; or that he who is properly called the Holy Spirit in the confession of this Trinity is personally either the Father or the Son. 4.

For the faith which the holy patriarchs and prophets received divinely before the incarnation of the Son of God, which also the holy apostles heard from the Lord himself set in the flesh, and, instructed by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, not only preached by word but also left behind, embodied in their writings, for the most salutary instruction of posterity, preaches that one God is a Trinity, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But there would not be a true Trinity if one and the same person were called Father and Son and Holy Spirit. For if, just as the substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, so there were one person, there would be absolutely nothing in which a Trinity could truly be spoken of.

Again, there would indeed be a true Trinity, but that Trinity would not be one God, if, just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinguished from one another by the property of persons, so they had also been separated by a diversity of natures. But because in that one true God, the Trinity, not only that he is one God, but also that he is a Trinity, is naturally true, therefore that same true God is a Trinity in persons, and in one nature is one. Through this natural unity the whole Father is in the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the whole Son is in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the whole Holy Spirit is in the Father and the Son. None of these is outside any of themselves (1 Sent., dist. 19, chap. 'Et inde'):

for no one either precedes another in eternity, or exceeds [another] in magnitude, or surpasses [another] in power. For as regards the unity of the divine nature, the Father is neither prior to, nor greater than, the Son or the Holy Spirit (Ibidem, chap. 'Nunc postquam'); nor can the eternity and immensity of the Son, as though prior or greater, either precede or exceed by nature the eternity and immensity of the Holy Spirit. As therefore neither is the Son posterior to or less than the Father, so neither is the Holy Spirit posterior to or less than the Son. For it is eternal and without beginning, that the Son came forth born of the nature of the Father; and it is eternal and without beginning, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the nature of the Father and the Son.

For this reason, therefore, we rightly believe and say that the three are one God, because there is altogether one eternity, one immensity, and by nature one divinity of the three persons. 5. Let us hold, therefore, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are by nature one God; yet that the Father is not the same who is the Son, nor is the Son the same who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit the same who is the Father or the Son (1 Sent., dist. 2, chap. 'Omnes autem catholici'). For there is one essence of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which the Greeks call ousia, in which the Father is not one thing, and the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another, although personally the Father is one, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another.

This is chiefly shown to us at the very beginning of the holy Scriptures, where God says: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness' (Gen. 1:26). For when he says 'image' in the singular number, he shows that there is one nature, to whose image man was to be made. But when he says in the plural, 'our,' he shows that the same God, to whose image man was being made, is not one person. For if in that one nature of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit there were one person, it would not be said, 'to our image,' but 'to my image'; nor would he have said 'let us make,' but 'let me make.' But if in those three persons three substances were to be understood or believed, it would not be said, 'to our image,' but 'to our images':

for one image of three unequal natures could not exist. But since man is said to have been made according to the one image of the one God, the divinity of the holy Trinity is essentially intimated as one. Then, and a little after, in place of that which God had said above: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' Scripture thus narrated man as made, so that it said: 'And God made man: to the image of God he made him' (Gen. 1:27). 6. This Trinity of persons and unity of nature the prophet Isaiah did not keep silent as having been revealed to him, when he says that he saw the Seraphim crying out: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts' (Isa. 6:3). Where indeed, in that it is said three times 'Holy,' [we recognize] the Trinity of persons;

but in that it is said once 'the Lord God of hosts,' we recognize the unity of the divine nature. In that holy Trinity, therefore, which is repeated by us for this reason, that it may be more tenaciously fixed in your heart, there is one Father, who alone essentially begot from himself one Son; and one Son, who alone was essentially born (or begotten) of one Father; and one Holy Spirit, who alone essentially proceeds from the Father and the Son. But this whole one person could not [do], that is, both to beget itself, and to be born of itself, and to proceed from itself. Since, therefore, to have begotten is other than to have been born, and to proceed (or to have proceeded)

is other than to have begotten or to have been born, it is manifest that the Father is one, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another. The Trinity, therefore, refers to the persons of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; the unity, to the nature. CHAPTER II. The Humanity of Christ. — 7. As therefore, according to that divinity by which the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one, we believe that neither the Father was born, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son alone: so also, according to the flesh, the catholic faith both believes and preaches that the Son alone was born. For neither in that Trinity would it be proper to the Father alone that he himself was not born, but begot the one Son;

nor would it be proper to the Son alone that he himself did not beget, but was born alone of the essence of the Father; nor would it be proper to the Holy Spirit that he himself was neither born nor begot, but alone proceeds from the Father and the Son; if, according to the divine nature indeed, God the Father were born of no God, yet according to the flesh he himself were born of a virgin. For if the Father were born of a virgin, the Father and the Son would be one person: and that same one person, inasmuch as it would be born not of God, but only of a virgin, would truly be called not the Son of God, but only the son of man; nor would the very Son of God say: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son' (John 3:16); and again:

'For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him' (Ibid., 17). Nor would blessed John have said: 'He who loves the begetter loves also him who is born of him' (1 John 5:1); nor would the Son himself have said: 'My Father works until now, and I work' (John 5:17). For he who is called the Son, if he were also the same as the Father, would not truly be called the Son of God, because he would be born not of God, but only of a virgin. And at the last, the Father himself would not testify from heaven and point out his own Son with a bodily voice, saying: 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' (Matt. 3:17). Nor would the Apostle Paul have said concerning God the Father:

'Who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all' (Rom. 8:32). 8. But since all these things have both been spoken divinely for our instruction, and, because they have been divinely spoken, are certainly true, that is true which the catholic faith preaches: that according to the divinity the Son alone was born of the Father, eternal with the Father, immortal, impassible, and immutable God; and that according to the flesh not the Father, but his only-begotten Son, his eternity being preserved, was born in time; his impassibility being preserved, suffered; his immortality being preserved, died; his immutability being preserved—by which he is true God and eternal life—was truly raised up.

He has everything in common with the Father which, being naturally eternal, He possessed without beginning; and He has nothing in common with the Father among those things which that eternal and exalted One received into His own person in time and in lowliness. 9. Again, if it were not He who is the proper and only-begotten Son of God the Father, but rather the Holy Spirit, who was born of the Virgin, then the holy Church would not believe in her heart unto righteousness, nor confess with her mouth unto salvation, that very Son who was made of a woman, made under the law, born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, received in the Creed.

But also, if the Holy Spirit Himself, who is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, had taken the form of a servant, then the Holy Spirit Himself would not have descended from heaven in the form of a dove upon that Man whom He Himself had made. 10. Therefore God the Father, begotten of no God, once from His own nature begot without beginning the Son, God equal to Himself, and co-eternal in that same divinity by which He Himself is naturally eternal. But this same Son of God, though He is eternal and true God, and with the Father according to divinity naturally one God—according to that which He says: 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30)—the same One for our sake was made a true and complete man. In Him true, because that God possesses a true human nature;

and in Him complete, because He took on both human flesh and a rational soul. Yet the same only-begotten God was born a second time: once of the Father, once of the mother; for God the Word was born of the Father, and the Word made flesh was born of the mother. 11. Therefore there is one and the same God, the Son of God, born before the ages and born in time; and both nativities belong to the one Son of God: the divine, according to which as Creator, in the form of God, He is God co-eternal with the Father;

the human, according to which, emptying Himself and taking the form of a servant, He not only formed Himself in the conception of the maternal womb by that same assumption of the servile form, while He became man, but also the same God made man went forth from that same womb of His mother, and the same God made man hung upon the cross, and the same God made man lay in the tomb, and the same God made man rose again from the dead on the third day; yet in the tomb the same God lay according to the flesh alone, and He descended into hell according to the soul alone. When He returned from the dead to the flesh on the third day, the same God, according to the flesh which lay in the tomb, rose again from the tomb;

and on the fortieth day after the resurrection, the same God made man, ascending into heaven, sat at the right hand of God, and from thence He will come at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead. 12. Therefore the Word made flesh is the one Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and men. And He is Mediator because He is at once the same true God and man, having with the Father one nature of divinity, and with the mother one substance of humanity; having from us, even unto death, the penalty of our iniquity; having from God the Father unchangeable righteousness; for the sake of our iniquity dying in time, but for the sake of His own righteousness Himself ever living, and about to bestow immortality upon mortals.

He preserved His perfect humanity in the very perfection of His divinity; yet the reality of His mortality, through the acceptance of death, He swallowed up by the reality and unchangeableness of His immortality. 13. This is what blessed Peter attests, that Christ swallowed up death, so that we might be made heirs of eternal life (cf. 1 Pet. 3:22). Blessed Paul also teaches that Christ swallowed up death, and brought to light life and incorruption (2 Tim. 1:10). Christ therefore tasted death, because He is true man; and the same One swallowed up death, because He is true God. For the same One, as the Apostle says, 'was crucified through weakness, yet lives by the power of God' (2 Cor. 13:4):

one and the same, who according to the prophecy of blessed David both was made man in Zion, and He Himself, the Most High, founded her (Ps. 87:5). Thus neither is the divinity of Christ foreign to the nature of the Father, according to that which says, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made' (John 1:1-3); nor is His humanity foreign to the nature of the mother, according to that which says, 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (ibid., 14). For that nature which always remains begotten of the Father took on our nature without sin, that He might be born of a virgin.

