Sermons 57–60

[On the Apostles' Creed.] Blessed Isaiah, an evangelist no less than a prophet, laments that he has unclean lips and dwells in the midst of a people with unclean lips, saying: “O wretch that I am, for I am pierced, because, being a man and having unclean lips, and dwelling in the midst of a people having unclean lips, I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa 6:5). He is struck with a more than human grief, because what he perceives and sees of God he cannot speak, cannot announce, cannot confess. As narrow as the flesh is, so cramped are the lips for their mind, so short is the tongue as interpreter of its own mind. A fire shut up in the flesh pants, heats the veins, inflames the inward parts, seethes in the marrow, and always sets all a man's inner parts burning, because what he contemplates with the affection of the mind is not enough to bring forth with the mouth, pour out with the lips, articulate with the tongue, and wholly breathe out in speech. This is why Isaiah, when he saw the King of heaven, that is, Christ, and beheld in clear vision that he was the Lord of hosts, lamented his own lips and his people's as unclean; because as the confessed divinity of Christ enlightens hearts, purifies mouths, and cleanses lips, so the denied majesty of Christ pollutes them. But let us hear what this groaning of the prophet gained. “And one of the seraphim,” he says, “was sent to me, who had in his hand a coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth, saying: Behold, this has touched your lips, and has taken away your iniquities, and has purged your sins.” This is not the time to say why one is sent, and who this one is who is sent, and how great he is who so fearlessly carries a coal of heavenly fire in his hand, indeed so tempers it with his touch as to purify the prophet's lips, not burn them; but now let us too be pierced with the whole affection of the heart, and confess that we are wretched in this misery of the flesh, and with devout groans lament that we too have unclean lips, so that this one of the seraphim may bring to us with the tongs of the law of grace the fiery sacrament of faith taken from the altar above, and may touch the lips of our mouths with such moderation as to take away iniquities, purge sins, and so kindle our mouths into the flame of full confession that this may be a burning of salvation, not of pain. Let us ask also that the heat of this coal may reach even to our hearts, so that from so great a sweetness of the mystery we may take not only a taste with the lips but complete fullness with our very senses and mind; and as Isaiah, after the cleansing of his lips, spoke of the unspeakable childbirth of the Virgin, saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son” (Isa 7:14), so may we recount the sacrament of the passion and the glory of the resurrection. “I believe in God the Father almighty.” Rightly do you confess today that you have believed in God, when you rejoice that you have fled gods and goddesses differing in sex, confused in number, common in crowd, mean in birth, shameful in reputation, greatest in ungodliness, first in wickedness, singular in crime, accused even by the very faces on their tombs; because it would be a matter of misery, grief, and unhappiness to have had even as little slaves such beings as you have until now endured as masters. But rejoice that you have come to the one living, true, only, but not solitary God, saying: “I believe in God the Father.” Whoever names the Father now confesses the Son: for he who wished to be called Father, to be named Father, mercifully showed that he has a Son, whom he did not receive from time, did not beget in time, did not take up for a time. Divinity neither takes a beginning nor receives an end, nor admits a later one, since it knows no setting. God brings forth the Son not with pains but shows him to exist by powers; nor does he make apart from himself what is from himself, but he begets him; and while he is in himself, he discloses and reveals him. The Son proceeded from the Father, he did not withdraw; nor did he go forth from the Father to succeed the Father, but he went forth to remain always in the Father. Hear John saying: “This was in the beginning” (John 1:2). And elsewhere: “What was from the beginning” (1 John 1:1). What was surely did not come to be; what was clearly did not begin. “I am,” he says, “the first, and I am the last” (Isa 44:6). He who is first does not come after another; he who is last leaves no other after himself; but when he says this he does not exclude the Father, but includes all things in himself and the Father. But let us come to what follows: “And in Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord.” As kings are named by the titles of their triumphs, and gain very many surnames from the names of subject nations, so Christ is named by the titles of his good works: for he is called Christ from chrism, the devoted physician who poured the ointment of divinity on the already dried-up limbs of mortals; and as he is called Christ from chrism, so he is called Jesus from salvation, because he poured the divine ointment on us in order to give back sure salvation to the sick and perpetual health to the lost. “And in Christ Jesus, his only Son”: because, though there are many sons by grace, he is one and singular by nature. “Our Lord”: who seeks us, freed from the servitude of so many, so cruel, so shameful masters, not to claim us for our former condition but to manumit us to perpetual freedom. