we embrace, the venerable Council of Chalcedon, and all the writings of the holy Fathers, who felt one and the same according to the definitions of these councils; but we anathematize all who doubt, or retract, or judge them imperfect, or who deem them alien to the faith of the holy Fathers. Likewise, therefore, we anathematize all the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and of Nestorius his disciple, and all who think like them. To these we add Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy, Elusius, Peter of Alexandria, and Peter of Antioch, and Acacius of Constantinople, with all their followers, and successors, A communicants and accomplices, or those who are in any way stained by their contagion, or who celebrate the memories of those who have died in that very condemnation, or who defend the innocent.
These things being so, most blessed ones, we now believe that it is necessary to make manifest to your holiness, by briefly explaining, what we hold concerning the grace of God—not that by which we are created, but that by which we are recreated and renewed. This is because in this matter also, the enemies of the grace of God, that is, the followers of Pelagius and Coelestius, seem to be too hostile to us. Therefore, we confess that Adam was created by God upright in all things, neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of both, having in the power of his own free will both the will and the ability for all things, that is, for both good and evil; that he, deceived by the craftiness of the cunning serpent, became a transgressor of the divine precept of his own accord, and on account of this, by the just judgment of God, became subject not only to the death of the body, but also of the soul, and despoiled of his former honor, having become like the beasts—not that he became irrational, but because his rational vigor was bound by carnal delight; finally, he immediately felt, by the merit of his disobedience, a law B contrary in his own members, fighting against the law of his mind, and taking him captive in the law of sin. We believe that this evil, and the punishment of this evil, has passed upon the whole human race. For not only the death of the body, which is the punishment of sin, as some wish to say, but also the sting of death, that is, sin, has entered into the world. For we do not acquiesce to them, but rather to the Apostle, who testifies that both sin and death have passed through unto all men, saying: *By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so unto all* [Rom. v, 12] *men death hath passed, in whom all have sinned*.
Therefore, we believe that recent infants from the womb are baptized not only to merit the adoption of sons, or on account of the kingdom of heaven (as Pelagius and Coelestius, or the disciples of Theodore of Mopsuestia who attempt to affirm that there is one and the same natural and original sin, think), but for the remission of sins, lest they perish eternally. The vigor of nature, therefore, having been weakened by the evil of transgression, was in no way able to rise again by itself from where it had fallen by its own will. Therefore, we believe that no one from Adam until now has been saved by the vigor of nature, except by the gift of the grace of the Holy Spirit in the faith of the name of Jesus. For *there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby it behoveth* [Act. iv, 12] *us to be saved*, except in the name of Jesus Christ. We believe that the natural free will—we believe—is of no value except for discerning and desiring carnal or earthly things, which perhaps can appear glorious not before God, but before men. But as to those things which pertain to eternal life, it can neither think, nor will, nor desire, nor perform them, except through the infusion and operation within of the Holy Spirit, who is also the Spirit of Christ. *For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his* [Rom. VIII, 9]. But if any man believes in Christ, he is already Christ’s. As is also true, it is not, however, by the gift of nature, but by the Holy Spirit, who is of Christ. For he who now believes in him who justifies the ungodly, so that he may confess that Jesus is Lord, which *no man can say, but in the Holy Spirit* [I Cor. XII, 3]. Therefore, C we anathematize those who say that nature or any substance is sin. We also abhor those who dare to say against the voice of the Apostle: "It is ours to will, but God’s to perform," when the same doctor testifies that both to will and to perform is a divine gift, he himself saying: *For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, for good will* [Philipp. II, 13]. We also believe that all from Abel unto Christ, if any were saved, were saved by that same grace by which we are saved, according to the voice of the blessed Apostle Peter saying: *Why tempt you God, to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither our fathers* D *nor we have been able to bear? But by the grace of the Lord Jesus we believe to be saved, in like manner as they* [Act. XV, 10, 11].