For an eternal and divine nature could in no way be conceived in time and born in time from a human nature, unless the ineffable divinity had, according to the assumption of true humanity, received in itself a true conception and nativity in time. Thus God, eternal and true, was truly both conceived and born of a virgin according to time. For when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons (Gal. 4:4-5)—namely, that God who was naturally made the Son of man, who is naturally the one Son of God the Father. This indeed the Evangelist John confirms, when, after he had said,

'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John 1:14), he immediately adds, 'And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth' (ibid.). Thus He, the Creator and Lord of all spirits and all bodies, that is, of all natures, created the Virgin, being about to be created from the Virgin; and He made a mother for Himself of her whose maker He is, when, being about to be conceived and brought forth from her flesh, the boundless and everlasting God received the true matter of flesh: so that both according to the reality of the servile form God might mercifully become man, and according to the form of God, remaining the same God, He might not lack that man by natural reality. 15.

Thus therefore believe that Christ, the Son of God, that is, one Person of the Trinity, is true God, so that you do not doubt that His divinity was born of the nature of the Father; and thus believe Him to be true man, so that you do not think His flesh to be born of heaven, or of air, or of any other thing, but of that whose flesh belongs to all men: that is, the flesh which God Himself formed from the earth for the first man, and forms for the rest of men, whom He creates by propagation from men. But although the flesh of Christ and of all men is of one and the same nature, yet this flesh, which God the Word deigned to unite to Himself from the Virgin Mary, was conceived without sin and born without sin:

so that, precisely according to it, the eternal and just God was mercifully both conceived and born, and the Lord of glory was crucified. 16. The desire of intercourse. — But with what words shall be explained the singular excellence of that flesh, whose person is divine from its very conception, whose origin of nativity is unwonted, whereby the Word was so made flesh that the Only-begotten and everlasting God was one Person with His own flesh, being conceived by the very conception of His flesh? But that flesh of other men is certainly born through human intercourse, the man sowing the seed, the woman conceiving and bearing.

And because, when man and woman join together to beget children, the intercourse of the parents is not without lust, for this reason the conception of the children born of their flesh cannot be without sin, since it is not propagation but lust that transmits sin to little ones; nor does the fecundity of human nature cause men to be born with sin, but the foulness of lust, which men have from the most just condemnation of that first sin. Therefore blessed David, although he was born of a lawful and just marriage, in which indeed no fault of infidelity nor stain of fornication could be found:

yet on account of original sin, by which the children of wrath are naturally bound—not only the children of the impious, but also all who are born of the sanctified flesh of the just—he cries out and says: 'Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me' (Ps. 51:5). Holy Job also says that man is not clean from filth, not even if his life upon earth be of one day (Job 14:4, according to the Septuagint). 17. The only-begotten Son of God, therefore, who is in the bosom of the Father, in order to cleanse the flesh and soul of man, was incarnate by the assumption of flesh and a rational soul; and He who is true God became true man, not that one should be God and another man, but the same God, the same man.

In order to take away that sin which the human race contracted in the intercourse of mortal flesh, He was conceived in a new manner, God incarnate in a virgin mother, without the union of a man, without the lust of the conceiving virgin: so that through the God-man, whom the inviolate womb of the virgin brought forth conceived without lust, might be washed away the sin which all men draw at birth—men for whom, in the body of this death, such is the condition of being born, that their mothers cannot fulfill the work of fecundity unless they first lose the virginity of the flesh.

The only-begotten God alone, therefore, took away the sin of human conception and nativity, who, while being conceived, received the reality of flesh from the virgin, and while being born, preserved the integrity of virginity in the mother. This is the reason why God became the son of the Virgin Mary, and Mary the virgin became the mother of the only-begotten God: so that Him whom the Father begot from eternity, the virgin might bring forth conceived in time—that virgin, indeed, whom God, who was to be born of her, so anticipated and filled with singular grace, that she might have as the fruit of her womb Him whom the whole universe has as its Lord from the beginning:

and she saw Him subject to herself by the solemn manner of being born, whom in the unity of the paternal substance not only human but also angelic creation acknowledges and adores as the Most High. 18. Thus therefore sin and the penalty of sin, which entered into the world through the crime of a corrupted woman, is taken away from the world through the childbearing of an inviolate virgin. And because in the condition of the human race it came about, through a woman who was made from a man alone, that we were held bound by the bond of death, this the divine goodness wrought in the redemption of the human race, that through a man who was born of a woman alone, life might be restored to men. There the devil, by his most wicked deception, associated human nature to himself in the likeness of sin;

here God took up human nature into the unity of His Person. There the woman was deceived, that she might become a daughter of the devil; here the virgin was filled with grace, that she might become the mother of the most high and unchangeable only-begotten God. There the angel, cast down through pride, gained possession of the mind of the seduced woman; here God, humbling Himself through mercy, being about to be born of her, filled the womb of the incorrupt virgin. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was in the form of God (which He could not be unless He were born of the nature of the Father), Himself, according to apostolic teaching, 'emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant' (Phil. 2:7).