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit.” So and in such a way is Christ born for you, until he changes for you, O man, the order of being born, so that you may have a new rising into life, you for whom the old setting always remained in death. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.” Where the Spirit begets, a virgin gives birth, everything done is divine, nothing human; nor is there any room for weakness where power is joined to power. Adam was put to sleep so that a virgin might be taken from a man (Gen 2:21–22); now a virgin was amazed so that man might be restored from a virgin (Luke 1:29). What can nature claim for itself from so great, such a birth, when, seeing its order renewed, it beholds all its laws changed, and perceives and marvels that its own Author has come into its offspring? Let this seem mean to the unbelieving; to believers it is a great sacrament. “Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried.” You hear the judge's name so that you may know the time of the passion too; you hear “crucified,” so that you may know that the salvation we had lost has been restored through that by which it had perished, and may see the life of believers hanging there where the death of the unbelievers had hung. You hear “buried,” so that death may not be thought to have been mocked. This is the mark of divine power, when death dies by death, the author of death is cut down by his own sword, the robber is captured by his own prey, hell is burst open by the Life it swallowed. “On the third day he rose from the dead.” Christ spent three days of his burial to benefit three dwellings, the lower world, the earth, and heaven: to restore what is in heaven, to repair what is on earth, and to redeem what is in the lower world; at the same time to disclose to men for salvation the grace of the Trinity given by the sacrament of the three days. “He ascended into heaven.” He ascended not to bring himself back into heaven, he who always remained in heaven, but to carry you there, whom he so loosed from bonds and drew out of hell. Understand from where, to where, O man, you have been lifted by God, so that you might be firm in the heavens who were slippery and always tottering on earth. “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” But the Father has nothing of his own on the left. Our confession assigns not places of the divine seating but signs of power: God does not know places; the Godhead admits nothing on the left. “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Granted the living, how can he judge the dead? But those live who are counted dead by us. So confess that those whom unbelief thinks have perished will rise for judgment, so that those who have died and those who will be found alive may together give account of their acts and life. “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” After you have confessed the sacrament of the flesh he assumed, you must confess the divinity of the Spirit, so that the equal unity of the Trinity, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, through all and in all, may keep and hold in our confession the whole truth of the faith of power. “The holy catholic Church”: because neither are the members separated from the head, nor the bride from the bridegroom; but by such a union of spirit he becomes one, God becomes all and in all. So he believes in God who confesses the holy Church in God. “And the forgiveness of sins.” He grants pardon to himself who trusts that his sins can be forgiven him through Christ. “The resurrection of the flesh.” You believe well if you believe that through God you can rise from death, for whom the elements are always rising: so time from time, so day from night, so seeds from their burial. Nor can you perish when they revive; nor is it hard for God to make of you, an old man, what you yourself always make of a seed. “Eternal life.” This faith, this sacrament, is not to be committed to paper, not to be written in letters, because paper and letters speak a case rather than grace; but where God's grace, a divine gift, is found, faith suffices for the pact, the depth of the heart for the secret: so that the divine arbiter may know this symbol of salvation, this pact of life, and a false witness may not know it. Sign yourselves. May the Lord our God himself guard your senses and your hearts, and in the things he has commanded you may he himself stand by you as your supporter.

