[Casus longi super V libros decretalium]

¶ Note that no one should presume to make another compilation of decretals after that one without the special license of the Apostolic See.

On the supreme Trinity and the Catholic faith

Note that after the Apostles' Creed, which is "I believe in God," four councils were established by the holy fathers on the supreme Trinity and the Catholic faith against certain heretics, about which four councils one reads in Distinction 15, Chapter 1. In these, certain heretics were condemned who felt wrongly about the Catholic faith and the supreme Trinity. Because of this Catholic faith, one reads in Distinction 23, Chapter 2. There is also another greater creed which is sung in the Mass, made in the Nicene synod because of the Greeks, who did not believe that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both. Afterward, another creed of Athanasius followed, that is, "Whoever wills," which could be called the fourth creed, in which that which is contained concerning the Catholic faith and the supreme Trinity in the aforementioned councils and creeds is confirmed and received. Therefore, so that you may better understand the case, divide this chapter into five parts, as they are marked.

We firmly believe

¶ In the first part, it is noted that we ought firmly to believe and simply to confess that there is one sole true God, eternal and immense and unchangeable, omnipotent and ineffable: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons in one essence, the Father entirely simple,

from none; the Son from the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from both, without beginning, always and without end, the creator of all visible and invisible things, spiritual and corporal. Who from the beginning of time created both kinds of creatures out of nothing, spiritual and corporal, angelic and worldly, and afterward human, constituted as a common being out of body and spirit. But the devil and other demons were created good by God, but they made themselves evil of their own accord. Man, indeed, sinned by the devil's suggestion.

¶ In the second part, namely, "This holy." It is said that this holy Trinity, of which a promise was made according to the most orderly disposition of times through Moses and the prophets and his other servants, bestowed a saving doctrine upon the human race. And at last, the only-begotten Son of God, incarnate by the whole Trinity, conceived by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, was made true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one person in two natures, demonstrating the way of life; immortal according to his divinity, passible and mortal according to his humanity, about to render the sixth article of faith in his own person at the end of the age, both to the reprobate and to the elect according to their merits.

¶ In the third part, "One." It is said that there is one universal church, outside of which no one at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ himself, who is the priest and the sacrifice, whose body and blood is truthfully contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread having been transmuted into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power, so that we might receive from him what he received from us. And this sacrament