The form of a servant, therefore, that is, the nature of a servant, that God took into His own Person, and thus, being the Maker of men, was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the Father even unto death, even the death of the cross (ibid., 8). 19. Ponder therefore attentively this saying of the Apostle, and in it you will learn how you are to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is the same God and man. Yet do not in Him either confound or divide the reality of both natures in one Person. When therefore you first hear of the Lord Jesus Christ that He was in the form of God, it behooves you to acknowledge and to hold most firmly that in that word 'form' the natural fullness ought to be understood.

In the form of God, therefore, was the Lord Jesus Christ, because He was always in the nature of God the Father, of whom He was born. Therefore He is of one nature with the Father, and equally with Him everlasting and boundless, equally immortal and unchangeable, equally invisible and inexpressible, equally good and just, equally compassionate and merciful, patient and full of mercy and truthful, equally strong and gentle, equally wise and almighty. 20. Accordingly, retain most firmly all these things which we have said of the Son of God, because, having all these things in unity of nature with the Father, He is without doubt equal to the Father. Wherefore the Apostle also, immediately adding, says:

'He thought it not robbery to be equal with God' (Phil. 2:6). For that equality of the Son with the Father in divinity was not of robbery, but of nature. Also those things which the Apostle consequently subjoins, saying that 'He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man; and that He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross'—all these things receive concerning that only-begotten God, the Son of God, concerning that Word who is God, of whom the Evangelist says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John 1:1); concerning that Power of God and Wisdom of God, of which it is said to God: 'Thou hast made all things in wisdom' (Ps.

104:24); concerning that Beginning with which the Father Himself is one Beginning, and in which, being co-eternal with Himself, He made heaven and earth, that is, every spiritual and corporeal nature; concerning the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, as I have said—receive all these things personally: preserving nevertheless the eternity, immensity, immortality, unchangeableness, and invisibility of His divinity. These things the Son of God has so naturally and equally in common with God the Father, that, although for our sake He was truly made man, He nonetheless remained equal to God the true Father, of whom He was born, true God and Truth. He therefore emptied Himself, but 'of His fullness have we all received' (John 1:16):

which fullness, if in emptying Himself He had lost it, He would surely not have that which He might give us from it. And if He did not have it, we without doubt could receive nothing. But of His fullness have we all received. From this, therefore, that He gave us of His fullness, He shows also that when He emptied Himself He did not lose the fullness which He had: because if He were to lose His fullness, He could in no way give from it. He took, therefore, the form of a servant: for that emptying of the most high God was nothing else than the acceptance of the servile form, that is, of human nature. 21. Both forms, therefore, are in Christ, because both substances are true and full in Christ.

Therefore the holy Evangelist proclaims Him full of grace and truth (ibid., 14), because both in the divine nature, in which God is Truth, He is full; and in the human nature, in which the true man was made by grace, He is full. In that fullness He is God, in the form of God, equal to God; in this fullness a servant, in the form of a servant, because being made in the likeness of men, He was found in fashion as a man. Emptying Himself, therefore, He took the form of a servant that He might become a servant; but He did not lose the fullness of the form of God, in which He is always the eternal and unchangeable Lord: being made, according to the form of a servant, a true man, of the same nature as His handmaid mother;

and remaining in the form of God true God, of the same nature of which the Father the Lord also is. In the form of God, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He is one sole God, Fashioner of all things; according to the form of a servant, He alone is fashioned by His own operation and that of the Father and the Holy Spirit: in that He is Creator, having this in common naturally with the Father and the Holy Spirit; but in that He is created, having personally in Himself alone the form of a servant according to which He was created. His future nativity according to the flesh, and His death and resurrection, and His ascension into the heavens, the Law and the prophets never ceased to foretell, just as He Himself commanded, being obedient both in words and in deeds. 22.

For also in the sacrifices of fleshly victims, which the holy Trinity itself, which is the one God of the New and the Old Testament, commanded to be offered by our fathers, there was signified that most acceptable gift of that sacrifice, by which God the Son alone was mercifully to offer Himself for us according to the flesh. For He Himself, according to apostolic teaching, 'offered Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor' (Eph. 5:2). He Himself is true God and true high priest, who for us entered once into the holy places, not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with His own blood (Heb. 9:12).