OF THE SAME: CAPITULA AGAINST THE NESTORIANS
That these twelve anathemas are those protests which the Scythian monks publicly posted at Rome, when they had fled secretly from the city in which they were kept under guard by the holy pontiff Hormisdas, is not entirely alien to what Baronius conjectures in volume VII, year 520, chapter 25. Concerning the first…
anathema, when he says: "One incarnate nature of God the Word." Note the heretical fraud, reader; this assertion is indeed true and orthodox of itself: "The nature of the Word, or the divinity, is incarnate." For it is clear that Saint Athanasius and Saint Cyril, whom Saint John Damascene cites in *Book I De fide, cap. 6*, saint Fulgentius in *Quæst. 2 ad Ferrandum*, the Lateran Council under Martin I, in canon 1, Saint Peter the Deacon in his *Book on the Incarnation, cap. 2*, and others, all spoke thus. Provided, that is, that it receives this catholic sense: the divine nature is incarnate, that is, united to flesh, or because it assumed the nature of flesh. Moreover, because the Eutychians perverted this proposition—"One incarnate nature of God the Word"—in a depraved and heretical sense, as if there were nothing in Christ but a divine nature into which human nature had been converted, it is in no way to be tolerated in a Eutychian man, such as Maxentius was. For even Dioscorus, when he was separating himself from the orthodox bishops, said in the Council of Chalcedon at the end of the first session, before the second session of the Council of Constantinople: "I, for my part, have the testimonies of the Holy Fathers Athanasius, Gregory, and Cyril in many places, that one ought not to say after the union there are two natures, but one incarnate nature of God the Word." Behold, the latter words are the very words of Maxentius; the former he omitted with treacherous guile, or rather concealed, though he wanted them to be understood. In the same way the erring Armenians spoke, who nevertheless did not want to appear as Eutychians, whom, however, Theodorianus refutes below.
Wherefore, the holy Damascene, prudently detecting the impostures of the Eutychians in *Lib. Fidei orthod., cap. 11*, warned of these things: "But that the divinity was made man, or that it is incarnate, or that it clothed itself in humanity, we have never heard. This we have certainly learned, that the divinity is united to humanity in one of its persons." And Nicetas, in *Lib. III Thesauri, cap. 11*, says: "It is not free from error if we say the divine nature is incarnate, or if we say flesh was assumed by the divine nature." This is why, lest the orthodox be imposed upon by the frauds of the Eutychians, as John Maxentius did here in his first anathema. In the third anathema, those words are not without guile: "substantial or natural union, after the union of the two natures in Christ there resulted a unity of substance or nature," that is, nothing but nature, which is the Eutychian heresy. In that same anathema those words, "but he says it is a subsistential or personal union," if they are not openly heretical, they are none the less absurd and improper. For the Catholic faith teaches that the union of the two natures in Christ is subsistential and personal, because the two natures are united in one subsistence and personality of the Word. (See S. Thomas, *III part., quæst. 2, art. 2*.)
If anyone confesses two united natures A in our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, of his divinity and humanity, and not one incarnate nature of God the Word, as two united in one substance and person, according to what the venerable Council of Chalcedon handed down to us, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess holy Mary to be properly and truly the Mother of God, but attributes this name to her only out of honor, because she gave birth to a man who, according to grace, is called God, and not because she gave birth to God incarnate and made man, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess a substantial or natural union, according to that by which the nature of God the Word remaining is united to the human nature, but calls it a subsistential or personal union, or according to enlightenment, or according to affection, or according to inclination, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not acquiesce in confessing Christ as one of the Trinity, even with his own flesh, who for us suffered in the flesh, although according to the flesh he is not of the substance of the Trinity, but is the same as one of us, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess that that boy whom the holy Virgin Mary brought forth is God by nature, through whom all things were made, visible and invisible, celestial and terrestrial; the creator of all, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace, the Father of the age to come, let him be anathema. B
If anyone says Christ suffered in the flesh, but does not acquiesce in saying that God suffered in the flesh, which is understood as the same, that Christ suffered in the flesh, let him be anathema.
If anyone says: God was not made Christ, but Christ was made God, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess two nativities in the one Son of God, God the Word, born of the Father before the ages indeed, and in these last days the same born of a mother, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess that Christ is composite after the incarnation, let him be anathema.
