He who seeks faith does not seek a reason; he who demands divine things sets human things aside; he who is born of God as begetter transcends nature, and owes nothing to time, he who merits the Author of time. Behold, we see, O devout seedlings, that you wish to be born before you are conceived, to receive the kingdom of heaven before you endure the straits of the womb; thus to strive toward the joys of the Father, that you may pass by the languors of the mother; nor do you think that a thing untimely which you believe to be ripe through Christ. Thus Paul the apostle is born ripe through faith, who cries that he is one born out of due time in respect of season (1 Corinthians 15). Receive, therefore, faith by faith alone;
nor seek to have the reason of that very faith unfolded to you, which faith you, by your own haste, shut off from your requiring it, lest you should demand it within the bounds of faith. To faith, O sons, the faith of your Author today invites you, who fulfils the faith of his promise before he receives the faith of your undertaking; and he has restored this to human affairs, as of old he had promised in word through the prophet: 'Open wide,' he says, 'your mouth, and I will fill it' (Psalm 80). That is, do you open wide in confession, and I will fill it with the very sacrament of that confession, and I will enrich it with mystic speech, and I will fill it with the whole utterance of the heavenly secret. And truly, O sons, whatever the obedience of the hearer, whatever the obedience of the respondent professes, this redounds to the grace of God who gives and teaches.
About to receive the Creed, that is, the covenant of life, the compact of salvation, and the indissoluble bond of faith between you and God, prepare your hearts, not paper; sharpen your understanding, not your pen; and what you have heard, inscribe not with ink, but with the Spirit ministering: for the eternal and heavenly secret cannot be committed to perishable and corruptible instruments, but is to be lodged in the very ark of the soul, in the very library of the inner spirit; lest a profane arbiter, lest a wicked scrutineer, find what he may tear apart, and lest that become the ruin of one who despises and is ignorant, which was given for the salvation of one who confesses and believes. But when the prophet says to you: 'Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it' (Psalm 80), you may be able to answer:
'In my heart I have hidden your words, that I may not sin against you' (Psalm 118). I believe in God the Father almighty. He who has confessed the Father confesses also the Son, because without the Son the Father cannot be named; and because nothing can be increased to God, nothing added to God. The Son always was, because the Father also always was; the Son knows no beginning, because the Father knows no ceasing; nor does the Begotten grow, where the begetter does not grow old: the eternal and coeternal substance of the Father and the Son is to be estimated not by human degrees, but by divine powers. In Christ Jesus his only Son, our Lord. Understand Christ to be anointed not with common oil, but with the holy oil, whereby he was born of the Spirit.
Who was born of the Holy Spirit. By such a birth humanity was consecrated in God, yet by no such condescension was deity lessened in man. Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary. Virginity believed God, since not except through God could she herself be virgin and mother. Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. He indicates the judge that he may designate the time; he mentions the crucified one that he may impart the nature of the Passion: and thence let faith gather the proof of divine power and of the true resurrection, from where impiety presumed the material of insult and the occasion of error. Crucified upon the cross, on high before all his enemies, and while they looked on with all cruelty, and observed with all bitterness, he received death. He suffers burial:
lest it be flung about by the impious that he had not undergone death in order to conquer it, but had feigned it in order to elude it. Buried, on the third day he rose again. And if in the Passion he proved that he had the true substance of our flesh, through the figure of the three days he rises again into the whole glory of the Trinity. He ascended into heaven. He ascended carrying us, not carrying himself back, he who never departed from heaven. He sits at the right hand of the Father. There the order is divine, not human; the Son sits at the right in such a way that the Father does not sit at the left: single and singular is the divine session, where the power on high admits nothing on the left. Thence he is to come to judge the living and the dead. Let men cease, let heretics cease to judge their own judge;
let them hope for pardon, lest from such presumption they incur his sentence. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Now your confession is made perfect in the Trinity, when with a faithful voice you have confessed the Holy Spirit to be of one substance with the Father and the Son. And the holy Church. Because it is so joined to Christ that it is translated wholly into the glory of the divinity. The remission of sins. Acquire for yourself pardon by your own faith: for he is enough of an enemy to himself who does not believe this to be given to him, which the most bountiful pardoner promises with all kindness. The resurrection of the flesh. Believe in the resurrection of the flesh: for he who does not believe this has no faith in the things foretold, as the Apostle says: 'If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen' (1 Corinthians 15).
Whom will God judge, over whom will God reign, if resurrection does not restore to life and to judgment those whom death took away from the world? Life everlasting. It is manifest that life everlasting succeeds when death itself dies.