This is what that high priest signified, who year by year entered into the holy of holies with blood. He therefore is the One who exhibited in Himself alone all that He knew to be necessary for the effecting of our redemption, namely the same priest and sacrifice, the same God and temple: priest, through whom we are reconciled; sacrifice, by which we are reconciled; temple, in which we are reconciled; God, to whom we are reconciled. Yet He alone is priest, sacrifice, and temple, because all these He is as God according to the form of a servant; but not God alone, because this He is with the Father and the Holy Spirit according to the form of God. 23. We are therefore reconciled through the Son alone according to the flesh, but not to the Son alone according to divinity:

for the Trinity reconciled us to itself by this, that the Trinity itself made the Word alone flesh. In whom the unchangeable reality of the human and divine nature so abides, that just as His divinity, which He has unchangeable from the Father, is ever true, so His humanity, which the supreme divinity bears united to itself, is ever true and unchangeable. 24. These few things concerning the faith of the holy Trinity, which alone and truly is naturally God, I have inserted, as far as the brevity of time and of speech has permitted. Now I will intimate what you ought to believe without doubt concerning the creature. CHAPTER III. — 25. Whence created natures make progress and fall away. — Hold therefore principally that every nature (or: creature)

which is not the Trinity, God, was created out of nothing by that same holy Trinity, which alone is the true and eternal God. And thus that all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers, are the work and creature of the holy Trinity, which is the one God, Creator and Lord of all things, eternal, almighty, just, and good, having naturally that it should always be, and that it can never at any time be changed. And this God, who is always without beginning, because He supremely is, gave to the things created by Him that they should be: not, however, without beginning, because no creature is of the same nature of which the Trinity, the one true and good God, is, by whom all things were created.

And because He is supremely good, He gave to all the natures (or: things) which He made that they should be good: not, however, as good as the Creator of all good things, who is not only supremely good, but is also the supreme and unchangeable good, because He is the eternal good; having no defect, because He is not made from nothing; having no growth, because He has no beginning. For this reason indeed the natures made by God can fall away, because they began to be; for this reason they can fail, because they were made from nothing. The condition of their origin leads them toward defect, but the operation of the Creator advances them toward progress.

In this, therefore, first, the natural eternity of the Trinity without beginning, which is the true God, is recognized: because it made certain things in such a way that, although they indeed began to be, yet they can never at any time not be. But in this, His omnipotence is understood: because He made every creature, visible and invisible, that is, corporeal and spiritual, out of nothing; in which the very diversity of things much more commends the goodness and omnipotence of the Creator. For unless He were omnipotent, He would not have made the highest and the lowest with one and the same ease; and unless He were supremely good, He would not have granted Himself to the governing even of the lowest things. 26.

Heavenly and earthly bodies differ. — Therefore in things great as well as small that have been established, great is the goodness and omnipotence of the Founder. For the supreme and true Wisdom made all things wisely, to which this is naturally the same—to be, and to be wise; to make, and to make wisely. The simplicity, therefore, of the manifold Wisdom of God commends the greatness of His sublimity not only in the greatness of lofty creatures, but also in the smallness of the lowest: since all the good things which He created are not only far inferior and unlike their Creator, being not brought forth from Him but made utterly from nothing;

but they are also not equal among themselves, but each thing remains just as it received from God that it should be, one indeed thus, another otherwise. For it was not given to bodies to be as spirits received: since bodies themselves are not equal, and even among heavenly and earthly things some diversity is found: since heavenly things as well as earthly ones not only differ in unequal quantity of mass, but also shine with dissimilar brightness. For there is, as the Apostle says, one glory of heavenly bodies, and another of earthly. Among the heavenly ones too there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory (1 Cor.

15:41). The diversity of corporeal natures, therefore, shows that each of them is not what it could have of itself forever, but what it received from the disposition and work of the most omnipotent, unchangeable, and most wise Creator. 27. God is everywhere. — But if any corporeal creature were of the one and same nature of which the holy Trinity is, which is the one God, it would neither be locally in a place, nor ever feel the change of time, nor pass from place to place, nor be circumscribed by the quantity of its mass.

