THE Christian Faith is proclaimed by the authority of the New Testament and of the Old; but although the Old scripture2 contains within its pages the name of Christ and constantly gives token that He will come who we believe has already come by the birth of the Virgin, yet the diffusion of that faith throughout the world dates from the actual miraculous coming of our Saviour.
Now this our
religion which is called Christian and Catholic is founded chiefly on the
following assertions. From all eternity, that is, before the world was
established, and so before all that is meant by time began, there has existed
one divine substance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in such wise that we
confess the Father God, the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and yet not three
Gods but one God. Thus the Father hath the Son, begotten of His substance and
coeternal with Himself after a manner that He alone knoweth, Him we confess to
be Son in the sense that He is not the same as the Father. Nor has the Father
ever been Son, for the human mind must not 
imagine a divine lineage stretching back into
infinity; nor can the Son, being of the same nature in virtue of which He is
coeternal with the Father, ever become Father, for the divine lineage must not
stretch forward into infinity. But the Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son,
and therefore, albeit of the same divine nature, neither begotten, nor
begetting, but proceeding as well from the Father as the Son.3
Yet what the manner of that Procession is we are no more able to state clearly
than is the human mind able to understand the generation of the Son from the
substance of the Father. But these articles are laid down for our belief by Old
and New Testament. Concerning which fortress and citadel4of our religion many men have spoken otherwise and have even impugned it,
being moved by human, nay rather by carnal feeling. Arius, for instance, who,
while calling the Son God, declares Him to be vastly inferior to the Father and
of another substance. The Sabellians also have dared to affirm that there are
not three separate Persons but only One, saying that the Father is the same as
the Son and the Son the same as the Father and the Holy Spirit the same as the
Father and the Son; and so declaring that there is but one divine Person
expressed by different names.
The Manichaeans, too, who allow
two coeternal and contrary principles, do not believe in the Only begotten Son
of God. For they consider it a thought unworthy of God that He should have a
Son, since they entertain the very carnal reflection that inasmuch as5
human generation arises from the mingling of two 
bodies, it is unworthy to hold a notion of this sort in respect of the
divine nature; whereas such a view finds no sanction in the Old Testament and
absolutely6 none in the
New. Yea, their error which refuses this notion also refuses the Virgin birth
of the Son, because they would not have the God's nature defiled by the man's
body. But enough of this for the present; the points will be presented in the
proper place as the proper arrangement demands.
The divine nature then, abiding
from all eternity and unto all eternity without any change, by the exercise of
a will known only to Himself, determined of Himself to form the world, and
brought it into being when it was absolutely naught, nor did He produce it from
His own substance, lest it should be thought divine by nature, nor did He form
it after any model, lest it should be thought that anything had already come
into being which helped His will by the existence of an independent nature, and
that there should exist something that had not been made by Him and yet
existed; but by His Word He brought forth the heavens, and created the earth7
that so He might make natures worthy of a place in heaven, and also fit earthly
things to earth. But although in heaven all things are beautiful and arranged
in due order, yet one part of the heavenly creation which is universally termed
angelic,8 seeking
more than nature and the Author of Nature had granted them, was cast forth from
its heavenly habitation; and because the Creator did not wish the roll of the
angels, that is of the heavenly city whose citizens the angels are, to be
diminished, He formed man out of the earth and breathed into him the breath of
life; He endowed him with reason, He adorned him with freedom of choice and
established 
him in the joys of Paradise,
making covenant aforehand that if he would remain without sin He would add him
and his offspring to the angelic hosts; so that as the higher nature had fallen
low through the curse of pride, the lower substance might ascend on high
through the blessing of humility. But the father of envy, loath that man should
climb to the place where he himself deserved not to remain, put temptation
before him and the consort whom the Creator had brought forth out of his side
for the continuance of the race, and laid them open to punishment for disobedience,
promising man also the gift of Godhead, the arrogant attempt to seize which had
caused his own fall. All this was revealed by God to His servant Moses, whom He
vouchsafed to teach the creation and origin of man, as the books written by him
declare. For the divine authority is always conveyed in one of the following
ways - the historical, which simply announces facts; the allegorical, whence
historical matter is excluded; or else the two combined, history and allegory
conspiring to establish it. All this is abundantly evident to pious hearers and
steadfast believers.
