Anti-Arian Works 8

CHAPTER ONE. Since you, most dear son Felix, kindled with the warmth of faith, often inquire of me how you ought to believe concerning the Holy Trinity, which is God, or how you may, with the Lord's help, defend the catholic and orthodox faith against the errors of the heretics—especially of those whose company you frequent—and by this avoid their snares; I have judged it necessary and profitable to me to answer your requests.

But would that as fittingly and suitably as I have the will, that same unchangeable Trinity Itself—in whose hand are both we and our words—would grant, for the announcing of Itself, both a right discourse and a sincere faith, so that I might be able fully to satisfy your holy desire and your zeal burning to learn. That faith, then, believe that we wish to make known to your most sincere mind, by which the patriarchs were justified, the prophets, the apostles, the crowned martyrs; which the holy Church still holds throughout the whole world, whose splendor, illuminating the minds of believers, makes them partakers of eternal life.

This faith, even until now, is preached through the series of successions by the bishops of those very cities: in the chair of the apostle Peter at Rome or at Antioch, in the chair of the evangelist Mark at Alexandria, in the chair of the evangelist John at Ephesus, in the chair of James at Jerusalem. Compel therefore the Arians, Donatists, Nestorians, Eutychians, Manichaeans, and the rest of the plagues of the heresies to commune with these Churches over which the apostles presided. They do not consent, because through the perversity of their faith they have willed, being divided from the unity of the Church, to be in a part. Whence also the apostle John says: They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us (1 John 2:19).

They went out from us indeed, because with a most insane heart they separated themselves from the unity of the Church. They were not of us—that is, of the predestined and of those elected unto eternal life. For they were not of those of whom the Lord says: I have chosen you and appointed you, that you should go and bring forth much fruit, and that your fruit should remain (John 15:16). Nor are they blessed in the seed of Abraham, according to what the Lord said to Abraham: In your seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen. 26:4); and the Apostle, adding on, joins: Not in seeds, as of many, but in your seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16).

Since all nations deserve to be blessed in Christ and through Christ into the unity of faith, the heretics are not blessed, because they do not have the unity of faith, but, fattened on the pasture of error, through pride they have become not sons of God but sons of the devil. Whence, having the eyes of their heart darkened, they cannot see the whole world redeemed by the blood of Christ and made harmonious in the unity of faith, according to what is designated of the primitive Church: They had, it says, one heart and one soul unto God (Acts 4:32). Thus the whole world is called redeemed; thus the whole world is called redeemed among all nations. And the nations shall fear, it says, Your name, O Lord, and all the kings of the earth Your glory (Ps. 102:15). And again:

All the nations whom You have made shall come and adore before You, O Lord (Ps. 86:9); or again: All the ends of the earth shall remember and be converted to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall adore in His sight. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He shall have dominion over the nations (Ps. 22:27-28). What shall the wretched say who, cut off from the Church of God, with an impenitent heart contradict that very Church; and while they strive to rend her—she who is the seamless tunic of the Lord—are themselves more easily rent asunder? Let these be questioned one by one. This one says he is redeemed by the blood of Christ. Was, then, the blood of Christ shed only for the Arians, or only for the Donatists? God forbid. Truth does not say so.

God does not say thus to Abraham: In your seed, He says, shall all nations be blessed (Gen. 26:4). Not one nation, but all. Not this one and that, but the whole. Nor yet in a diverse faith, but in one, since the Apostle says, One faith (Eph. 4:5). In one faith, namely, are believers saved: through the unity of faith the catholic Church has one heart and one soul unto God. This right faith, which makes the diverse hearts of believers to be one, is praised by the mouth of the apostle Paul. I give thanks, he says, to my God, because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world (Rom. 1:8). The one faith, which is proclaimed throughout the whole world, is itself to be praised and preached.

CHAPTER TWO. Receive the faith in which long ago you were reborn as one believing—in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son. And since there are three, what, I ask, is the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in which we must be baptized, if not that name of the Godhead, which cannot be tripled? For although we say the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet we do not say three gods, because it is written: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one (Deut. 6:4). There is therefore one God in nature, not in person: because the person of the Father is one, that of the Son another, that of the Holy Spirit another.