[On the same.] Whoever seeks faith does not seek reason; whoever asks for divine things lays aside human ones; whoever is born with God as begetter goes beyond nature, and owes nothing to time, who deserves the Author of time. See, we see you, holy offspring of faith, wishing to be born before you are conceived, to receive the kingdom of heaven before you endure the narrowness of the womb; so to strain toward the joys of the Father as to pass over the pangs of the mother; nor do you think it untimely, what you believe to be ripe through Christ. So Paul the apostle is born ripe through faith, who cries that he was untimely born as to time (1 Cor 15:8). Receive, then, the faith by faith alone; and do not seek to have the reason of faith itself opened to you, which by your haste you have shut within the faith so that you would not seek it. The faith of your Author invites you today, children, to faith, he who fulfills the faith of his promise before he receives the faith of your pledge; and he restores this to human affairs, as he had once promised by word through the prophet: “Open wide your mouth,” he says, “and I will fill it” (Ps 81:10). That is: you open it wide in confession, and I will fill it with the sacrament of that very confession, and enrich it with mystical speech, and fill it with the whole utterance of the heavenly secret. And truly, children, whatever the obedience of the one who hears, whatever that of the one who answers, professes, overflows to the grace of God who gives and teaches. So, as you are about to receive the Creed, that is, the pact of life, the agreement of salvation, the indissoluble bond of faith between you and God, prepare your hearts, not paper; sharpen your sense, not a pen; and write down what you hear not with ink but with the Spirit ministering: because the eternal and heavenly secret cannot be entrusted to perishable and corruptible instruments, but must be placed in the very chest of the soul, in the very library of the inner spirit; lest a profane observer, a wicked examiner, find what he might tear apart, and what has been given for the salvation of the one who confesses and believes become the ruin of the one who scorns and does not know. But to the prophet who says to you, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it,” you may answer: “I have hidden your words in my heart, that I may not sin against you” (Ps 119:11). “I believe in God the Father almighty.” Whoever has confessed the Father confesses also the Son, because without the Son he cannot be called Father; and because nothing can be increased or added to God, the Son always was, because the Father also always was; the Son does not know how to begin, because the Father does not know how to fail; nor does the Begotten grow, where the Begetter does not grow old: the eternal and coeternal substance of Father and Son is to be reckoned not by human stages but by divine powers. “In Christ Jesus, his only Son, our Lord.” Take “Christ” as “anointed” not with common oil but with the Holy Spirit, by whom he was born. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit.” By such a birth humanity was consecrated in God; by such condescension Godhead was not diminished in man. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.” Virginity believed God, because only through God could she be both virgin and mother. “Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried.” It names the judge to mark the time; it records the crucified to set out the nature of the passion; and from it faith gathers proof of divine power and of a true resurrection, from the very place from which ungodliness took material for insult and an occasion of error. Crucified on a cross, on high, before all his enemies, with all their cruelty watching and all their bitterness observing, he underwent death. He undergoes burial, so that the ungodly might not boast that he did not go to death in order to conquer it but feigned it in order to elude it. “Buried, on the third day he rose.” And if in the passion he proved that he had the true substance of our flesh, by the figure of the three days he rises to the whole glory of the Trinity. “He ascended into heaven.” He ascended carrying us up, not carrying himself back, who never withdrew from heaven. “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” The order there is divine, not human; the Son so sits at the right hand that the Father does not sit at the left: the divine seating together is one and singular, where the power above admits nothing on the left. “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” Let men stop, let heretics stop judging their judge; let them hope for pardon, so that they may not incur a sentence for such presumption. “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Now your confession in the Trinity is complete, when with 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 as to be carried over into the whole glory of the Godhead. “The forgiveness of sins.” Acquire pardon for yourself by your faith: because he is very much his own enemy who does not believe that this is given to him, which the most generous forgiver promises with all kindness. “The resurrection of the flesh.” Believe the resurrection of the flesh: for whoever does not believe this has no faith in what was said before, as the Apostle says: “If the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen” (1 Cor 15:16). Whom will God judge, over whom will he reign, if the resurrection does not give back to life and to judgment those whom death took from the world? “Eternal life.” It is plain that eternal life follows when death itself dies.

