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On the Creed:
1. Receive, my children, the Rule of Faith, which is called the Symbol (or Creed ). And when ye have received it, write it in your heart, and be daily
2. Of this, then, ye have now received, have meditated, and having meditated have held, that ye should say, “I believe in God the Father Almighty.” Go
3. For this reason we believe also in His Son, that is to say, God the Father Almighty’s, “His Only Son, our Lord.” When thou hearest of the Only Son
4. We do not bring in two Gods as some do, who say, “God the Father and God the Son, but greater God the Father and lesser God the Son.” They both are
5. The Father doeth what He will, and what He will doeth the Son. Do not imagine an Almighty Father and a not Almighty Son: it is error, blot it out w
6. But this Only Son of God, the Father Almighty, let us see what He did for us, what He suffered for us. “Born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Ma
7. What next? “Suffered under Pontius Pilate.” He was in office as governor and was the judge, this same Pontius Pilate, what time as Christ suffered.
8. He was begotten before all times, before all worlds. “Begotten before.” Before what, He in Whom is no before? Do not in the least imagine any time
9. Of His cross what shall I speak, what say? This extremest kind of death He chose, that not any kind of death might make His Martyrs afraid. The doc
10. Scripture saith, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord.” When we read what great trials Job endured, it makes o
11. “He ascended into heaven:” believe. “He sitteth at the right hand of the Father:” believe. By sitting, understand dwelling: as [in Latin] we say o
12. “Thence He shall come to judge the quick and dead.” The quick, who shall be alive and remain the dead, who shall have gone before. It may also be
13. It follows in the Creed, “And in the Holy Ghost.” This Trinity, one God, one nature, one substance, one power highest equality, no division, no d
14. It follows after commendation of the Trinity, “The Holy Church.” God is pointed out, and His temple. “For the temple of God is holy,” says the Apo
15. “Forgiveness of sins.” Ye have [this article of] the Creed perfectly in you when ye receive Baptism. Let none say, “I have done this or that sin:
16. In three ways then are sins remitted in the Church by Baptism, by prayer, by the greater humility of penance yet God doth not remit sins but to
17. We believe also “the resurrection of the flesh,” which went before in Christ: that the body too may have hope of that which went before in its Hea
A Sermon to the Catechumens.
S. AURELII AUGUSTINI HIPPONENSIS EPISCOPI DE SYMBOLO SERMO AD CATECHUMENOS .