But to return
to the order of our discourse; the first man, before sin came, dwelt with his
consort in the Garden. But when he hearkened to the voice of his wife and
failed to keep the commandment of his Creator, he was banished, bidden to till
the ground, and being shut out from the sheltering garden he carried abroad
into unknown regions the children of his loins; by begetting whom he transmitted
to those that came after, the punishment which he, the first man, had incurred
by the sin of disobedience. Hence it came to pass that corruption both of body
and soul ensued, and death; and 
this he was to taste first in his own son Abel, in
order that he might learn through his child the greatness of the punishment
that was laid upon him. For if he had died first he would in some sense not
have known, and if one may so say not have felt, his punishment; but he tasted
it in another in order that he might perceive the due reward of his contempt,
and, doomed to death himself, might be the more sensibly touched by the
apprehension of it. But this curse that came of transgression which the first
man had by natural propagation transmitted to posterity, was denied by one
Pelagius who so set up the heresy which goes by his name and which the Catholic
faith, as is known, at once banished from its bosom. So the human race that
sprang from the first man and mightily increased and multiplied, broke into
strife, stirred up wars, and became the heir of earthly misery, because it had
lost the joys of Paradise in its first parent. Yet were there not a few of
mankind whom the Giver of Grace set apart for Himself and who were obedient to
His will; and though by desert of nature they were condemned, yet God by making
them partakers in the hidden mystery, long afterwards to be revealed,
vouchsafed to recover fallen nature. So the earth was filled by the human race
and man who by his own wanton wilfulness had despised his Creator began to walk
in his own ways. Hence God willing rather to recover mankind through one just
man than that it should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty
multitude to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only Noah, the just
one, with his children and all that he had brought with him into the ark. The
reason why He wished to save the just by an ark of wood is known 
to all hearts learned in the Holy Scriptures. Thus
what we may call the first age of the world was ended by the avenging flood.
Thus the human
race was restored, and yet it hastened to make its own the vice of nature with
which the first author of transgression had infected it. And the wickedness
increased which had once been punished by the waters of the flood, and man who
had been suffered to live for a long series of years was reduced to the brief
span of ordinary human life. Yet would not God again visit the race by a flood,
but rather, letting it continue, He chose from it men of whose line a
generation should arise out of which He might in the last days grant us His own
Son to come to us, clothed in human form. Of these men Abraham is the first,
and although he was stricken in years and his wife past bearing, they had in
their old age the reward of a son in fulfilment of promise unconditional. This
son was named Isaac and he begat Jacob, who in his turn begat the twelve
Patriarchs, God not reckoning in their number those whom nature in its ordinary
course produced.9 This Jacob,
then, together with his sons and his household determined to dwell in Egypt for
the purpose of trafficking; and the multitude of them increasing there in the
course of many years began to be a cause of suspicion to the Egyptian rulers,
and Pharaoh ordered them to be oppressed by exceeding heavy tasks10
and afflicted them with grievous burdens. At length God, minded to set at
naught the tyranny of the king of Egypt, divided the Red Sea - a marvel such as
nature had never known before - and brought forth His host by the hands of
Moses and Aaron. Thereafter on account of their departure Egypt was vexed with
sore plagues, because they would not let 
the people go. So, after crossing the Red Sea, as
I have told, they passed through the desert of the wilderness and came to the
mount which is called Sinai, where God the Creator of all, wishing to prepare
the nations for the knowledge of the sacrament to come, laid down by a law
given through Moses how both the rites of sacrifices and the national customs
should be ordered. And after fighting down many tribes in many years amidst
their journeyings they came at last to the river called Jordan, with Joshua the
son of Nun now as their captain, and, for their crossing, the streams of Jordan
were dried up as the waters of the Red Sea had been; so they finished their
course to that city which is now called Jerusalem. And while the people of God
abode there we read that there were set up first judges and prophets and then
kings, of whom we read that after Saul, David of the tribe of Judah ascended
the throne. So from him the royal race descended from father to son and lasted
till the days of Herod who, we read, was the first taken out of the peoples
called Gentile to bear sway. In whose days rose up the blessed Virgin Mary,
sprung from the stock of David, she who bore the Maker of the human race. But
it was just because the whole world lay dead, stained with its many sins, that
God chose out one race in which His commands might shine clear; sending it
prophets and other holy men, to the end that by their warnings that people at
least might be cured of their swollen pride. But they slew these holy men and
chose rather to abide in their wanton wickedness.
And now at the
last days of time, in place of prophets and other men well-pleasing to Him, God
willed that His only-begotten Son should be born 
ofa Virgin that so the salvation of
mankind which had been lost through the disobedience of the first man might be
recovered by the God-man, and that inasmuch as it was a woman who had first
persuaded man to that which wrought death there should be this second woman who
should bring forth from a human womb Him who gives Life. Nor let it be deemed a
thing unworthy that the Son of God was born of a Virgin, for it was out of the
course of nature that He was conceived and brought to birth. Virgin then she
conceived, by the Holy Spirit, the Son of God made flesh, Virgin she bore Him,
Virgin she continued after His birth; and He became the Son of Man and likewise
the Son of God that in Him the glory of the divine nature might shine forth and
at the same time the human weakness be declared which He took upon Him. Yet
against this article of Faith so wholesome and altogether true there rose up
many who babbled other doctrine, and especially Nestorius and Eutyches,
inventors of heresy, of whom the one thought fit to say that He was man alone,
the other that He was God alone and that the human body put on by Christ had
not come by participation in human substance. But enough on this point.
