The Last Things

“We firmly believe and simply confess that there is one only true God, eternal, immeasurable and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, Father and Son and Holy Spirit: three Persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature altogether simple. The Father from none, the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit equally from both: without beginning, always and without end; the Father begetting, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial and coequal and coalmighty and coeternal; one principle of all things; creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power from the beginning of time made together out of nothing both orders of creature, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is the angelic and the earthly, and thereafter the human, as it were common to both, composed of spirit and body. For the devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good in their nature, but they made themselves evil of their own doing. Man however sinned at the suggestion of the devil. This Holy Trinity, undivided according to its common essence and distinct according to the properties of the Persons, gave to the human race the doctrine of salvation, first through Moses and the holy Prophets and his other servants, according to the most orderly disposition of the times. And at the last the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, made flesh by the whole Trinity in common, conceived of Mary ever Virgin by the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, made true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one Person in two natures, showed more plainly the way of life. Who, although according to his divinity he is immortal and impassible, the same according to his humanity was made passible and mortal; who also, for the salvation of the human race, having suffered and died upon the wood of the cross, descended to the realms below, rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven — but he descended in the soul and rose again in the flesh, and ascended alike in both — to come at the end of the world, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the reprobate as to the elect: who shall all rise again with their own bodies, which they now bear, that they may receive according to their works, whether these have been good or evil; the one everlasting punishment with the devil, and the other everlasting glory with Christ. There is moreover one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved; in which Jesus Christ himself is both priest and sacrifice, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread having been transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power, so that, to accomplish the mystery of unity, we ourselves may receive of what is his what he himself received of what is ours. And this sacrament no one at all can confect but a priest who has been rightly ordained according to the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ himself granted to the Apostles and their successors. But the sacrament of baptism — which is consecrated in water at the invocation of God and the undivided Trinity, namely of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — rightly conferred by anyone in the form of the Church, profits unto salvation both little ones and adults. And if anyone, after receiving baptism, has fallen into sin, he can always be restored through true penance. Moreover not only virgins and the continent, but also the married, pleasing God by right faith and good works, deserve to come to eternal blessedness.”

“Furthermore, every doctrine or proposition rashly asserting, or calling into doubt, that the substance of the rational or intellective soul is not truly and of itself the form of the human body, we reprove, with the approval of the aforesaid sacred Council, as erroneous and hostile to the catholic truth of the faith; defining, so that the truth of sincere faith may be known to all and the way to all errors closed lest they creep in, that whoever shall henceforth presume to assert, defend or obstinately hold that the rational or intellective soul is not of itself and essentially the form of the human body, is to be reckoned a heretic.”

“Since therefore in our days — which we report with sorrow — the sower of tares, the ancient enemy of the human race, has dared to sow over and to increase in the field of the Lord certain most pernicious errors, always rejected by the faithful, concerning especially the nature of the rational soul, namely that it is mortal, or one in all men; and since some, rashly philosophising, affirm that this is true at least according to philosophy: desiring to apply fitting remedies against a plague of this kind, with the approval of this sacred Council we condemn and reprove all who assert that the intellective soul is mortal, or one in all men, and those who call these things into doubt — since it not only truly exists of itself and essentially as the form of the human body, as is contained in the canon of Pope Clement V of happy memory, our predecessor, issued in the general Council of Vienne, but is also immortal, and, according to the multitude of the bodies into which it is infused, individually multiplicable, multiplied and to be multiplied. And since truth in no way contradicts truth, we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of the illumined faith is altogether false; and we most strictly forbid that it be lawful to teach otherwise; and we decree that all who adhere to assertions of such error are to be shunned and punished in every way as detestable and abominable heretics and unbelievers, sowing most damnable heresies and undermining the catholic faith.”

“At the Consummation of the World Christ will appear for judgment, and will raise up all the dead; He will give to the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys, but ungodly men and the devils He will condemn to be tormented without end. They condemn the Anabaptists, who think that there will be an end to the punishments of condemned men and devils.”