If anyone says that sin is natural, crazily ascribing the cause of sin to the creator of natures, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not confess original sin entered into the world through the transgression of Adam, according to the voice of the Apostle saying: *By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all have sinned*, let him be anathema.
Item: We anathematize every opinion of Pelagius, and Caelestius, and all who think similar things to them, receiving all things which in diverse places have been acted and written against them by the prelates of the Apostolic See, that is, Innocent, Boniface, Zosimus, Celestine, Leo, and also Atticus of Constantinople, and Augustine, (and) the bishops of the African province.
REASON FOR THE UNION OF THE WORD OF GOD. ANOTHER PROFESSION OF FAITH OF THE SAME.
God is Father, God is Son, and God is also the Holy Spirit; not three Gods, but one God, one substance or nature, one wisdom, one virtue, one dominion, one kingdom, one omnipotence, one glory, yet three subsistences or persons. Each person incommutably always possessing what is proper to it, so that neither the Father is the Son or the Holy Spirit, nor the Son is the Father or the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy Spirit is the Father or the Son. The Son, however—that is, the Word of God, the only-begotten God, consubstantial with the Father, remaining God in his own subsistence—in the last days assumed human nature from the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary and, joining flesh to himself, became man, having a rational or intellectual soul. Therefore, it must be confessed that God was born of a woman, not according to his divinity, but according to his humanity; that God lay in a cradle, wrapped in swaddling clothes, covered in filth, grew, and progressed in age and wisdom according to his humanity, not according to his divinity; that God hungered, thirsted, and rested, weary from the journey, not according to his divinity, but according to his humanity; B that God was seized by the hands of the impious, judged, condemned, crucified, and his side pierced with a lance, not according to his divinity, but according to his humanity; that God died, was buried, and rose again, not according to his divinity, but according to his humanity; that God ascended into heaven with that same flesh, sat at the right hand of the Father, and from thence will come again in that same flesh in glory to judge the living and the dead.
It must further be professed that Christ, the Son of Man or man, born of the Father before the ages as one of the Trinity—by whom all things visible and invisible were made, and without whom nothing was made—is this, not according to his humanity, but according to his divinity; that this same man is the eternal life, wisdom, and virtue of the Father, not according to his humanity, but according to his divinity; that this same man is the stamp of the substance or image of the Father and the radiance of the glory of God, not according to his humanity, but according to his divinity. It must further be said that he who is the eternal life, wisdom, and virtue of the Father, born according to the flesh from a woman, this eternal life, wisdom, and virtue of the Father, lay in a cradle wrapped in swaddling clothes; that this eternal life, wisdom, and virtue of the Father suffered, was crucified, and died according to the flesh. Since these things are so, no one can be a Catholic unless he has professed that, in the Word of God, the only-begotten Son, two natures—that is, of the Word and of the flesh, of God and of man, of divinity and of humanity—remain after the union always and indissolubly. For just as he is one of the Trinity, and in the beginning the Word is God, so also the very same is from us, a perfect and true man. For he who was given to us as a child from the loins of Abraham and from the seed of David is the God of heaven and the Prince of Peace; and therefore there are not two, but one person of Christ, because no one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven, Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the same is for the ages. C
THE SAME MAXENTIUS'S ACCOUNT OF THE UNION OF THE WORD OF GOD TO HIS OWN FLESH.
The Son of God, the Word of the Father, one of the Trinity, consubstantial with the Father, born of God before the ages, subsisting as God in his own person, in the last times, straightway between the words of the evangelizing angel and the consenting faith of the Virgin, by the power of his own virtue, joined flesh to himself from the womb of the same Virgin without the seed of a man, remaining God in his own D nature, became man, having a rational or intellectual soul, and so, in the fullness of time, according to the law of human nature, he proceeded from the virginal chamber. For this reason, it is most rightly called a natural, not a social, union or joining in Christ, because it was not to flesh formed or animated—which the person of any given man can [already] demonstrate—