Ad Felicem Notarium De Trinitate Liber Unus

S. FULGENTIUS TO FELIX THE NOTARY, ON THE TRINITY, ONE BOOK CHAPTER ONE. Since you, my dearest son Felix, inflamed with the zeal of faith, very often inquire how you ought to believe concerning the holy Trinity, which is God, or in what manner you may, with the Lord’s help, defend the catholic and orthodox faith against the errors of heretics, especially those whose company you enjoy, and thereby avoid their snares; I have thought it necessary and advantageous for you to respond to your petitions. But would that I might do so as fittingly and appropriately as the will is in me; may the immutable Trinity itself, in whose hand are both we and our words, grant for the proclaiming of itself both right speech and sincere faith, so that I may be able to satisfy fully your holy desire and burning eagerness to learn. Believe, therefore, that we wish to make known to your most sincere mind that faith by which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and crowned martyrs were justified, which the holy Church throughout the whole world has held up to now, whose splendor, illuminating the minds of believers, makes them partakers of eternal life. This faith is even now preached, through a succession of bishops, in the chair of the apostle Peter at Rome and 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, by the bishops of those cities.

Therefore, compel the Arians, Donatists, Nestorians, Eutychians, Manichaeans, and the other plagues of heresies to share communion with those churches over which the apostles presided. They do not consent, because through the perversity of their faith they have been divided from the unity of the Church and have chosen to be in a faction. Whence the apostle John says: They went out from us; but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would certainly have remained with us (1 John 2:19). They went out from us, indeed, because they separated themselves from the unity of the Church with a most insane heart. They were not of us, that is, of the predestined, and those chosen for eternal life. For they were not among those of whom the Lord says: I have chosen you, and I have placed you so that you may go and bear abundant fruit, and your fruit may remain (John 15:16). But neither are they blessed in the seed of Abraham, according to what the Lord said to Abraham: In your seed all nations will be blessed (Genesis 26:4); and the Apostle, adding on, subjoins: Not in seeds as in many, but in your seed, which is Christ (Galatians 3:16). Since all nations are worthy to be blessed in Christ and through Christ into the unity of the faith, heretics are not blessed, because they do not have the unity of the faith, but, fattened on the pasture of error, through pride they have become not sons of God, but sons of the devil.

Therefore, having the eyes of their heart darkened, they cannot see that the whole world has been redeemed by the blood of Christ and is in agreement in the unity of faith, according to what is signified about the primitive Church: "They had," it says, "one heart and one soul toward God" (Acts 4:32). Thus the whole world is redeemed, thus the whole world is called redeemed among all nations. "And the nations will fear," it says, "your name, O Lord, and all the kings of the earth your glory" (Ps. 101:16). And again: "All the nations which you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord" (Ps. 85:9), or again: "They will be counted," it says, "and all the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations will worship in his sight. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and he will rule over the nations" (Ps. 21:28-29). What do the wretched say who, cut off from the Church of God, with an unrepentant heart contradict the Church itself; and while they strive to tear that which is the seamless tunic of the Lord, they themselves are more easily torn? Let them ask each one individually. That one says he is redeemed by the blood of Christ. Therefore, was the blood of Christ shed only for the Arians, or only for the Donatists? Far from it. Truth does not speak thus. God does not speak thus to Abraham: "In your seed," he says, "all nations will be blessed" (Gen. 26:4). Not one nation, but every one. Not this one and that one, but all. But not in a diverse faith, but in one: as the Apostle says, "One faith" (Eph. 4:5). In one faith, namely, they are saved.

believers: through the unity of me, the Catholic Church has one heart and one soul in God. This faith, which makes the diverse hearts of believers one, is praised by the mouth of the Apostle Paul. "I thank God," he says, "that your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world" (Rom. 1:8). One faith, which is proclaimed throughout the whole world, is to be praised and proclaimed. CHAPTER II Accept the faith in which you were once reborn 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 the Father nor the Son. And since they are three, what, I ask, is the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in which we ought to be baptized, if not that name of the Deity, 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). Therefore God is one in nature, not in person, because the person of the Father is one, the person of the Son is another, the person of the Holy Spirit is another. The Father is begotten by no one, the Son is begotten by 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 Holy Spirit is of someone who breathes forth: therefore he is referred to the Father and the Son. Thus these relative names make the Trinity; but the essential names are in no way tripled. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

