39. The necessity of the moment urged the Council to set forth a wider and broader exposition of the creed including many intricate questions, because the heresy which Photinus was reviving was sapping our Catholic home by many secret mines. Their purpose was to oppose every form of stealthy subtle heresy by a corresponding form of pure and unsullied faith, and to have as many complete explanations of the faith as there were instances of peculiar faithlessness. Immediately after the universal and unquestioned statement of the Christian mysteries, the explanation of the faith against the heretics begins as follows.

I. “But those who say that the Son is sprung from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was a time or age when He was not, the holy Catholic Church regards as aliens.”

39. Photini fraus multiplex retunditur. Filius a Patre nec substantia differt nec tempore.---Necessitas et 0512C tempus admonuit eos, qui tum convenerant, per multiplices quaestiones latius ac diffusius expositionem fidei ordinare; quia multis et occultis cuniculis in catholicam 0513A domum ea, quae per Photinum renovabatur, haeresis tentaret irrepere: ut per singula genera intemeratae et illaesae fidei, unicuique generi haereticae ac furtivae fraudulentiae contrairetur; essentque tot fidei absolutiones, quotidem essent quaesitae perfidiae occasiones. Ac primum post generalem illam atque indubitatam sacramentorum expositionem, hinc exponendae fidei adversum haereticos coepit exordium.

I. «Eos autem qui dicunt: De nullis exstantibus Filius, vel de altera substantia et non ex Deo; et quod erat tempus vel saeculum quando non erat: alienos scit sancta et catholica Ecclesia.»