The Father is begotten of none, the Son is begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Father is not for Himself, but for the Son; the Son is not for Himself, but for the Father; the Spirit is of some one who breathes: therefore He is referred to the Father and the Son. These relative names, then, constitute the Trinity; but the essential names are in no way tripled. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Good the Father, good the Son, good the Holy Spirit. Loving the Father, loving the Son, loving the Holy Spirit. Just the Father, just the Son, just also the Holy Spirit. Almighty the Father, almighty the Son, almighty also the Holy Spirit.

And yet we do not say three Gods, nor three goods, nor three loving, nor three just, nor three almighty, but one God, good, loving, just, almighty—Father and Son and Holy Spirit: where there is one nature, essence, or substance. For whatever of these names you say in that holy and only Trinity signifies one and the same thing. The essence of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not diverse. But if it were, neither would the Son be truly begotten of the Father, nor would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son. But because the Son is true—that is, begotten of the essence of the Father—the Holy Spirit also is true, proceeding from the Father and the Son.

But if the Son or the Holy Spirit were of another kind than the Father, neither would the Son truly be the Father's, whom a differing essence would make a stranger; likewise neither would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son—which it is madness to say: for holy Scripture manifests to the faithful, by trustworthy narration, both the Son begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father. CHAPTER THREE. There are therefore three certain things, coeternal, consubstantial, coessential. But when it was asked by the Fathers, and it was said: Three what?—they dared to say neither essences, nor substances, nor natures, lest perchance some diversity of essences, or of natures, or of substances be believed: but they said three persons, one essence:

so that the one essence might declare the one God, while the three persons might show forth the holy Trinity. Nor do we say this, that only the Trinity is God, and not each single person. For the Father alone is God, and the Son alone is God, and the Holy Spirit alone is God. I say 'alone' because the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. Yet the Trinity, inseparable, unchangeable, infinite, does not admit three Gods, just as it does not admit three essences, or substances, or natures; and therefore the Son is by no means to be called, in that in which He is equal to the Father, either created out of something, or established out of nothing:

because what the Father is, this He begot: God begot God, light begot light, the unchangeable begot the unchangeable, the infinite the infinite, the eternal the coeternal. Similarly also concerning the Holy Spirit we believe that He is that which is He from whom He proceeds. Let us then see henceforth whether we may prove these things which we have said by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures. First it must be asked whether God is a Trinity. Let us make, He says, man to our image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). And again, Come, let us go down, He says, and confound there their tongues (Gen. 11:7). Now 'our' and 'let us go down' suggest a plurality of persons, not of gods. Likewise the vision of three men to Abraham and the entreaty of one Lord. And:

The Lord rained from the Lord upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord (Gen. 19:24). And: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand (Ps. 110:1). And: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Ps. 33:6). What else do these show than the Trinity? And more openly indeed does the Lord in the Gospel: Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). And again: A voice was made from heaven saying: This is My beloved Son, hear Him (Matt. 17:5). And again and again he says, I saw the Spirit of God descending and remaining like a dove upon Him (John 1:32). CHAPTER FOUR.

Lo, you have in brief that the Father is one, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another; one and another in person, not one thing and another in nature; and therefore, I, He says, and the Father are one (John 10:30). 'One' teaches us to refer to nature; 'we are' to the persons. Likewise also that: There are three, He says, who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one (1 John 5:7). Let Sabellius hear 'we are,' let him hear 'three,' and let him believe that there are three persons, and let him not with a sacrilegious heart blaspheme, saying that He is His own Father, He His own Son, He His own Holy Spirit—as though in some manner He begets Himself, or in some manner proceeds from Himself;

since this can by no means be found even in created natures, that anything should be able to beget itself. Let Arius likewise hear 'One,' and let him not say the Son is of a differing nature, since a diverse nature cannot be called one. The Son therefore cries out, I and the Father are one (John 10:30); and: He who sees Me sees also the Father (John 14:9). And the Apostle concerning Him: Who, being in the form of God, He says, thought it not robbery to be equal to God (Phil. 2:6); and: For this reason, He says in the Gospel, the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because He not only broke the sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal to God (John 5:18). And Arius with a blasphemous spirit contradicts:

They are not one, they are not equal, because the Son Himself says of Himself: The Father is greater than I (John 14:28); and He testifies that He was often sent by the Father. O unhappy error and pestilential doctrine, ignorant of the dispensation of the manhood made in time for the salvation of the human race! I ask, in what respect is the Father greater than the Son? According to substance, or according to power, or according to goodness, or according to incorporeality, or according to eternity? If the God the Only-begotten is the image of the unbegotten God the Father, the truth of a perfect and absolute substance is in Him, whereby He is made to be the image of the truth. The Father is powerful; but if the Son is weak, He is no longer the image of the powerful.

The Father is good; but if the Son is of a divinity of a diverse kind, an evil nature will not render the image of the good. The Father is incorporeal; but if the Son according to the spirit is circumscribed by a body, then the corporeal is not the form of the incorporeal. The Father is eternal; but if the Son is not coeternal, then the name of paternity accrued to the Father in time; and then not all things were made through the Word, since a time is found prior to the Word, before, when the Father was without the Son. But Scripture evidently declares the Word to be the image of God the Father, and all things to have been made through Him.

Or does he perhaps carry the sense of his impious profession to this, that he believes the Holy Spirit to be good indeed, but the Son better, and the Father best; or with a sacrilegious sense asserts the Holy Spirit to be powerful, but the Son more powerful, and the Father most powerful; or, blaspheming, teaches the Holy Spirit to be just, but the Son more just, and the Father most just? Therefore he is not held under the profession of one God, but after the manner of the heathen he is bound over to the cult of many gods, while with rash presumption he supposes God the Father greater, the Son lesser, and the Holy Spirit less than lesser. Let the error of those who refuse to be Israel have a greater God and a lesser God, and with stopped-up ears not hear:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (Deut. 6:4); and that: You shall adore the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve (Deut. 6:13). CHAPTER FIVE. But lest perhaps with a blinded heart they believe the Son, or the Holy Spirit, not to be God, and after the manner of the blaspheming Jews deny Him to be God, let them be convinced by the testimonies of the sacred Scriptures. Whose are the fathers, says the Apostle, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is blessed God forever (Rom. 9:5). And again the apostle John: That we may be, he says, in His true Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life (1 John 5:20). And concerning the Holy Spirit John the evangelist: The Spirit, he says, is God (John 4:24).

And the Apostle, when he called the Holy Spirit the indweller of the Church: Do you not know, he says, that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Glorify and bear the Lord in your body (1 Cor. 6:19-20). And in the Acts of the Apostles: Ananias, said Peter, why has Satan tempted your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3)? And a little after he adds: You have not lied to men, but to God (Acts 5:4). Lo, he has the Son as God, the Holy Spirit as God. Concerning the Father, that He is God, there is no need to prove, whom he without ambiguity believes to be God. But concerning the Son or the Holy Spirit, almost all holy Scripture resounds with this; but for brevity of speech we have plucked a few passages therefrom.

But we believe the Son to be lesser, or sent, according to that which the Apostle also says: God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. 4:4). Now 'made of a woman,' that is, born of the Virgin Mary: because He who was born of the Father without beginning, by being born of a mother, received a certain beginning of time. Who also, when He was in the form of God, says the Apostle, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in habit as a man, humbled Himself even unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2:6-8). 'Who when in the form of God,'

he says, when He was—that is, when in substance He was God—did not snatch at the deity which He naturally had with the Father; but emptied Himself, that is, He appeared to the human race not in that which is God and equal to the Father; but, man having been assumed, God not being consumed, in the unity of person, and in this world He appeared, and sustained sufferings, and passed through human affections—which were fitting and which He willed—without fault. According to this human form He is not equal to the Father, He Himself saying, The Father is greater than I (John 14:28). But according to that in which He is equal to the Father, He says: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). According to the human form, He came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15);