Good Father, good Son, good Holy Spirit. Pious Father, pious Son, pious Holy Spirit. Just Father, just Son, just and Holy Spirit. Omnipotent Father, omnipotent Son, omnipotent and Holy Spirit. And yet we do not say either three Gods, or three good ones, or three pious ones, or three just ones, or three omnipotent ones, but one God, good, pious, just, omnipotent, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: where there is one nature, essence, or substance. For whichever of these names you utter concerning that holy and highest Trinity, it signifies one and the same thing. The essence of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not diverse. For if it were, neither would the Son be truly begotten from the Father, nor would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son. But because the Son is true, that is, begotten from the essence of the Father, the Holy Spirit is also true, proceeding from the Father and the Son. For if the Son or the Holy Spirit are of a different kind than the Father, then the Son is not truly of the Father, whom a differing essence makes alien; similarly, neither would the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son, which it is insane to say, because holy Scripture, by a faithful narrative, reveals both the Son begotten from the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father.

CHAPTER III. Therefore there are three things coeternal, consubstantial, coessential. But when it was asked of the Fathers, and it was said: What three? they dared not say essences, nor substances, nor natures, lest some diversity of essences, or natures, or substances be believed; but they said three persons, one essence: so that one essence would declare one God, but the three persons would show the holy Trinity. Nor do we say this, that God is only the Trinity, 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. Moreover, the inseparable, immutable, infinite Trinity does not admit three gods, just as it does not admit three beings, or substances, or natures, and therefore the Son is in no way to be called that which is equal to the Father, or created from something, or substituted from nothing: because what the Father is, that he begot, God from God, light from light, immutable from immutable, infinite from infinite, eternal from coeternal. Similarly, we believe concerning the Holy Spirit that it is that from which it proceeds. Let us therefore see next whether we may approve these things we have said by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures. First, it is also to be asked whether God is the Trinity. Let us make, he says, man in our image and likeness (Genesis 1).

And again: "Come, let us go down," it says, "and there let us confuse their tongues" (Gen. 11:7). But our phrase "let us go down" suggests a plurality of persons, not of gods. Similarly, the vision of three men and the prayer of one Lord to Abraham. And: "The Lord rained from the Lord upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur 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 things show but the Trinity? And more clearly indeed 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 came from heaven saying: This is my beloved Son; listen to him" (Matt. 17:5). And likewise it says: "I saw the Spirit of God descending and remaining like a dove upon him" (John 1:32).

CHAPTER IV. Thus you have briefly that the Father is one person, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another; one and another in person, not one thing and another in nature; and for this reason He says, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). "One" teaches us to refer to nature, "are" to the persons. Similarly, also this: "There are three," it says, "who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one" (1 John 5:7). Let Sabellius hear "are," let him hear "three," and believe that there are three persons, and not blaspheme with a sacrilegious heart by saying that He Himself is the Father to Himself, He Himself the Son to Himself, He Himself the Holy Spirit to Himself; as if in some manner He begets Himself, or in some manner He Himself proceeds from Himself; since this cannot be found even in created natures, that something is able to beget itself. Let Arius also hear "one," and not say that the Son is of a different nature, since things of diverse nature cannot be called one. Therefore the Son proclaims, "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, when He was in the form of God," it says, "did not think it a usurpation to be equal to God" (Philippians 2:6); and, "For this reason," it says in the Gospel, "the Jews sought to kill Jesus, because not only did he break the Sabbath, but he also called his Father God, 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

CHAPTER IV. Thus you have briefly that the Father is one person, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another; one and another in person, not one thing and another in nature; and for this reason He says, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). But the wicked error and pestilent doctrine, ignorant of the dispensation of the man undertaken temporally for the salvation of the human race, asks: I ask, according to what 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 Only-begotten God is the image of the unbegotten God the Father, the truth of perfect and absolute substance is in Him, through which He is made to be the image of truth. The Father is powerful, but if the Son is weak, He is no longer the image of the powerful one. The Father is good, but if the Son is of a different kind of divinity, a nature that is evil will not render the image of the good. The Father is incorporeal, but if the Son is circumscribed in body according to spirit, then a corporeal being is not the form of the incorporeal. The Father is eternal, but if the Son is not coeternal, the name of paternity accrued to the Father temporally; and then not all things were made through the Word, because a time is found before the Word, when the Father existed without the Son. But Scripture clearly declares the Word to be the image of God the Father, and that all things were made through Him.