[On the same.] You have heard the voice of the Father, you have heard the voice of one calling: Come, children; come, come, because the time of faith has come, the day of belief, the hour of confession. Come, seekers of faith, bring a sincere breast, a clean heart, a pure voice, so that what the saving word slips in through us you may take with holy hearing. Faith comes from hearing, hearing rests on the word. Hear with full simplicity of mind the agreement of faith, the pact of grace, the Creed of salvation, so that you may be able both to hear it and to give it back at the time of confession: because to give this back is to have it; whoever gives back the divine gift does not lose it. When God was about to give the law, he ordered the people to wash their clothes, to wash their bodies, and to cleanse themselves wholly from every contagion of the flesh, because man cannot approach God polluted with bodily dregs and worldly squalor (Exod 19:10–15). That law, which held the shadow and figure of grace, rightly sought such great purification, rightly demanded such great purity. How great a purity of mind and body is needed by those who are about to hear the whole sacrament of the Godhead? Let us cleanse our hearts, then, purify our bodies, open our eyes, unlock our sense, throw wide all the doors of the soul, so that we may be able to hear, grasp, hold, and always keep in the very secret of our heart the Creed, which is the pact of faith. “I believe in God the Father almighty.” We believe in God if we deny gods, if we renounce idols, if we renounce the devil and his angels. “Hear, O Israel,” it says, “the Lord your God is one” (Deut 6:4; Mark 12:29). And again: “You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exod 20:3). So he will have the true God, the one God, who has no other god. We believe in God, and confess the same as Father, so that we may believe that he always had a Son: had a Son not conceived, not begun, not separated by birth, not increased by time, not diminished in rank, not changed by ages, but remaining within the eternal Begetter as offspring for ever. “I,” he says, “am in the Father and the Father in me” (John 14:10). We have heard the Father; let us believe the Son, by divine power, not human order; by God's secret, not worldly reason; not by the law of the world but by heavenly power. What we are permitted to know we are not permitted to discuss; it is fitting to believe, not fitting to scrutinize: for this is why we said God almighty, so that we may think nothing impossible for God. “And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” Christ is named from anointing, Jesus from salvation: because the anointing, which had once run through kings, prophets, and priests as a figure, poured itself with the whole fullness of the Spirit of the Godhead into this King of kings, Priest of priests, Prophet of prophets; so that the kingship and priesthood that it had sent ahead temporally through others it might pour back into the Author himself and render everlasting. And Jesus, that is, Savior, is rightly called salvation, because he both gave things being and gives salvation to the perishing. “His only Son.” He is the only Son in himself, who possesses by nature as his own alone what he gives to others by his grace. “Our Lord.” As we said above, Lord God: one God stands firm in Christ, because whatever he is, in Godhead and humanity he is one God. The diversity of substances ceased in Christ when the flesh began to be what the spirit is, man what God is, when the majesty of our body and of the Godhead became one. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.” What earthly thing is born, where by the Spirit's authorship a virgin is called to childbirth? Who would not believe it divine, when she who gave birth felt nothing human? A woman carried God in a virginal temple: hence she both acquired the honor of a mother and did not lose the glory of virginity. “Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried.” We say the judge's name so that the time of the passion and the truth of what was done may thus be made plain. “He was crucified”: so that, since death had come through a tree, life might return through a tree. “And buried”: so that he might fulfill all the duties of death, so that death might die by death, so that from the seed of that body the whole sowing of human bodies might rise and be lifted into a life-giving harvest. “On the third day he rose from the dead”: so that in three days the benefit of the Trinity might be disclosed, so that through a three-day time the human generation of three times might be saved, that is, before the law, under the law, and under grace. “He ascended into heaven”: not as seeking heaven but as returning to it. “No one,” he says, “has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven” (John 3:13). “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” But he does not have the Father at his left. The seating together of the Godhead admits nothing on the left. “He sits at the right hand of the Father,” so as to be of one Godhead with the Father. He sits at the right hand so that he may not be lesser in rank, later in order, but may reign together with the Father in one Godhead, with equal power: “I,” he says, “and the Father are one” (John 10:30). “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” If we believe that the judge will come, let us prepare ourselves innocent for the judge: he denies that there is a judge who does not believe that he will come; he who lives badly has little confidence about being judged. He judges the living, he judges also the dead, whom, being about to judge them, he raises up. “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Having confessed up to this point the mystery of the Lord's birth, passion, resurrection, ascension, and coming, we now come to the confession of the Holy Spirit: so that as in the Father and the Son, so belief may be in the Holy Spirit, and we may proclaim one Godhead, 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 forgiveness of sins.” One who is to be born into the new man, what will he have of ancient guilt, of old sin? Whoever does not believe that his past debts are forgiven him doubts that he will receive the future goods. “The resurrection of the flesh.” Believe, O man, that you can rise from death, because before you lived you were nothing: or why do you doubt that you will rise, when everything in the world rises for you daily in this way? The sun sets and rises again; the day is buried and returns; months, years, seasons, fruits, seeds die when they pass and revive by their own death when they return; and so that you may be continually instructed by a homely example that you will rise, as often as you sleep and wake, so often you die and rise. “Eternal life. Amen.” It is necessary that one who rises live forever, because if he did not live forever he would rise not to life but to death. Sign yourselves. Let your mind hold, let your memory keep, this pact of hope, this agreement of salvation, this symbol of life, this guarantee of faith, so that cheap paper may not cheapen the precious gift of the Godhead, so that black ink may not darken the mystery of light, so that an unworthy and profane hearer may not have God's secret. If your charity always gave me such silence, your hearing would reach all the treatises of my preaching: but may our God deign to grant me confidence in speaking and you the desire to hear.