according to the divine, He was in the world, and the world was made through Him (John 1:10). And therefore it behooves us to believe two substances, or natures, or forms (whichever of these you say, it is the same) in the one Son of God: one indeed of God, the other of man; so that the one Son of God may be believed to be true God and true man; lest, like Nestorius, introducing the man born of the Virgin Mary as a fourth person, we fall away from the Trinity; nor, like Eutyches, not believing Him to be true man, believe the Son of God to be without the assumption of manhood, that is, to be of one substance; or indeed suppose that from two substances one substance could be made.

For the Son of God, as we have said, in the unity of His person assumed the whole man, that is, a rational soul and flesh, according to what was said through the Prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bring forth a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel (Isa. 7:14), which is interpreted, God with us (Matt. 1:23). He therefore is both man and God who was born of Mary; He is both man and God who grew in age; He is both man and God who was fastened to the cross, who also rose again, and ascended into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father. And although, on account of the unity of the person, God is man and man is God, yet according to the man God is said to be crucified, God is said to have suffered, God is said to have died.

For according to that which is God, He is rightly believed to be impassible and immortal. CHAPTER SIX. Therefore each nature remains in Christ, preserving its truth, so that neither does the human, translated into the divine, cease to be man, nor is the divine transferred into the human, and cease to be God. So then: the one begotten, the other created; the one intemporal, the other temporal; the one without beginning, the other with a beginning. And although that begotten and intemporal one pertains to the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet the temporal and created one in no way does: because in truth whatever is of nature the Father, by begetting, gave to the Son; whatever of nature accrued to the Son from time or from without does not overflow to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit.

And although the whole Trinity is one substance, the man Christ does not pertain to the whole Trinity, but only to the Son. For it is not lawful to believe that the Father or the Holy Spirit assumed man, or suffered according to the man. But the Holy Spirit, although He is nowhere found in the Scriptures to be lesser, yet is most evidently found written to be sent. On this account the heretics bind their own neck, and, with the spirit of their understanding constricted and rather suffocated, they do not acknowledge their creator the Holy Spirit, while they define Him to be a creature. If He were a creature, He surely could not be creator, because a creature does not form a creature out of nothing.

And since in Genesis God says that man is formed to His own image (Gen. 1:27), and Job relates that he himself was fashioned by the Holy Spirit: The divine Spirit, he says, who made me (Job 33:4); it clearly appears that the Holy Spirit is co-worker with the Father and the Son, both in the formation of man and likewise in the establishing of the angels, according to that saying of the Psalmist: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Ps. 33:6). If He is God, if He is creator, if He consecrates baptism, why is He said to be sent? Sent indeed in that He came upon Christ in the form of a dove at the river, and that He came upon the apostles in fire. For that very apparition is a mission.

For where is He sent, who is everywhere? The Spirit of the Lord, it says, has filled the whole world (Wisd. 1:7). And again: O Lord, whither shall I go from Your Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Your face? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; and if I descend into hell, You are present. If I take my wings straight ahead, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me (Ps. 139:7ff.). Nothing indeed of the world is passed over, that it might not show the presence of the whole Trinity to be there. In the manner that we believe the Son sent according to the man, so the Holy Spirit is sent on account of the dove or the fire.

But the Son so joined to His person the man He assumed, for the sake of man, that He should have it forever, and never cease from it, nor at any time receive an end; whereas the Holy Spirit so joined to Himself the dove or the fire that those visions, made in time, should afterward cease to be. CHAPTER SEVEN. Now you have the reason why the Holy Spirit is said to be sent. But now let these few things which we have said be sufficient to strengthen your faith; namely, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one God. He is certainly not a created nature—not earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire. For of these elements the bodies of animals are compacted. He is certainly not an irrational spirit, such as is in cattle;

