num debitis finibus permansuros; solumque est[42] praemium
beatitudinis contemplatio conditoris--tanta dumtaxat, quanta a creatura ad
creatorem fieri potest,--ut ex eis reparato angelico numero superna illa
ciuitas impleatur, ubi rex est uirginis filius eritque gaudium sempiternum,
delectatio, cibus, opus, laus perpetua creatoris.

[40] qui _uel_ quod _codd._

[41] suspiciones _uel_ suspicione _uel_ suspicio _uel_ subici _codd.
meliores._

[42] esse _codd_.

ON THE CATHOLIC FAITH[43]

The Christian Faith is proclaimed by the authority of the New Testament
and of the Old; but although the Old scripture[44] contains within its
pages the name of Christ and constantly gives token that He will come
who we believe has already come by the birth of the Virgin, yet the
diffusion of that faith throughout the world dates from the actual
miraculous coming of our Saviour.

Now this our religion which is called Christian and Catholic is founded
chiefly on the following assertions. From all eternity, that is, before
the world was established, and so before all that is meant by time
began, there has existed one divine substance of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit in such wise that we confess the Father God, the Son God, and the
Holy Spirit God, and yet not three Gods but one God. Thus the Father
hath the Son, begotten of His substance and coeternal with Himself after
a manner that He alone knoweth. Him we confess to be Son in the sense
that He is not the same as the Father. Nor has the Father ever been Son,
for the human mind must not imagine a divine lineage stretching back
into infinity; nor can the Son, being of the same nature in virtue of
which He is coeternal with the Father, ever become Father, for the
divine lineage must not stretch forward into infinity. But the Holy
Spirit is neither Father nor Son, and therefore, albeit of the same
divine nature, neither begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding as well
from the Father as the Son.[45] Yet what the manner of that Procession
is we are no more able to state clearly than is the human mind able to
understand the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father.
But these articles are laid down for our belief by Old and New
Testament. Concerning which fortress and citadel[46] of our religion
many men have spoken otherwise and have even impugned it, being moved by
human, nay rather by carnal feeling. Arius, for