Contents

Chapter IV. On the Holy Spirit

Theodore Beza · The Christian Faith

Article 1. On the person of the Holy Spirit.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is the essential power of the Father and the Son, eternal and consubstantial with both, residing in them and proceeding from them, so that he is one God with them, yet in his person distinct from both, just as the Church has rightly defined from the Word of God against Macedonius and other monsters of that kind.¹

Article 2. On the effects that are properly considered in the Holy Spirit.

His power and efficacy, which are infinite, have shown themselves in the creation and preservation of all creatures from the very beginning of the world; but in this treatise he will be weighed by us chiefly from what he works in the sons of God, whose gifts he brings with him, to make them partakers of those gifts, and, to say it in few words, to lead them step by step to that end for which they were destined before the foundations of the world were laid.

Article 3. That the Holy Spirit makes us partakers of Christ by faith alone.

And so the Holy Spirit is the one through whom the Father sends his elect into the possession of Jesus Christ his Son, and preserves them in him, and consequently puts them in possession of all things that are necessary for salvation. But it is necessary, first of all, that this same Holy Spirit make us fit and suited to receive Jesus Christ. And this he accomplishes for us when, out of his mere goodness and mercy, he creates and brings to birth within us that which we call faith: that one instrument, namely, by which we apprehend the Jesus Christ who is offered to us, and the one vessel made ready for receiving him.

Article 4. By what means the Holy Spirit creates and preserves faith in us.

The Holy Spirit uses two ordinary means, both to create faith and also to strengthen more and more, day by day, that instrument which we have called faith; yet in such a way that he does not transfer his own power to them, but works through them alone: namely, the preaching of the Word of God, and the sacraments, as we shall show in their place. For first we shall explain what that faith, so precious, is, and what its effects are.

Article 5. How necessary faith is, and what it is.

Because of the corruption implanted in us, we have so conspired against our own selves that, if God should only admonish us to find our salvation in Christ, we would hold him up to mockery, as the world has always been accustomed to do. And if, beyond this, he should add the one thing, that by believing in Christ Jesus we can receive the fruit of that one remedy provided against eternal death, not even this would help us.

For, as far as these things are concerned, it cannot be told how mute, how deaf, and how blind we are by the fault of our very nature; nor would it be less difficult for us to be willing to believe than it was for a corpse to fly. Here, therefore, it is necessary that, besides all those things, that good heavenly Father, who has chosen us for his glory, should use a twofold grace toward his enemies: and when he announces that he so loved the world that for it he gave his only-begotten Son, on this condition, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life, he should likewise create in us that faith which he requires of us.

Now the faith of which we speak is not that by which we merely believe that God is God, and that his word is truly his (for the very devils have this faith, and tremble all the more); but we call faith a certain sure knowledge, which the Holy Spirit, by his grace and goodness alone, engraves more and more upon the hearts of the elect, by which it comes to pass that each of them, being made more certain of his election in his heart, applies to himself the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ.

Faith, I say, not only believes that Jesus died and rose again for sinners, but also embraces Jesus Christ, in whom alone he who truly believes places his trust, and is so certain of his salvation that, so far as can be, he doubts nothing of it. Rightly, therefore, does Bernard, in full agreement with the Word of God, say: “If you believe that your sins cannot be blotted out except by him against whom alone you have sinned, and upon whom sin does not fall, you do well; but add this further, that you also believe that through him your sins are forgiven you.

This is the testimony which the Holy Spirit bears in our heart, saying: Your sins are forgiven you.”²

Article 6. What the object of true faith is, and what its efficacy.

Since Christ is the object of faith (Christ, I say, as he is set before us in the Word of God), two things follow that are well worth observing by all. The first: wherever no word of God is present, but only human authority, there is no place for faith, but only for dreams and opinions, which cannot but deceive us. The second: faith embraces, and claims as its own, Jesus Christ and whatever is in him; for Christ is offered to us on this condition, that we believe in him.

And so one of two things must be true: either that whatever is required for our salvation is not in Christ, or, if all things are in him, that he who possesses Christ by faith possesses all things. But no one could assert the former without notable blasphemy, since it would follow that Christ is not Jesus, that is, a Savior, except in part. Therefore the latter is established as necessary: namely, that he who obtains Christ by faith obtains in him all things that can be desired for salvation, as the Apostle signifies when he testifies that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Article 7. How it is to be understood, from Paul, that we are justified by faith alone.