nor a rational spirit, such as is in men or angels; but He is God the Trinity, immutable, creating all things through His goodness, created by none. Who then can, as is worthy, and as that unfabricated Form is in itself—from whom all things were fashioned—either perceive it in mind, how much more utter it in speech, save that the Trinity is thus believed and called to be God? Now this uncreated Trinity has imparted to His creature certain vestiges of the Trinity, such as they are. For thus it is written, that He has disposed all things in number, in measure, and in weight (Wisd. 11:21). Every body indeed, whether it be small or great, has both number according to the quantity of its parts, and has measure, and weight; nor could nature be

a number without weight, or a measure without weight and number. For wherever one of these has been, it cannot be without the two. But behold, in corporeal things weight, number, and measure are easily proved: let us see how they may be found in incorporeal things. Therefore in the soul of man there is memory, counsel, and will. For you think this which you wish, which also your memory contains. For your will is your love. For you recall this which, by loving, you bring into your thought. Three there are: memory, counsel, and will—which we have said to be love—and they are inseparable, and they are one, and the one cannot be without the other. A certain one of the Fathers also elegantly said these three to be in the soul, when he prayed to God:

'May I remember You, may I understand You, may I love You;' and in these he taught the image of God to be. For the human soul is indeed the image of God—not begotten, but created; not equal, but similar. CHAPTER EIGHT. These things I have therefore briefly suggested to your charity, that there are even in created things certain signs of that highest Trinity, so that by evident reason it may be manifest how great is the error of the heretics, when—although in created things there is both trinity and unity—they do not believe that very Trinity which is God to be in the unity of nature. By the power of this eternal and unchangeable Trinity all things were created;

but we find, arisen as the more excellent and first among creatures, the rational nature of the angels, blessed by the gift of their God, and beatified through free will, yet not perpetually adhering. Of these a certain portion of the angels, unwilling to do the will of their creator, cast down from His contemplation, is kept to be punished in the judgment, as the apostle Peter says: God spared not the angels who sinned; but, dragged down in the chains of hell into Tartarus, He delivered them to be reserved for judgment to be tormented (2 Pet. 2:4). Deservedly indeed shall they be punished forever with the pain of eternal fire: because, if they had willed to persevere in their blessedness, free will would surely have supported them. By which will, turned to themselves, not

They who turned away from God, made dark through pride and thrust down into the lowest regions of this air, are kept for the judgment that shall punish them: in them no trace of good will remained. But those who, through the same free will, preserved that which they were made — namely, cleaving unceasingly to God their Creator — by the fact that they stood firm were made more blessed by the grace of God; so that their will can neither will nor be able to sin, since, although they were made mutable by nature, they have been made immutable by grace. Steadfast also and assured that their blessedness can in no way be lost, they enjoy God, in whose contemplation they are blessed. CHAPTER IX.

Great and learned men plainly assert that they are of a twofold substance, that is, of an incorporeal spirit, by which they never depart from the contemplation of God, and of a body, by which they appear to men in time; and they prove this from that passage of the Psalm where it says: Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire (Ps. CIII, 4). They say therefore that these have an ethereal, that is, a fiery body; but the evil angels, that is, the demons, an airy body. Therefore, after the fall of the wicked and the establishment of the good, it pleased Almighty God to create another rational creature, adorned with free will, by which that number of angels who had perished by falling from heaven might be filled up.

I speak of the first men, established as to the soul out of nothing, and as to the body out of clay: as to the soul, rational and immortal; but as to the body, immortal if he had not sinned, mortal if he had sinned — such, that is, as could die, as the Apostle says: The body indeed is dead because of sin (Rom. VIII, 10); for the penalty of sin, death, was inflicted upon the body. For besides the death of the spirit — in that it is forsaken by God — he received this death also in the flesh: for as the life of the soul is to live blessedly, that is, to enjoy God, so to die is for the body to be forsaken by the soul. He would not have experienced the unequal penalty of these deaths, had he not sinned.