[On the same.] If the Canaanite woman, by a sudden cry and a quick faith, with Christ's help both received what she asked and wrested out what was being refused (Matt 15:21–28); if the Ethiopian eunuch, passing by, found on the road and seized in passing the secret of the life-giving bath (Acts 8); if Cornelius the centurion came to Christ before he entered baptism (Acts 10); if the thief at the very moment of death seized paradise (Luke 23:43): who will deny you, in a moment of time, the life you seek? So receive faith from faith, and labor, as time goes on, to know the mystery of faith. Moses, about to give the law, calls on heaven and earth: on what will the bishop call, about to bring forth grace? He said: “Give heed, O heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth” (Deut 32:1); I will say: “Give heed, O God, and I will speak, and let man hear the words of my mouth.” He said: “Let my speech be awaited like rain, and let my words come down like dew” (Deut 32:2); I will say: “Let your Spirit come like dew, and let your grace flood like a river, and let there be now a wave of the heavenly Word springing up to eternal life.” He said: “Because I have called on the name of the Lord, give greatness to our God” (Deut 32:3); I will say: “Because I have called on the faith, give belief to your God.” And since the ships of our bodies have been prepared by the Lenten fast, we must now say the agreement of faith, the symbol of heavenly commerce, so that with sure hope we may acquire, across the whole sea of the world and through the faithless waves of the age, gains that will last for ages. Receive, then, the faith; await the reality: because for one in whom faith does not go before in the seed, the reality does not follow in the fruit. Sign yourselves. The word creates hearing, hearing conceives faith, faith gives birth to belief, belief nourishes confession, confession gives perpetual salvation. This is why it meets on my mouth and yours: so faith embraces itself, belief embraces itself; so salvation greets itself with the kiss of confession. “I believe in God the Father almighty.” This utterance confesses and opens the whole sacrament of the Trinity. It says God, not gods, because Christian faith believes one God in the Trinity: it knows the Father, knows the Son, knows the Holy Spirit; it does not know gods. The Godhead is threefold in persons, but one Godhead in the Trinity: the Trinity is distinct in persons, not divided in substance: God is one, but in trinity; God is alone, but not solitary; the Godhead is neither divided by the trinity nor confused by the unity: this is what faith perceives when it says, “I believe in God.” At once it added: “the Father.” Whoever believes that there is a Father confesses the Son; whoever believes the Father and the Son should not perceive ages, should not think of stages, should not suspect times, should not seek a conception, should know nothing of childbirth: whoever believes God has confessed divine things, not human ones. But the heretic says: How is he Father if he does not come first? How is he Son if he does not follow? How does he who begets not give a beginning? How does what is begotten not take its beginning from the begetter? Reason teaches this, nature proves this. You are wrong, heretic: human reason has this, not divine; the nature of the world accepts this, the nature of the Godhead does not admit it: human frailty is conceived and conceives, is given birth and gives birth, is begotten and begets, receives a beginning and gives an end, undergoes death and pays it back, and keeps in its offspring whatever belongs to its condition and nature. But God the Father did not beget in time, because he does not know time; he did not give a beginning, who knows no beginning; he did not pass on an end, who has no end: but he so begot the Son from himself that everything that was in himself might be and remain in the Son. The honor of the Begotten is the honor of the Begetter; the perfection of the Begotten is the form of the Begetter; the diminishing of the Begotten redounds to the injury of the Begetter. But hearing this, heretic, do not say: How can these things be? You have said God, you have believed the Father, you have confessed him almighty; if you doubt, you have lied; if you say “I believe,” how do you not believe, if you discuss? If you think it impossible, you have taken away the almighty whom you confessed. But we who confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to be of one majesty and glory, let us now speak the faith of the Lord's body. “And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” After the Son of God poured himself into our flesh like rain on a fleece, with the whole ointment of the Godhead, he was called Christ from the ointment; and he alone was the author of this name, who was so poured over and poured into by God that man and God were one God. This name of ointment, then, he poured out on us, who are called Christians from Christ; and that which is sung in the Song of Songs was