The ground on which the foregoing conclusion rests is this: that faith is the instrument which receives Christ, and therefore his righteousness, that is, the fullest perfection. When, therefore, we affirm from Paul that we are justified by faith alone, or freely, or by faith without works (for these are synonymous), this saying is not to be taken as though we were saying that faith is some virtue which justifies us in ourselves before God.

For that would be to put faith in the place of Jesus Christ, who alone is our perfect and entire righteousness. Rather, we speak thus with the Apostle, and say that we are justified by faith alone, because faith embraces him who justifies us, namely Jesus Christ, who, when he unites and joins us to himself, makes us partakers of himself and of all his benefits; and these, being imputed to us, are wholly sufficient for this, that we should be acquitted before God and accounted righteous.

Article 8. That to be certain of one’s salvation, apprehended through Christ by faith, is anything but arrogance.

From this it follows that it is not the mark of an arrogant man to doubt nothing of his salvation; but on the contrary, that by this very means men lay aside all arrogance, so as to give all the glory to God. For faith alone teaches us to depart, as it were, out of ourselves, and plainly compels us to acknowledge that there is nothing in us but causes and matter of condemnation; and therefore it sends us away to Christ alone, by whose righteousness alone it makes us the more sure of obtaining salvation from God, since whatever is in Jesus Christ (and in him is the highest and most absolute perfection of righteousness, both because there is no sin in him, and also because he fulfilled all the righteousness of the law) is imputed to us, just as if it were properly our own, if only we embrace him by faith.

Therefore Bernard says beautifully: “This is our glory: not indeed such a testimony as that proud Pharisee bore, who, with a thought both deceived and deceiving, bore witness concerning himself, and his testimony was not true; but our glory is when the Spirit bears his testimony in our heart.”²

Article 9. That faith finds in Christ alone whatever is required for salvation.

This matter deserves to be explained point by point, that we may know whether through faith there is apprehended a remedy suitable enough, relying on which we may hope for eternal life with sure hope, as it is written: The righteous shall live by his faith. I say, then, that whatever hinders man from being at one with God can be reduced to three heads, for which we obtain as many ready remedies, not in ourselves, but in Jesus Christ alone; yet in such a way that nothing is more properly our own than Christ and whatever is Christ’s, provided only that, united and joined with him by faith, we have entered together into fellowship with him.

For this is the reason why the Church, that is, the assembly of believers, is called the bride of Christ, to whom she is married as to a husband: namely, that the closest fellowship and union which exists between him and believers may the better appear. For the law of this fellowship and spiritual marriage is this, that he takes upon himself all our miseries, while we on the contrary receive all the treasures of good things out of his goodness and mercy, as may easily be understood from what I shall set down.

Article 10. On the first assault of temptation, in which our countless sins are set before us, and the one remedy found by faith in Christ alone against it.

Now let us consider more closely whether in Jesus Christ alone we can obtain sure remedies against all the assaults of Satan and of our own conscience. First of all, Satan and our conscience, in order to prove us utterly unworthy to be saved and most worthy to perish, set before our eyes the nature of God, supremely just, and the deadly enemy and avenger of all wickedness.

And since it is plain enough that we are covered over with countless crimes, what else can we deservedly look for than the wages of sin, that is, eternal death? But what will wretched mortals be able to set against this conclusion of Satan and of their own conscience? Nothing, surely, of any weight, except the one thing I shall presently name.

For, first, if, passing over the justice of God, they flee to his mercy, they deceive themselves; for it is most certain that God is merciful in such a way that meanwhile we must confess his supreme justice, of which we spoke a little before, in article 26 of the third chapter.

But if, to cover their sins, they flee to the merits of the saints (as they call them), in the first place they do the saints a great injury. For David cries out, “Enter not into judgment with your servant”; and elsewhere he confesses that his works do not reach up to God. And what does Paul say of that faithful Abraham, indeed the father of the faithful?

“If Abraham,” he says, “was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Indeed, what does Paul report of himself? “I am aware,” he says, “of nothing against myself, yet I am not thereby justified.” How, then, shall we bring forward any merits of the saints for the satisfaction of our sins, when the saints themselves fled nowhere else than to the one mercy of God, to be reconciled through Christ?