All which things show that the Maker of such natures is One to whom no place is broad or narrow, because He is no less whole in the narrow than in the broad; nor is He changed by time, because He alone can wondrously order the courses of the ages, not by temporal mutability but by eternal stability: for He does not think in time how the series of the ages runs on by the passing away and succession of things; nor is He bounded by any quantity of mass, because He is enclosed by no limit; nor is He Himself diffused through the parts of the world by His own parts, so as to fill the greater parts of the world with His greater and the smaller with His smaller, and yet nowhere pour Himself out whole. For He is the God who says:

'I fill heaven and earth' (Jer. 23:24). Therefore all things which He made, that is, spirits and bodies, the highest and the lowest, heavenly and earthly, living things and those to which He did not give the faculty of living, the Lord God ineffably fills and contains everywhere as a whole; nor is He Himself divided in those things which are divided, nor is He varied by any change in those things which are changed. For unless He were naturally unchangeable, never in changeable things would a certain unchangeable order of His counsel and disposition remain. 28. God is the life of all.

— God therefore, the boundless Creator of corporeal and incorporeal things, first shows Himself to be no body by this, that He did not give life to certain bodies, although He Himself created all bodies. But He Himself is naturally life, because if He were not life, He would not have made living bodies. For a living thing makes nothing except a living thing (unless the making be that of a living thing). Bodies, therefore, which cannot live at all, are not of one nature with God. And thus neither are those bodies of one nature with God into each of which He inserted individual brute and irrational spirits, by which those same bodies might be made alive and endowed with sensation.

But neither are the brute spirits themselves of one nature with God, which, although they are known to have been inserted for the making alive and giving sensation to bodies, yet He bestowed on those very spirits no light of understanding by which they might be able either to know or to love their Creator. 28b. As for those spirits also, which there is no doubt are rational and intellectual, who would dare, with blasphemous spirit and blind heart, either to think or to say that they are of the same nature of which God is, since God is assuredly by nature altogether unchangeable and boundless? He who, though He can have no diversity in Himself, yet in those same spirits, which He made rational and intellectual, shows the diversity of His operation.

For in certain of them, that is, those which are inserted into earthly and mortal bodies, even though there is no local motion—because through the parts of corporeal places, since they themselves are in bodies, they are not present part by part, but as they are whole in whole bodies, so they are whole in the parts of those same bodies—yet the variety of their thoughts shows in them a diversity of a certain temporal motion and mutation; since now they are ignorant of something, now they know it; now they will, now they are unwilling; now they are wise, now foolish; now unjust from just, now just from unjust; now they are illumined by the light of piety, now depraved by the dark error of impiety. 29.

Those also whom no muddy matter of earthly bodies weighs down, that is, the angelic spirits, who would not see that they are not of one nature with God, but made from nothing? Their natural mutability is recognized in this, that a part of the same nature was changed for the worse.

Then, because those which have not been depraved (although, by the gift of Him by whom they were made when they were not, they unceasingly receive the multitude of the Lord's sweetness with untiring and, as far as is freely given to the angelic creature, perfect love, contemplation, and exultation, nor fall away from Him by their natural condition)—even though in those cleaving to God there is nothing of the variety of time, because by the gift of eternal incorruption and unchangeableness conferred upon them, they feel in themselves no change—yet there is in each a natural limit by which they are distinguished from one another, because none of them is in another;

And when some work or other is enjoined upon one of them, another too is appointed by the decision of the divine power to fulfil another work. All these things show that even the holy angels are a creature of the holy Trinity, in whose every work—which he assuredly made just as he willed—there appears both a marvellous wisdom in the ordering and a power in the performing. Some spirits, then, God so created that they should exist forever; but others, so that they should at some time cease to be spirits. Those, therefore, that were destined to cease he brought forth—some out of water, and some, because the Almighty so willed, out of earth. But the higher spirits he made to have no natural fellowship with bodily elements;

these he created both eternal, and into them he implanted the faculty and the intelligence for thinking upon, knowing, and loving the Godhead. Yet he so created them that they should love him above their very selves—him by whose work they knew themselves to have been created such—since no merits of theirs had gone before that they should be made such. But that this love might have just and fitting praise, he granted them also freedom of will: so that it should be possible for them either to raise the intention of holy love toward him who is above them, or to bend themselves down, by the weight of a depraved (or: grievous) desire, toward themselves or toward the things that are beneath them.