Or does he extend the sense of his impious profession to this, that he believes the Holy Spirit is good indeed, but the Son better, and the Father best; or does he assert with sacrilegious understanding that the Holy Spirit is powerful, but the Son more powerful, and the Father most powerful; or does he blasphemously teach that the Holy Spirit is 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 pagans, is enslaved to the worship of many gods, while he suspects with rash presumption that God the Father is greater, the Son lesser, and the Holy Spirit more than lesser. Let the error of those who refuse to be Israel, and with stopped ears do not hear, have a greater God and a lesser God: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God" (Deut. 6:4); and that: "You shall adore the Lord your God, and serve him alone" (Ibid., 13). CHAPTER V. But lest, with blinded heart, they do not believe the Son or the Holy Spirit to be God, and, after the manner of the Jews blaspheming, deny that they are God, let them be convicted by the testimonies of the sacred Scriptures. "Whose fathers," says the Apostle, "and from whom 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 true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20). And concerning the Holy Spirit, the evangelist John: "The Spirit," he says, "is God" (John 4:14).

And the Apostle, when he called the Holy Spirit the inhabitant of the Church, says: "Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Glorify and carry the Lord in your body" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). And in the Acts of the Apostles: "Ananias," says Peter, "why did your heart let Satan tempt you to lie to the Holy Spirit" (Acts 5:3)? And a little later he adds: "You have not lied to men, but to God" (Ibid., 4). Thus he has the Son as God, the Holy Spirit as God. That the Father is God, there is no need to prove, since he believes without ambiguity that He is God. But concerning the Son or the Holy Spirit, almost all of Holy Scripture resounds; but for brevity's sake we have culled a few passages from it. However, we believe the Son to be lesser or sent according to what the Apostle also says: "God sent His Son, made from a woman, made under the law" (Gal. 4:4). "Made from a woman," that is, born from the Virgin Mary: because He who was born from the Father without beginning, by being born from a mother received a definite beginning in time. He who, even when He was in the form of God, as the Apostle says, did not consider it a usurpation to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man, humbled Himself even to death, and that death on the cross (Phil. 2:6). He who, when in the form of God...

he says: "He was," that is, since He was God in substance, He did not seize the divinity which He naturally held in common with the Father; but He emptied Himself, that is, He did not appear to the human race as what He is, God and equal to the Father; but with the man assumed, not the God consumed, in a single person, He appeared in this world, and endured sufferings and human affections, which were fitting and which He willed, without defect, He passed through. According to this human form, He is not equal to the Father, as He Himself says: "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28). According to that form, however, 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 form, He was in the world, and the world was made through Him (John 1:10). And therefore we must believe in 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 is believed to be true God and true man: lest, like Nestorius, by introducing the man born from the Virgin Mary as a fourth person, we fall away from the Trinity; nor, like Eutyches, by not believing in the true man, do we believe the Son of God to be without the assumption of man, that is, of one substance; or certainly that from two substances one substance could have been made.

Because the Son of God, as we have said, assumed the whole man in the unity of His person, that is, a rational soul and flesh, according to what was said through the Prophet: "Behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel" (Isa. 7:14), which is interpreted, "God with us" (Matt. 1:23). Therefore, He who was born of Mary is both man and God; He who grew in age is both man and God; He who was crucified, who also rose again, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, is both man and God. And although, on account of the unity of the person, God is man and man is God, nevertheless, according to the man, God is said to have been crucified, God is said to have suffered, God is said to have died. For according to what He is as God, He is rightly believed to be impassible and immortal. CHAPTER VI. Therefore, each nature in Christ remains preserving its truth, so that neither is the human nature transferred into the divine and ceases to be man, nor is the divine nature transferred into the human and ceases to be God. Thus, then, one is unbegotten, the other created; one is timeless, the other temporal; one is without beginning, the other with a beginning. And although that which is unbegotten and timeless pertains to the Father and the Holy Spirit, the temporal and created pertains in no way to them: because, in truth, whatever of nature the Father has, He gave to the Son by begetting; whatever of nature came to the Son from time or from without does not redound to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit.