Besides, even if the saints had obtained eternal life by their own merits (which is nevertheless plainly false, as is established from their own words), would not the reward of their merits already have been paid to them in full? By what right, then, shall we bring those merits forward again before God? For if anyone objects that they had so much merit that something is even left over which others may borrow, is this not just the same as to accuse the whole of Scripture?

Indeed, is it not just the same as to say that those saints needed nothing of the death of Christ, since they had enough and more than enough merit in themselves? But come: even if we were to grant what the adversaries ask, that the merits of the saints overflowed, by what right shall we suppose that those merits belong to us? Is it because we dream it to be so, or because we have bought them with money?

Yet it is plain enough how bitterly Peter rebuked Simon Magus when he trafficked in spiritual things: “Your money perish with you, since you suppose that the gift of God can be purchased with money.” See, then, how we load the saints with the very insult by which we most wish to honor them.

And if there is no place here for the works of the saints, what at last shall we find, either in ourselves or in anyone else, by which we may be sufficiently equipped against that assault of Satan?

But, to meet these false imaginations once for all, let us weigh the considerations that follow. First, would we not judge a man utterly mad who, buried under debt, should seriously maintain that he owed his creditors nothing, because he had dreamed that he, or someone else in his name, had satisfied them? Yet we act no differently with God, as often as we do not rest in the satisfaction of Christ alone.

For on what foundation do all those other things rest, and what are they but the empty dreams of men, as though whatever pleases us pleased God? Let us therefore, on the contrary, hear what the Son of God pronounces with his own mouth: “In vain do they worship me, keeping the commandments of men.” And elsewhere: “When you appear before me, who has required these things at your hands?”

Secondly, when we say that we trust in the mercy of God alone, and yet think that we have satisfied him either wholly or at least in part, do we not take away as much from his mercy as we arrogate to ourselves? Thirdly, whoever does not rest in the merit of Christ alone, but joins some other thing with it, does he not act just as if he openly cried out that Christ is not Jesus, that is, a Savior, except in part?

Fourthly, whenever we come to such shamelessness that we dare to set against the wrath of almighty God the works of men, in which there is so much defilement (even if you take the most excellent of them), is this not, so far as in us lies, to rob God of his perfect justice, and therefore of his deity as well? This is why David cried out, “Enter not into judgment with your servant.”

Let us learn, then, to answer Satan’s argument in an altogether different way, namely this: “You take this as your premise, Satan, that God is supremely just, and the avenger of all wickedness. This I grant to be so; but I add something else, which both agrees with justice and has been passed over by you: namely, that since God is supremely just, he will not allow his justice to require that one and the same debt be paid to him twice.

Next, neither do I in the least deny what you have assumed, that I am wholly teeming with countless sins, to which eternal death is owed. But here again I add what you have maliciously passed over: namely, that God has most severely, and by the highest right, avenged all my iniquities in Jesus Christ, who in my name offered himself to the Father to be punished.

And so I reach a conclusion altogether contrary to yours. For since God is just, and does not will the same debt to be paid to him twice, and since Christ Jesus, God and man, has by his infinite obedience satisfied the infinite majesty of God, it follows from these things that it can no longer be that my iniquities should shake my mind, inasmuch as they have been utterly blotted out and erased by the blood of Christ, so that they may never come into account before God.

For Christ was made a curse for me, the just dying for the unjust.”

Here, indeed, there is no doubt that Satan will set before our eyes various afflictions, and death itself, as though they were so many proofs that God has not forgiven us our sins. But there are two things we may answer. The first: although all afflictions, and death itself, entered the world through sin, God nevertheless does not always have regard to that when he afflicts us, as may be seen in the history of Tobit and of many others; for God has various and manifold causes by which he provides for his own glory and for the salvation of his people, as we shall say in the last article of this chapter.

The second: that God, even when he wraps his own people in the sorrows of death on account of their sins, is not angry against them as a judge ready to condemn them, but as a most gentle father who chastises his sons lest they perish, and who, by the example made in some one of them, calls back many to amendment.

Article 11. On the remedy which faith alone obtains in Christ alone against the second assault of the same temptation: that nowhere in us is the righteousness God justly requires of us.

