Then there arose, and too widely overspread the world, that doctrine of rationalism, or naturalism, which opposes itself in every way to the Christian religion as a supernatural institution, and works with the utmost zeal in order that, after Christ, our sole Lord and Saviour, has been excluded from the minds of men, and from the life and moral acts of nations, the reign of what they call pure reason or nature may be established. And after forsaking and rejecting the Christian religion, and denying the true God and His Christ, the minds of many have sunk into the abyss of Pantheism, Materialism, and Atheism, until, denying rational nature itself and every sound rule of right, they labour to destroy the deepest foundations of human society.
Unhappily, it has yet farther come to pass that, while this impiety prevailed on every side, many even of the children of the Catholic Church have strayed from the path of true piety; and by the gradual diminution of the truths they held, the Catholic sense has become weakened in them. For, led away by various and strange doctrines, wrongly confusing nature and grace, human science and divine faith, they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our Holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and to endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith.
Considering these things, how can the Church fail to be deeply stirred? For, even as God wills all men to be saved, and to arrive at the knowledge of the truth; even as Christ came to save what had perished, and to gather together the children of God who had been dispersed; so the Church, constituted by God the mother and teacher of nations, knows its own office as debtor to all, and is ever ready and watchful to raise the fallen, to support those who are falling, to embrace those who return, to confirm the good and to carry them on to better things. Hence, it can never forbear from witnessing to and proclaiming the truth of God, which heals all things, knowing the words addressed to it: My Spirit that is in thee, and My words that I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, from henceforth and for ever (Isaias lix. 21).
We, therefore, following the footsteps of our predecessors, have never ceased, as becomes our supreme Apostolic office, from teaching and defending Catholic truth, and condemning doctrines of error. And now, with the Bishops of the whole world assembled round us and judging with us, congregated by our authority and in the Holy Spirit in this Œcumenical Council, we, supported by the word of God written and handed down, as we have received it from the Catholic Church, preserved with sacredness and set forth according to truth—have determined to profess and declare the salutary teaching of Christ from this chair of Peter, and in sight of all, proscribing and condemning, by the power given to us of God, all errors contrary thereto.
Chap. I. Of God the Creator of all things.
The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfection, who, as being one, sole, absolutely simple, and immutable spiritual substance, is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from the world, of supreme beatitude in and from Himself, and ineffably exalted above all things beside Himself which exist or are conceivable.
This one only true God, of His own goodness and almighty power, not for the increase or acquirement of His own happiness, but to manifest His perfection by the blessing which He bestows on creatures, and with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing, from the beginning of time, both the spiritual and the corporeal creature, to wit, the angelical and the mundane; and afterwards the human creature, as partaking, in a sense, of both, consisting of spirit and of body.[497]
God protects and governs by His Providence all things which He hath made, "reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). For "all things are bare and open to His eyes" (Heb. iv. 13), even those which are yet to be by the free action of creatures.
Chap. II. Of Revelation.
The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things; "for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Romans i. 20): but that it pleased His wisdom and bounty to reveal Himself, and the eternal decrees of His will, to mankind by another and supernatural way, as the Apostle says: "God, having spoken on divers occasions, and many ways, in times past, to the fathers by the prophets; last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews i. 1, 2).