And since the whole Trinity is one substance, the man Christ pertains not to the whole Trinity, but only to the Son. For it is not lawful to believe that the Father or the Holy Spirit assumed a man, or suffered according to the human condition. The Holy Spirit, although nowhere found in the Scriptures to be lesser, is nevertheless most clearly found to be sent, as it is written. For this reason heretics bind their own neck, and with the breath of their understanding thus constricted and rather suffocated, they do not acknowledge their creator the Holy Spirit, while they define Him as a creature. If He were a creature, He certainly could not be a creator, because a creature does not form a creature from nothing. And since in Genesis God says that man is formed in His image (Gen. 1:27), and Job declares himself to have been shaped by the Holy Spirit: "The divine Spirit," he says, "who formed me" (Job 33:4); it is clearly evident that the Holy Spirit is a co-worker with the Father and the Son, both in the formation of man and likewise in the substitution of angels, according to that of the Psalmist: "The heavens were strengthened by the word of the Lord, and all their power by the Spirit of His mouth" (Ps. 33:6). If He is God, if He is creator, if He consecrates baptism, why is He said to be sent? He is sent, indeed, in that He came upon Christ in the form of a dove in the river, and that He came upon the apostles in fire. The appearance itself is the sending. For where is He sent, who is everywhere? "The Spirit of the Lord," it says, "filled the whole world" (Wis. 1:7).

And again: "Lord, where shall I go from your Spirit, and from your face whither shall I flee? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; and if I descend into hell, you are present. If I take my wings straightway and dwell in the farthest sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me" (Psalm 138 and following). Clearly, no part of the world is omitted where the presence of the whole Trinity is not shown. Just as we believe the Son was sent according to the man, so the Holy Spirit was sent on account of the dove or the fire. But the Son so joined the assumed man to his own person for the sake of man that he always has being, never ceases, nor ever comes to an end; the Holy Spirit, however, so joined the dove or the fire that those appearances, made for a time, afterwards ceased. CHAPTER VII. Thus you have why the Holy Spirit is said to be sent. But let these few things we have said suffice to strengthen your faith, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God. It is certainly not a created nature, not earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire. For from these elements the bodies of living things are composed. It is certainly not an irrational spirit, as is in beasts; nor a rational spirit, as is in men or angels; but it is the immutable Trinity, God, creating all things through its goodness, created by no one.

Who, therefore, can as is worthy, and as that unformed form holds, by which all things are formed, either perceive with the mind, much less express in speech, except that the Trinity is believed and said to be God? This uncreated Trinity, however, has impressed upon its creation certain traces of the Trinity. For it is written that He arranged all things in number, measure, and weight (Wisdom 11:21). Every body, whether small or large, has number according to the quantity of its parts, and has measure, and weight; nor could number exist without weight, or measure without weight and number. For wherever one of these is present, it cannot be without the other two. But behold, in corporeal things weight, number, and measure are easily recognized: let us see how they can be found in incorporeal things. Therefore, in the human soul there are memory, counsel, and will. For you think what you will, which your memory also contains. Your will is your love. For you remember what you bring into your thought by loving. There are three: memory, counsel, and will, which we have said is love, and they are inseparable, and they are one, and one cannot exist without the other. Some of the Fathers also elegantly said that these three are in the soul when praying to God: "May I remember you, understand you, love you"; and in these he taught that the image of God exists. For the image of God is the human soul, not begotten but created; not equal but similar.

CHAPTER VIII I have briefly suggested these things to your Charity, that even in created things there are some signs of that supreme Trinity, so that it may be evident by clear reasoning how great is the error of heretics, who, although in created things there is both threeness and oneness, do not believe that the Trinity which is God exists in a unity of nature. By the power of this eternal and immutable Trinity, of course, all things were created; but we find that a more excellent and first among creatures is the rational nature of angels, blessed by the gift of their God, and beatified through free will, yet not perpetually adhering. From among these, a certain part of the angels, unwilling to do the will of their creator, cast down from his contemplation, is kept for punishment at the judgment, as the apostle Peter says: "God did not spare the sinning angels, but dragged them down, bound by the chains of hell, into Tartarus, to be kept for judgment and tormented" (2 Peter 2:4). Rightly, indeed, they will be punished forever by the punishment of eternal fire, because if they had wished to persevere in their blessedness, free will would certainly have supported them. Through that will, turned toward themselves, not toward God, made dark by pride and thrust down into the depths of this air, they are kept for judgment to be punished: no trace of good will remains in them.

