You have heard the voice of the Father, you have heard the voice of him who calls: Come, sons; come, come, for the time of my glory has come, the day of believing, the hour of confession. Come, seekers of faith, bring a sincere breast, a clean heart, a pure voice, so that what through us the saving word insinuates, you may receive with holy hearing. Faith comes from hearing, hearing from the word. Hear with all simplicity of understanding the compact of faith, the covenant of grace, the symbol of salvation, so that at the time of confession you may be able both to hear it and to render it: for to render this is to have it; whoever renders the divine gift does not lose it.
When God was about to give the Law, he commanded that the people should wash their garments, wash their bodies, and cleanse their whole selves from every defilement of the flesh, because man cannot draw near to God polluted with bodily dregs, with worldly squalor. That Law, which held the shadow and figure of grace, rightly requires so great a purification, rightly exacts so great a purity. For those about to hear the whole sacrament of the Divinity, how great a purity of mind, how great a purity of body is needed? Let us therefore cleanse our hearts, purify our bodies, open our eyes, unbar our understanding, throw open all the doors of the soul, so that the Creed, which is the compact of faith, we may be able to hear, grasp, hold, and ever keep in the very secret place of our heart. I believe in God the Father almighty.
We believe in God, if we deny gods, if we renounce idols, if we abjure the devil and his angels. 'Hear, O Israel,' he says, 'the Lord your God is one' (Deuteronomy 6; Mark 12). And again: 'You shall have no other gods besides me' (Exodus 20). He therefore will have the true God, the one God, who will not have another god. We believe in God, and confess the same to be the Father, so that we may believe that he has ever had the Son: had the Son, moreover, not conceived, not begun, not separated by birth, not increased by time, not lessened by degree, not changed by ages, but within the eternal Begetter remaining as a sprout unto eternity. 'I,' he says, 'am in the Father, and the Father is in me' (John 14).
We have heard the Father; let us believe the Son by divine power, by an order not human, by the mystery of God, not by worldly reasoning, not by the law of the age, but by heavenly power. What it is permitted to know, it is not permitted to dispute; it is fitting to believe, it is not fitting to scrutinize: for on this account we said God to be almighty, that we might think nothing impossible to God. And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord. From anointing he is called Christ, from salvation he is called Jesus: because the anointing, which of old had run in figure through kings, prophets, and priests, was poured out in this King of kings, Priest of priests, Prophet of prophets, with the whole fullness of the Spirit of divinity;
so that the kingship and priesthood, which he had bestowed beforehand through others in a temporal way, he might pour back and render eternal in the Author himself. And Jesus indeed, that is, Savior, is rightly called salvation, because he both gave to things their being, and himself gives salvation to the perishing. His only Son. In himself he is the only Son, who possesses uniquely for himself by nature what he grants to others through his grace. Our Lord. As we said above, the Lord God: God is one and constant in Christ, because whatever he is, both by deity and by humanity he is one God. In Christ the diversity of substances ceased, where the flesh began to be what the Spirit is, where man is God, where there is one majesty of our body and of the deity. Who was born of the Holy Spirit, from the Virgin Mary.
What earthly thing is born, where by the Spirit as author a virgin is named in childbearing? Who would not believe it divine, when she who bore felt nothing human? A woman was bearing God, a virgin, in the temple: hence it is that she both acquired the honor of a mother and did not lose the glory of virginity. Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. We name the judge, so that the time of the Passion, so that the truth of the deed may thus be made plain. He was crucified. So that, because death had come through the tree, life might return through the tree. And buried. So that he might fulfill all the offices of death, so that death might die by death, so that from the seed of that body all the sowing of human bodies might rise up life-giving and be lifted into harvest. On the third day he rose again from the dead.
So that in three days the benefit of the Trinity might be unfolded, so that through the three-day period the human generation of the three periods of time might be saved, that is, before the Law, under the Law, and in grace. He ascended into the heavens. Not as one seeking, but as one seeking again the heavens. 'No one has ascended into heaven,' he says, 'except him who descended from heaven' (John 3). He sits at the right hand of the Father. But the Father he does not have at his left. The divine session admits nothing on the left. He sits at the right hand of the Father, so that by the one deity of the Father. He sits at the right hand, that he be not lesser in degree, later in order, but one with the Father in divinity, he reigns together with equal power: 'I,' he says, 'and the Father are one' (John 10). Thence he is to come to judge the living and the dead.
If we believe the Judge is to come, let us who are guilty prepare ourselves for the Judge: he denies him to be Judge who does not believe him to come; he who lives evilly greatly distrusts that he is to be judged. He judges the living, he judges also the dead, whom he assuredly raises up in order to judge. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Thus far confessing the mystery of the Lord's nativity, passion, resurrection, ascension, and coming, we have now come to the confession of the Holy Spirit: so that as in the Father and the Son, so it may be believed in the Holy Spirit, that we may proclaim one deity, power, and glory in the Trinity. And the holy Church. We believe also the Church, which we believe to have been received and confirmed by Christ, and we confess it unto glory. The remission of sins.
When a man is about to be born into a new man, what shall he have of ancient guilt or of the old sin? He who does not believe that his past debts have been remitted to him doubts that he will receive things to come. 'The resurrection of the flesh.' Believe, O man, that you can rise again from death, since before you lived you were nothing. Or why do you doubt that you will rise, when everything that exists in the world rises again for you daily in this same way? The sun sets, and rises again; the day is buried and returns; months, years, seasons, fruits, and seeds, when they pass away, die, and when they return they come back to life by their very own death. And that you may be instructed by a homely example that you are to rise again: as often as you sleep and wake, so often you die and rise. 'The life everlasting. Amen.'
He who rises again must live forever; for if he did not live forever, he would rise not to life but to death. 'Seal yourselves.' Let the mind hold, let memory keep this covenant of hope, this pact of salvation, this token of life, this pledge of faith, lest cheap paper cheapen the precious gift of the Godhead, lest black ink darken the mystery of light, lest an unworthy and profane hearer possess the secret of God. If your charity would always grant me such silence, then your hearing would reach to all the words of my discourse; but may our God deign to grant both to me the confidence to speak, and to you the desire to hear.