The second assault, by which Satan attacks us, again drawn from our unworthiness, is of this kind: it is not enough not to have sinned, or to have satisfied for one’s sins through another; but besides this, perfect righteousness is required, that is, that we should have loved God and our neighbor perfectly. “Produce, then,” Satan objects to our wretched consciences, “that righteousness, or acknowledge that you cannot escape the wrath and curse of God.”

But against this assault, what defense at last shall we find in any men, Christ alone excepted? For here perfect obedience is required, which indeed no man ever rendered except Christ Jesus. Here, then, again it is necessary for us to apply by faith this other treasure of Christ, that is, his righteousness. For we know that he is the one who fulfilled all righteousness, since he both loved and revered God with his whole heart, and so perfectly loved his enemies that he endured even to be made a curse for them, that is, to bear the wrath of God; so that, clothed with this perfect and in every respect most complete righteousness of his (inasmuch as it is imputed to us through faith), we might be accepted by God as the brothers and co-heirs of Christ.

Here, indeed, it is altogether necessary that, so far as this assault is concerned, Satan be utterly silenced, provided only we have that faith which applies to us Jesus Christ with all his treasures.

Article 12. On the third assault of the same temptation: that our nature is depraved.

There remains in this temptation a further assault of Satan, drawn from our unworthiness. For Satan will object: even if Christ has borne the punishment your sins deserved, and you have put on his righteousness by faith, nevertheless you cannot deny that your nature is depraved, so that the seed-bed of every vice is fixed in you. With what face, then, will you dare to appear before the majesty of God, the deadly enemy of all defilement, and the very searcher of hearts?

But against this assault we shall find a ready remedy nowhere else than in Jesus Christ alone, in which we may rest. And the answer which Christ supplies us in this temptation is of this kind: that we are indeed still held shut up in this mortal body, whence it comes that we do not do what we would, and still feel sin dwelling in us, and the flesh striving against the spirit, so that both in body and in mind we cleave to some degree in that old mire.

But by faith we are united to Christ, and incorporated, rooted, and grafted into him, in whom our nature, from the first moment in which it was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, was restored with a much fuller sanctification than of old when it was created pure in Adam (for Adam was only created after the image of God, but Christ, who is true God, assumed our flesh conceived by the Holy Spirit).

Therefore that sanctification of human nature in Christ, imputed to us by faith, has brought it about that the remnants of that corruption which reside even in us who are regenerate do not come into account before God, because they are covered, as it were buried, by the holiness of Christ: of Christ, I say, whose power to sanctify us before God surpasses by infinite degrees the powers of corruption to pollute us.

Article 13. On the remedy against the fourth temptation, in which it is asked whether we have faith.

To the things we have said, Satan will object that the death of Christ does not profit all sinners, since sinners beyond number perish. But we in turn would reply that the faithful alone are partakers of the death and sanctification of Christ; yet so far is this from being a reason for us to lose heart, that on the contrary nothing comforts us so much, since we know that faith is within us: that faith, I say, by which we not only believe in a general and confused way that Jesus came to take away the sins of the world, but each of us applies Christ to himself in particular, so that every one of us reasons thus within himself: I am in Jesus Christ, and therefore I cannot perish.

Here, indeed, that we may lay a sure foundation beneath the foregoing victories, and bravely overcome this further temptation, it will be asked whether we have faith or not.

This controversy cannot be settled by us in any other way than by ascending from the effects to the efficient cause. Now the effects of Christ, when he is apprehended by us through faith and dwells within us, are twofold.

For first, the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are the sons of God, so that we cry without fear, Abba, Father. Next, this also must be established: that when we apply Christ to ourselves by faith, this does not come about by some vain and empty opinion or imagination, but really and plainly effectively, although this whole mystery is spiritual; so that, just as the soul, joined to the body in a physical manner, produces its effects, in the same way Christ Jesus, dwelling within us by faith in a spiritual manner and power, exerts his powers in us, which powers are indeed understood in the sacred writings under the name of Regeneration and Sanctification, since by them we come forth wholly new men, so far as concerns our qualities.