But those who preserved what they were made by the same free will, namely, incessantly adhering to their Creator God, by the fact that they stood firm through the grace of God, were made more blessed: so also that their will has neither the will to sin nor the ability; because although they were made mutable by nature, they are made immutable by grace: stable and certain of their beatitude never to be lost, they enjoy God, by whose contemplation they are blessed. CHAPTER IX Clearly, great and learned men assert that they are of a twofold substance, that is, from an incorporeal spirit, by which they never withdraw from the contemplation of God, and from a body, through which they appear to men from time to time, approving this from that place in the Psalm where it says: "Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire" (Ps. 103:4). Therefore they say that they have an ethereal body, that is, a fiery one; but evil angels, that is, demons, have an aerial body. Therefore, after the fall of the evil ones and the stability of the good, it pleased almighty God to create another rational creature, adorned with free will, through which that number of angels falling from heaven which had perished might be filled.

I speak of the first humans, constituted as to soul from nothing, as to body from clay: as to soul, rational and immortal; as to body, if they had not sinned, immortal; but if they had sinned, mortal, that is, capable of dying, as the Apostle says, "The body indeed is dead because of sin" (Rom. 8:10): since the penalty of sin, death, was inflicted upon the body. For apart from the death of the spirit in that it is abandoned by God, this death also was received in the flesh: because just as life for the soul is to live blessedly, that is, to enjoy God, so to die is for the body to be abandoned by the soul. The unequal penalty of these deaths would not have been experienced if they had not sinned. Thus man, made upright and formed and shaped in the image of his God according to reason and intellect, received a law, by not transgressing which he would be blessed, since he had free will, so that he could be good if he wished, not indeed without the grace of God by which the will itself was governed, so that it might will; and yet it was in his power to abandon that grace when he wished. Because he willed and sinned, for this reason he would also deservedly be condemned eternally, and all his offspring would be punished forever with the rebellious angels, unless grace were to come through our Lord Jesus Christ. For His death freed the human race from the power of the devil, to which it had been handed over for possession by a certain justice of God, and he ruled over them as over children of disobedience, as the Apostle says (Eph. 5:6).

Therefore, the death of Christ, which he undertook without sin, bestows life upon the sinner. The Only-Begotten of God took up humanity, and the Word became flesh, to discharge the office of mediator between God and men: so that, because we were utterly unable to return to God through free will, we might be able to return through God made man. Through this mediator, gratuitously slain by the devil, the devil himself, the author of death, lost those whom the same mediator judged by a hidden judgment. CHAPTER X. Let man not, therefore, boast of his own merits, but let him who boasts boast in the Lord (2 Cor. 10:17)? For what does he have that he has not received? And if he has received it, why does he boast as if he had not received it (1 Cor. 4:7)? For the Lord himself says: "If the Son frees you, then you will be truly free" (John 8:36). Our liberation lies in his judgment, in his will. For "wrath is in his fury, and life is in his will" (Ps. 13:6), says the Psalmist. Hence, what the guilty one is condemned for, let him attribute to his own merits; what he is freed from, to the grace of the Redeemer. Nor do we say this, that the human race has lost free will. For it has, before being freed by the grace of the Savior, a propensity toward evil, not toward good. For this reason, free will itself is freed by the grace of God, so that it may will and be able to do good. For thus one of the Fathers (Augustine, Ench. ch. 32) says, that the grace of God precedes the unwilling so that he may will; it follows the willing, lest he will in vain.

Thus a man, before he is a believer, has free will for evil; a believer has free will also for good, namely freed by the grace of God. Not undeservedly, so that for an evil deed we incur punishment, and for a good deed we obtain eternal life. CHAPTER XI. Therefore, concerning the grace which the first man had before sin, and the grace by which men are now redeemed from the condemned mass of sin, someone distinguishing them speaks thus: "The first is that man may have righteousness if he wills; the second, then, is more powerful, whereby it is also brought about that he wills, and wills so much and loves with such ardor that he overcomes the lust of the flesh, which desires the contrary, by the will of the spirit. Nor indeed was that first grace small, by which even the power of free will was demonstrated: since he was so assisted that without this assistance he would not persist in good, but he could abandon this assistance if he willed. This grace, however, is so much greater that it is not enough for man through it to recover lost liberty; it is not enough, finally, that without it he cannot either grasp the good or persist in the good if he wills, unless it is also brought about that he wills" (Augustine, On Correction and Grace, ch. 11). What, therefore, is prior in this grace except faith, which will lead us to the vision, so that we may see what we believe?