So Christ grew after the flesh,
and was baptized in order that He who was to give the form of baptism to others
should first Himself receive what He taught. But after His baptism He chose
twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed Him. And because the people of the Jews
would not bear sound doctrine they laid hands upon Him and slew and crucified
Him. Christ, then, was slain; He lay three days and three nights in the tomb;
He rose again from the dead as He had predetermined with His Father before the
founda
tion of the world; He ascended
into heaven whence we know that He was never absent, because He is Son of God,
in order that as Son of God He might raise together with Him to the heavenly
habitation man whose flesh He had assumed, whom the devil had hindered from
ascending to the places on high. Therefore He bestowed on His disciples the
form of baptizing, the saving truth of the teaching, and the mighty power of
miracles, and bade them go throughout the whole world to give it life, in order
that the message of salvation might be preached no longer in one nation only
but among all the dwellers upon earth. And because the human race was wounded
by the weapon of eternal punishment by reason of the nature which they had
inherited from the first transgressor and could not win a full meed of
salvation because they had lost it in its first parent, God instituted certain
health-giving sacraments to teach the difference between what grace bestowed
and human nature deserved, nature simply subjecting to punishment, but grace,
which is won by no merit, since it would not be grace if it were due to merit,
conferring all that belongs to salvation.
Therefore is
that heavenly instruction spread throughout the world, the peoples are knit
together, churches are founded, and, filling the broad earth, one body formed,
whose head, even Christ, ascended into heaven in order that the members might
of necessity follow where the Head was gone. Thus this teaching both inspires
this present life unto good works, and promises that in the end of the age our
bodies shall rise incorruptible to the kingdom of heaven, to the end that he
who has lived well on earth by God's gift should be altogether blessed in that
resurrection, but he who has lived amiss should, 
with the gift of resurrection, enter upon misery.
And this is a first principle of our religion, to believe not only that men's
souls do not perish, but that their very bodies, which the coming of death had
destroyed, recover their first state by the bliss that is to be. This Catholic
church, then, spread throughout the world, is known by three particular marks:
whatever is believed and taught in it has the authority of the Scriptures, or
of universal tradition, or at least of its own and proper usage. And this
authority is binding on the whole Church as is also the universal tradition of
the Fathers, while each separate church exists and is governed by its private
constitution and its proper rites according to difference of locality and the
good judgment of each. All, therefore, that the faithful now expect is that the
end of the world will come, that all corruptible things shall pass away, that
men shall rise for future judgement, that each shall receive reward according
to his deserts and abide in the lot assigned to him for ever and for aye; and
the sole reward of bliss will be the contemplation of the Almighty, so far,
that is, as the creature may look on the Creator, to the end that the number of
the angels may be made up from these and the heavenly city filled where the
Virgin's Son is King and where will be everlasting joy, delight, food, labour,
and unending praise of the Creator.
1 The conclusions adverse to the genuineness of this tractate, reached in the dissertation Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de Fide Catholica (Jahrb�cher fur kl. Phil. xxvi. (1901) Supplementband) by one of the editors, now seem to both unsound. The writer of that dissertation intends to return to the subject elsewhere. This fourth tractate, though lacking, in the best mss., either an ascription to Boethius or a title, is firmly imbedded in two distinct recensions of Boethiuis's theological works. There is no reason to disturb it. Indeed the capita dogmatica mentioned by Cassiodorus can hardly refer to any of the tractates except the fourth.
2 For instrumentum = Holy Scripture cf. Tertull. Apol. 18, 19, adv. Hermog. 19, etc.; for instrumentum = any historical writing cf. Tert. De Spect. 5.
3 Boethius is no heretic. By the sixth century uel had lost its strong separative force. Cp. "Noe cum sua uel trium natorum coniugibus," Greg. Tur. H.P. i. 20. Other examples in Bonnet, La Latinit� de Gr�g. de Tours, p. 313, and in Brandt's edition of the Isag. Index, s.v. uel.
4 Vide Cons. i. pr. 3 (infra, p. 140), and cf. Dante, De Mon. iii. 16. 117.
5 Ut quia.
A very rare use. Cf. Baehrens, Beitr�ge zur lat. Syntaxis (Philologus,
Supplementband xii. 1912). It perhaps = Aristotle's
6 In integro = prorsus; cf. Brandt, op. cit. Index, s.v. integer.
7 The doctrine is orthodox, but note that Boethius does not say ex nihilo creauit. Vide infra, p. 366 II. 24ff.
8 Vide infra, Cons. iv. pr. 6, p. 342 I. 54.
9 e.g.
Ishamel also
10 Cf. "populus dei mirabiliter crescens…quia…erant suspecta…laboribus premebatur. Aug. De Ciu. Dei, 18. 7. For other coincidences see Rand, op. cit. pp. 423ff.