There is therefore no nature which can subsist in eternity, whether living wretchedly or blessedly, except that which can think about God by the gift of God himself. Now this intellectual nature exists in the souls of men and in the spirits of angels. For God has bestowed the faculty of knowing and loving him upon none but angels and men. To these, on account of the freedom of the will—which above all ought to be conferred upon the intellectual creature by the Creator's kindness (or: goodness)—he so gave the faculty and the will of knowing and loving him, that each one could both possess it and lose it; yet if anyone should lose it of his own accord, he would afterward not be able by his own decision to take it up again.

so that it might belong to him to pour anew into whomever he willed, by the gift of gratuitous goodness, the beginnings of that holy thought—to him whose it was, in the very outset of creation, with no preceding merits, wondrously to arrange spirits and bodies, in places and dispositions fitting, just as he in his wisdom willed. Angels therefore and men, inasmuch as they were made rational, received divinely the gift of eternity and blessedness in the very creation of their spiritual nature: so, namely, that if they had clung continually to the love of their Creator, they would likewise have remained eternal and blessed; but if by the choice of their own freedom, against the (or: his own)

Creator's command they strove to do their own will, then blessedness would at once depart from the obstinate, and a wretched eternity would be left to them for punishment, to be tormented thereafter by errors and by pains. And concerning the angels indeed he ordained and fulfilled this: that if any of them should lose the goodness of his will, he should never repair it by any divine gift. That portion of the angels, therefore, which departed from God its creator—by whom alone, as its good, it was blessed—by an utterly voluntary aversion, found, by the judgment of the heavenly equity, the beginning of its own damnation in that very aversion of the will: so that for it, to begin now to be punished was nothing else than to be deprived of the love of that beatific good;

which God so ordained to remain wholly in eternal punishment that he even prepared for it an eternal fire: in which all those transgressor angels can never be without either an evil will or punishment; but while the evil of their unjust aversion abides in them, the eternal damnation of a just retribution likewise abides. The prince of these evils, the devil, who out of envy led the first men to the precipice of sin, engrafted the desert of death, together with the fault of sin, not only upon them but also upon their whole posterity.

But God, merciful and just, just as—when the devil and his angels fell by their own will—he confirmed the other angels in the eternity of his love, so likewise he did not permit the whole mass of the human race to perish forever, but predestined those whom his gratuitous goodness willed to be led back to the light, the darkness being repelled in which all human birth lies under the condemnation of original sin: showing especially in this, that he was releasing these from the bonds of original sin by the undeserved grace of the Deliverer; while eternal damnation held others—and most of all little children, in whom there can be no merits, whether good or bad, of their own will—bound by an indissoluble bond.

God plainly shows also that the beginning of good will and good thought is not born to man from himself, but is prepared and bestowed in him divinely, by this: that neither the devil nor any of his angels, from the time when by the desert of that ruin they were thrust down into this lower gloom, has been able or will be able to recover a good will. For if it were possible that human nature, after it had turned away from God and lost the goodness of its will, could of itself possess it again, this would be much more possible for the angelic nature, which, the less it is weighed down by the burden of an earthly body, so much the more would be endowed with this capacity.

But God has shown whence good will is given to men—the very will which the angels so lost while they possessed it, that, once lost, they can thereafter possess it no more. Since therefore that same good will is worthy, through the grace of God, of the reward of eternal blessedness, and since the iniquity of angels and of men ought not to be unpunished, therefore, according to the rule of the catholic faith, we faithfully await that the Son of God will come to punish all the sinning angels and to judge the living and the dead. For blessed Peter testifies that God did not spare the angels that sinned, but thrusting them down into the prisons of the gloom of hell, delivered them to be kept for punishment in the judgment (2 Peter 2:4).

Concerning the living and the dead who are to be judged, blessed Paul says this: I charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his coming and his kingdom (2 Tim. 4:1). At his coming all men will be raised—from the body of that first man which God fashioned out of the earth, down to the bodies of all men that at any time began to live once animated—by him by whose working they were created. And in the resurrection each single body will be restored to each of its own souls, which they began to have in their mothers' wombs so that they might begin to live:

namely, that at that examination of the just Judge the souls may receive, in those same individual bodies of theirs, retribution—whether of the kingdom or of punishment—in which bodies they possessed either the good or the evil quality of the present life. The origin of the evil life. The evil quality of life, however, begins from unbelief, which takes its beginning from the guilt of original sin. In which if anyone begins so to live that he ends his life before he is loosed from its obligation, even if that soul has lived in the body for the space of a single day or a single hour, it must necessarily, together with that same body, endure the endless torments of Gehenna, where the devil with his angels is to burn forever, who both sinned first and persuaded the first men to sin:

where, together with him, also fornicators, those who serve idols, adulterers, the effeminate, men who lie with men, thieves, the covetous, drunkards, revilers, the rapacious, and all who do the works of the flesh—concerning whom the blessed Apostle says that they shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21)—if before the end of this life they have not turned from their evil ways, shall be burned in eternal fires. For every man who in this world remains to the end in the delight of iniquities and in hardness of heart, just as here a harmful delight in crimes held him, so without end an everlasting torment shall hold him. The bodies of the impious.