This faith also a man will not receive, unless he has been baptized in the name of the Trinity: so that, having been made a believer, he may know what or from where he should ask, seek, and knock, so that he may be able to find, with the Lord admonishing in the Gospel: Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you (Matthew 7:7). Only the faithful are admitted, only those who have been baptized in the name of the Trinity. Yet not all who are baptized as believers will be saved: since indeed many heresies boast of this baptism of the Trinity, and appear to be baptized in the same way as the Catholic Church; but they are held in great error, while they rend the unity of the faith, and are unwilling to communicate with the whole world, and on this account they will deservedly be condemned. Therefore, it profits them nothing to be dipped in the name of the Trinity, who strive to divide the very name of the undivided deity by rash presumption. Certainly, when with a contrite 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 imposition of hands of the Catholic Church. For that sentence of the Lord is preserved thus: Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), so that even if they are baptized outside the Church, or indeed within the Church by a wicked and perverse priest according to this rule, it is in no way repeated in them. For the faith, which works through love, is held by the holy Catholic Church.

That heretics are proved to have in no way: because truly faith alone is not sufficient, unless, believing in 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 tending toward God. Hence, according to the Apostle, he goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8): whom we must resist with fortitude in faith. CHAPTER XII. And although as long as we live in this world in a mortal state, we cannot be without sin; nevertheless, that we may not be entangled in any crimes, so that we may return to his service, and having become his vessels, he may again begin to dwell in us; what are criminal sins, both divine Scripture and worldly laws publicly punish; but also your conscience, which does not wish to suffer from another, is not ignorant; but if perhaps after baptism we have been involved in some crimes, let it not displease us to do penance, and with contrite heart and body to ask for indulgence from God. For those who seem to themselves to commit sins with impunity, while perhaps they give some alms to the poor, are greatly deceived. For they do not know that the first work of mercy is to offer oneself to God, and thus to show mercy to another. For Scripture says thus: Have mercy on your soul pleasing God (Sirach 30:24); and again: Who is evil to himself, to whom is he good (Sirach 4:5)? Therefore alms are to be given, but vices are to be abandoned first.

Therefore, those who, with the Lord's help, preserve their white garment as when they were born, persevering until the end of their life, differ greatly from those who do not. For them, daily prayer suffices to absolve the smallest faults that creep in during this mortal body; concerning this, the Apostle desires to be freed, saying: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 7:24). For also the Lord in the Gospel (Matt. 13:23) showed three fertilities of the earth, that is, he demonstrated three grades of good people in the Church: the thirtieth, the sixtieth, and the hundredth. Whence also Noah's ark, which signified the Church, was two-chambered and three-chambered, signifying, as we have said, three grades or orders, which the Church's interpreters have referred to the married, the continent, and the virgins. The thirtieth, of course, to the married, the sixtieth to the continent, the hundredth to the virgins. Thus 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 receive the reward of the kingdom of heaven equally, nor all the continent, nor all the married; but each one will receive his own reward, says the Apostle, according to his own labor (1 Cor. 3:8). And the more obedient one has been to God than another, the more reward he will receive. And what will that reward or prize be, except God Himself, the prize of virtue?

Someone said: He who gave strength, who gave victory to those who strive, will without doubt himself be the crown. We understand that one person will see God in that life as much more fully as he loved Him more fully in this life and was more obedient to His commands. CHAPTER XIII. But even in the flesh of the resurrected dead there will be many differences of brightness, as the Apostle says: One is the brightness of the sun, another the brightness of the moon, another the brightness of the stars. For one star differs from another in brightness, and so it will be with the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:41). Therefore, whatever bodies fire has consumed, or beasts have devoured, or water has swallowed, will rise again in that moment of time and in the twinkling of an eye, each one in the sex in which he died: a male thus in the male, and a female in the female. That the dead do rise again, the Lord says in the Gospel: Have you not read what the Lord says to Moses from the bush: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Luke 20:37)? And adding, he continues: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all things live to Him (ibid., 38); and again: Then, he says, all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who have done good will rise to the resurrection of life, while those who have done evil will rise to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:28-29). For elsewhere (Matt. 25:46), enumerating the works of mercy and rebuking the good and the bad, he says that these go into eternal punishment.

The good will also receive eternal joy; there they will reign with their God without end, and, secure in their own stability, nothing unseemly will delight them. For wherever their spirit will be, it will at once be in a new body and a new earth. But the wicked will receive eternal fire, which will torment them forever. There their worm will not die, and the fire will not be extinguished (Mark 9:44). Therefore, dearest one, we must be diligent and continually implore God's mercy, so that we may live soberly, piously, and justly in this age, in order that we may be able to reach the kingdom of heaven.