fulfilled: “Your name is ointment poured out” (Song 1:3). “And in Christ Jesus his Son.” That is the name of the sacrament, this of the triumph: for as, anointed by God, he receives his name from the ointment, so when he gave back to the world its lost salvation he takes the name of Savior from saving. We have often said already that “Jesus” is said in the Hebrew language, “Savior” in Latin. “And in Christ Jesus his Son.” Whose? Surely God the Father's; so when you say “in Jesus his Son,” you confess that Jesus, who was born of Mary, is the Son of God. Take care, then, no longer to think in Christ of what he was as man, but always confess what he is as God, as the Apostle says: “And even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him so” (2 Cor 5:16). “His only Son, our Lord.” This fits both, because he is both the only Son of the Father and our only Lord: others have received by grace to be sons, others to be lords; Christ alone has and possesses by nature to be Son, to be Lord. “Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary” (Matt 1:20). If, according to the evangelist, what was born in her is of the Holy Spirit, since God is spirit, let the heretic now confess God born of virginal flesh; and let him no longer drag the heavenly mystery, the virgin's childbirth, to worldly conception, to the injury of earthly frailty. “Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried.” You hear the judge's name so that you may know the time of the passion; you hear “crucified,” so that from the shame of the death you may feel the greatness of the love, and may know that the death that came through a tree has been put to death through a tree, and may believe that greater things have been given back to you through this tree than you sighed at having lost through the tree of paradise. You say “buried,” so that the confession of burial may prove the true flesh of Christ and a death not merely gone through, that he underwent death and conquered it, entered the lower world and returned, came into the jurisdiction of hell and dissolved the jurisdiction of hell: this is not frailty but power. You confess that he rose on the third day, so that you may understand that Christ's resurrection was the victory of the whole Trinity. You say that he “ascended into heaven,” so that you may believe him Lord of heaven and confess that he has returned to where he came from, because, the devil overcome, death trampled, the world freed, Christ triumphs above the heavens, who was thought to have been conquered on earth. You cry out, “He sits at the right hand of the Father,” so that, since the Godhead of Father and Son is one and their power equal, in the heavenly seating there may be no injury of a seat on the left. “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead”: because when Christ comes the dead will rise, the living will be set before him, so that together they may give account of their deeds. And since we have now spoken of the sacrament of the Lord's body, let us come to confess the divinity of the Spirit. “We believe in the Holy Spirit,” whom the divine voice proclaims to us as God when it says, “For God is spirit” (John 4:24). “We believe in the Holy Spirit,” whom the prophet sings as fellow worker of the Father and the Son: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth” (Ps 33:6). He is wholly God and the whole power of God, who is proved to be the creator of the heavenly powers. “We believe the holy Church,” which Christ so took into himself as to make her a sharer of his divinity. “We believe the forgiveness of sins”: because whoever has been born through Christ and the Church into the new man will have nothing of the old offence. “We believe the resurrection of the flesh,” so that we may believe that this was the cause of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection, that we might rise from the dead. The flesh will rise, it will rise as we are, so that the recognition of persons may remain, so that the martyr may take joy from the persecutor's punishment and the persecutor take punishment from the martyr's honor. “We believe eternal life”: because after the resurrection there is no end either of good things or of evil. Sign yourselves. Let us commit the faith that we believe and teach not with ink but with the Spirit, to the heart, not to paper; let us give it to memory, not to a book, so that human things may not violate the divine gift, a profane observer may not take up the heavenly secret, and what is for believers unto life may not turn out for the unbelieving unto ruin. The sun gives not light but darkness to bleary eyes; wine does not restore the strength of the feverish but saps it; without a physician the cup of life becomes deadly: so the sacrament of faith without faith is destructive to the unbelieving. As the Apostle says: “Let faith be taken from hearing, and hearing from the word” (Rom 10:17); and let the agreement of life, the pact of faith, the law of salvation cling not to those who will die but be fixed to living senses.