For there will be a resurrection even of the unrighteous, but without that transformation which God will give only to the faithful and to those who live justly by faith. For this is what blessed Paul says: We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed (1 Cor. 15:51). And showing that the just are to be transformed by the divine gift, he says: And we shall be changed (ibid. 52). The unrighteous, therefore, will have a resurrection of the flesh in common with the just, yet they will not have the grace of transformation which will be given to the just: for from the bodies of the impious there will not be taken away the corruption, and the dishonour, and the weakness in which they are sown; which for this reason will not even be extinguished by death, that this perpetual torment may be to body and soul the punishment of eternal death.

But the just souls, whom here God the Redeemer justified freely by faith, and to the justified granted perseverance in living well unto the end, in those very bodies in which here they divinely received the grace of justification, and in which, justified by faith, they lived in the love of God and neighbour, shall flourish in the eternal blessedness of the heavenly kingdom: their bodies also glorified, which without doubt—the nature of the flesh which God created truly remaining—they will then have not, as here, animal, but spiritual. For the body of the saints is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body. In them, through that transformation which will be given only to the just, there shall be fulfilled what the Apostle says must come to pass (1 Cor.

15:53): that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. In them the sex, male or female, just as those same bodies were created, will remain: whose glory will be diverse according to the diversity of their good deeds. Yet all the bodies, whether of men or of women, whatsoever shall be in that kingdom, will be glorious: but that Judge knows how much glory he is to give to each, since in this life he anticipates by mercy, justifying freely, those whom he there disposes (or: disposed) to glorify by justice. But the time for acquiring eternal life God has granted to men in this life only, where he also willed penitence to be fruitful.

Now penitence is fruitful here for this reason: that here a man can, laying aside his malice, live well, and, his unjust will being changed, change likewise both his merits and his works, and in the fear of God do those things which please God. Whoever does not do this in this life will indeed have penitence in the world to come concerning his evils, but will not find pardon in the sight of God: because although there will be there the sting of repentance, yet there will be there no further correction of the will. For by such persons their own iniquity will be so blamed that in no way can justice be either loved or desired by them. For their will shall be such that it always has within itself the punishment of its own malignity, yet can never receive the affection for goodness.

For just as those who will reign with Christ will have in themselves no remnants of an evil will, so those who will be reckoned in the punishment of eternal fire with the devil and his angels, just as they will have no further rest, so they will in no way be able to have a good will. And just as to the co-heirs of Christ there will be given the perfection of grace unto eternal glory, so upon the associates of the devil that very malignity will heap up their punishment, when, appointed to the outer darkness, they will be illumined by no interior light of truth.

The keys of Peter. Accordingly, penitence can be profitable to every man in this life: whensoever a man performs it—however wicked, however aged—if with his whole heart he renounces his past sins, and for them in the sight of God sheds tears not only of the body but also of the heart, and takes care to wash away the stains of evil works by good works, he shall straightway have pardon of all his sins. For this the Lord promises us by prophetic utterance, saying: If you are converted and groan, you shall be saved (Isa. 30:15, according to the Septuagint). And in another place it is said: Son, you have sinned; add not again, but pray also concerning your past sins, that they may be forgiven you (Sir. 21:1).

A prayer for sins would never have been enjoined upon the sinner, if remission were not to be granted to the one who prays. But penitence also then profits the sinner, if he performs it in the catholic Church: to which, in the person of blessed Peter, God granted the power of binding and loosing, saying: Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven (Matt. 16:19). At whatever age, therefore, a man performs true penitence for his sins, and, God enlightening him, corrects his life, he will not be deprived of the gift of pardon; because God, as he says through the prophet, does not will the death of him who dies, but that

he should turn from his evil way, and his soul should live (Ezek. 33:11). Nevertheless, no man ought, under the hope of God's mercy, to remain longer in his sins, since not even in his own body would anyone, under the hope of future health, wish to lie sick longer. For such as neglect to withdraw from their iniquities, and promise themselves pardon from God, are sometimes so forestalled by God's sudden wrath that they find neither a time for conversion nor the benefit of remission. Therefore holy Scripture kindly forewarns each one of us, saying: Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and put it not off from day to day: for his anger will come suddenly, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you (Sir.

5:8). Blessed David also says: Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts (Ps. 95:8). With whom blessed Paul also agrees in these words: Take heed, brethren, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, departing from the living God: but exhort one another every day, while it is called Today, that none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Heb. 3:12-13). Hardened, therefore, lives either he who is not converted, despairing of the pardon of his sins, or he who so hopes for the mercy of God that up to the end of the present life he remains in the perversity of his crimes. The sin against the Holy Spirit.