Thus man, made upright and fashioned and formed to the image of his God according to reason and understanding, received a law by not transgressing which he would be blessed, since he had free will, so that he could be good if he willed — yet not indeed without the grace of God by which that very will was governed, that it might will; and nevertheless it was in his power to forsake that grace when he willed. Because he willed and sinned, for this cause also he would deservedly be damned forever, and his whole stock be punished perpetually with the transgressing angels, unless grace should come to his aid through Jesus Christ our Lord.

For His death set the human race free from the power of the devil, to whom by a certain justice of God it had been handed over to possess, and he ruled over them as over the children of disobedience, as the Apostle says (Eph. V, 6). Therefore the death of Christ, which He underwent without sin, bestowed life upon the sinner. The Only-begotten of God took upon Himself man, and the Word was made flesh, He who was to fulfil the office of mediator between God and men: so that, because through free will we were quite unable to return to God, through God made man we might be able to return. Through this mediator, slain by the devil without cause, the devil himself, the author of death, lost those whom that same mediator judged by a hidden judgment. CHAPTER X.

Let not man therefore glory in his own merits, but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (II Cor. X, 17). For what has he that he has not received? and if he has received it, why does he glory as though he had not received it (I Cor. IV, 7)? For the Lord Himself says thus: If the Son shall make you free, then shall you be free indeed (John VIII, 36). Our liberation lies in His choosing, is set in His will. For wrath is in His indignation, and life in His will (Ps. XXIX, 6 [Vulg. XXIX,6]), says the Psalmist. Whence, that the guilty is condemned, let him reckon it to his own merits; that he is set free, to the grace of the Redeemer. Nor do we say this, that the human race has lost free will. For it has, before it is set free by the grace of the Saviour, an inclination toward evil, not toward good.

Wherefore free will itself is set free by the grace of God, that it may will and be able to do good. For thus one of the Fathers says (Augustine, Enchiridion, ch. 32), that the grace of God goes before the unwilling that he may will, and follows after the willing that he may not will in vain. And so man, before he is faithful, has free will unto evil; the faithful man has free will also unto good, freed, that is, by the grace of God. Not without desert indeed, that we may receive punishment for an evil work, and life eternal for a good one. CHAPTER XI. The grace, therefore, which the first man had before sin, and the grace by which men are now redeemed from the condemned mass of sin, a certain one, distinguishing them, speaks thus: The first is that a man should have righteousness if he will;

the second, therefore, is more powerful, by which it even comes about that he wills, and wills so greatly and loves with such ardour, that by the will of the spirit he overcomes the lust of the flesh which craves things contrary. Nor indeed was that first grace a small thing, by which the very power of free will was displayed: since man was so helped that without this help he could not persevere in the good, but this help he could forsake if he willed. But this latter grace is so much the greater, that it is too little for man through it to recover his lost liberty; too little, in short, that without it he cannot even lay hold of the good, or persevere in the good if he will, unless it be also brought about that he wills (Augustine, De Correptione et Gratia, ch. 11).

What then is first in this grace but faith, which is to lead us to sight, namely that we may see what we believe? This faith, too, man will not receive unless he has been baptized in the name of the Trinity: so that, made faithful, he may know what and whence he should ask, seek, and knock, that he may be able to find, as the Lord admonishes in the Gospel: Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Matt. VII, 7). None are brought in but the faithful, unless they have been baptized in the name of the Trinity. Yet not all who are baptized as faithful shall be saved: for truly many heresies glory in this baptism of the Trinity, and seem to be baptized in the same manner as the Catholic Church;

but they are held in great error, while they rend the unity of the faith and refuse to be in communion with the whole world, and on this account they shall deservedly be damned. It profits them nothing therefore to be dipped in the name of the Trinity, who strive by rash presumption to divide that indivisible name of the Godhead. But when, pricked in heart, they return to the Catholic Church with humble piety, the baptism which they have already received is not repeated in them, but they are reconciled through the laying on of hands of the Catholic Church. For thus is kept that sentence of the Lord: Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt.

XXVIII, 19), so that, although they be baptized outside the Church, or indeed within the Church by an evil and perverse priest according to this rule, it is in no way repeated in them. For the faith which works by love is possessed by the holy Catholic Church, which faith heretics are shown in no way to possess: because in truth faith alone does not suffice, unless, believing God, you love God and obey His precepts. To obey His precepts is not to do evil and to do good, to fight against the devil, who strives at every moment to hinder our course as it tends toward God. Whence, according to the Apostle, as a roaring lion he goes about seeking whom he may devour (I Pet. V, 8): whom we must resist bravely in the faith. CHAPTER XII.

And although, so long as we live mortally in this world, we cannot be without sin, yet let us not be entangled in any grave crimes — lest we return to his service and, being made his vessels, he begin again to dwell in us; what things are criminal sins, both the divine Scripture and the laws of the world publicly punish; but your own conscience too, which does not wish to suffer from another what it does, is not ignorant of them; yet if perchance after baptism we have been involved in certain crimes, let us not be slow to do penance, and with a contrite heart and body to ask pardon of God. For those who think they can commit sins with impunity, while perhaps they give some alms to the poor, are much deceived.

For they know not that the first work of mercy is to offer oneself to God, and so to show mercy to another. For thus says the Scripture: Have mercy on thy own soul, pleasing God (Ecclus. XXX, 24); and again: He that is evil to himself, to whom will he be good (Ecclus. XIV, 5)? Alms therefore are to be given, but first vices are to be forsaken. They differ much, therefore, from those who have kept their garment white, who, being such as when they were reborn, by the Lord's help persevere thus even to the end of their departure: for whom daily prayer suffices to loose the least faults which creep in within this mortal body; from which the Apostle longs to be freed, saying: Unhappy man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. VII, 24–25). For the Lord also in the Gospel (Matt. XIII, 23) shows three fertilities of the earth, that is, He demonstrated three grades of the good in the Church: thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Whence also Noah's ark, which signified the Church, was made with two and three chambers; signifying, as we have said, the three grades or orders which the expositors of the Church have referred to the married, the continent, and the virgins. The thirtyfold, namely, to the married, the sixtyfold to the continent, the hundredfold to the virgins. So also the Catholic Church is constituted in these grades, so that, although there are three grades, there are nevertheless many differences of merits.

For neither do all virgins equally receive the reward of the kingdom of heaven, nor all the continent, nor all the married: but each one shall receive his own reward, says the Apostle, according to his own labour (I Cor. III, 8). And by how much more one has been obedient to God than another, by so much more of reward shall he receive. And what shall this reward or prize be, unless God Himself shall be the prize of virtue? A certain one has said: He who gave virtue, who gave victory to those who strive, He without doubt shall be the crown. By which we understand that by so much more shall one see God in that life than another, by how much more he has loved Him in this life, and been obedient to His precepts. CHAPTER XIII.

But even in the very flesh of the rising dead there will be many differences of glory, as the Apostle says: One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars. For star differeth from star in glory; so also shall be the resurrection of the dead (I Cor. XV, 41–42). Therefore whatever bodies either fire has consumed, or beast devoured, or water swallowed up, in that moment of time and twinkling of an eye shall rise again, each one in the sex in which he died; the male, then, in the masculine, and the female in the feminine. But that the dead rise, the Lord says in the Gospel: Have you not read what the Lord says to Moses at the bush: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Luke XX, 37)? And adding, He joins:

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to Him (Luke XX, 38); and again: Then all, He says, who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they shall rise: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment (John V, 28–29). For also elsewhere (Matt. XXV, 46), numbering the works of mercy, reproving the good and the evil, He says that these shall go into everlasting punishment. The good also shall everlasting joy receive, where with their God they shall reign without end, and, secure in their stability, nothing unseemly shall delight them. For wherever their spirit shall be, it shall be forthwith in a new heaven and a new earth. But the wicked eternal fire shall receive, and shall torment them forever.

Where their worm shall not die, and the fire shall not be extinguished (Mark IX, 44). And therefore, dearly beloved, we must be diligent, and continually implore the mercy of God, that we may live soberly, piously, and justly in this world, so that we may be able to attain to the kingdom of heaven.