Now there are three parts of this regeneration, or of this new origin and condition. For just as that inborn corruption, holding us wholly captive in body and soul, brought forth in us sins and death, so on the contrary the power of Jesus Christ, effectively working its way into us and laying hold of us (as they say) with a liberal hand, works three things in us: namely, the Mortification of sin, that is, of that inborn stain which is called the old man; the Burial of the same; and the Resurrection of the new man, as these things are copiously explained, above all by Paul.

Mortification, then, is that effect of Christ in us by which corruption, or sin, is gradually put to death and extinguished in us, so that it is no longer so powerful to stir up wicked motions, consents, and actions contrary to the will of God. The burial of the same old man is the second work of Christ within us, by whose power that old man, having received a deadly wound, little by little fades away.

And just as the burial of our bodies is a further stage of death, so the burial of the old man is a kind of continuation and advance of that mortification of which we spoke before. To this end, afflictions help us wonderfully (by which the Lord is said to have regard to us), as do those exercises, both spiritual and bodily, which we must continually use in order to hold down the rebelling flesh.

And finally the first death, so far as the faithful are concerned, is the completing of this mortification and burial of sin, inasmuch as it puts an end to the contest of the flesh and the spirit.

The resurrection of the new man, that is, of the man renewed as to the qualities of his faculties, is the third effect of Christ living within us, who, when the corruption of our nature has been destroyed, breathes new strength into us; so that our understanding, and that faculty of the mind by which we judge of the things we perceive, being enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit and governed by this new power of Christ, begin to understand and approve what before they accounted folly and an abomination.

Then our will is corrected and strengthened by the same power, so that it begins to flee sin and to embrace righteousness. And finally all the faculties of man begin to shun what the Lord forbade, and to follow after whatever he commanded.

And so, to return to the matter: if we feel this twofold effect within us, it is necessarily concluded that we have faith, and therefore also Jesus Christ unto eternal life, as we said before.

Nothing, therefore, ought to be so much our care as these two things: that by constant and diligent prayer we foster that precious testimony which the Lord bears to our spirits; and then that, by a kind of daily exercise of good works, each one for himself, according to his calling, we advance in the gift of regeneration. To this John had regard when he said that he who is born of God does not sin, that is, does not surrender himself to sin, but withstands it more and more, so as to make himself daily more sure of his election and calling.

For one must indeed come to the fruit, that a judgment may be made concerning the tree. But whoever, as we have just said, has been set free from the servitude of sin, that is, from that original stain, begins to bring forth those fruits which we call good works; and this is why we say, with the best right, that the faith of which we now treat is necessarily joined to good works, just as light coheres with the sun, and heat with fire.

Article 14. That it is a shameless slander to say that we condemn good works.

Those good men slander us most shamelessly who keep alleging that good works are condemned by us, because we affirm that we are justified by nothing real except Christ apprehended by faith alone. Yet meanwhile we do not conceal that we (so that we may claim for God his glory whole and undivided) differ from them especially in three things in this matter of good works; while otherwise we are so far from saying that a holy and honorable life does not befit Christians, that on the contrary we affirm that those men lie basely who, though they call themselves Christians, nevertheless neither pursue true virtues nor flee the vices condemned by God.

These, then, are the matters in which we freely and openly profess that we dissent from them.

Article 15. The first controversy concerning good works: which are to be held good, and which evil.

First, we differ from them in the distinction of good and evil works before God. For, as far as we are concerned, we rest wholly in the one will of God, as the most certain rule of the things which he either approves or disapproves; nor do we require any other declaration of the divine will than his most holy Law, to which we hold it a wickedness to add anything or to take anything away.

And so among good works before God we reckon none of those which rest on the bare will of men, whatever they may be. We affirm, moreover, that for anyone to be said to have done well, it is not enough that what he did be found commanded in the Word of God, but this also is required: that, in doing the work which God has prescribed, we set his will before us in the doing, and be assured from his Word, in our minds, that what we do pleases God.

For, as Paul says, whatever is not of faith (that is, whatever is undertaken by us with a conscience doubting whether it pleases God, and therefore whether it is commanded by God or not) is sin.

Article 16. Which works are the most excellent of all, and what is the excellence of prayer.

And so, this foundation being laid, we say that the Law, which we call the Ten Commandments, is divided into two tables: of which the one declares what we owe to God, the other what we owe to our neighbor; and therefore that there are two kinds of good works. For the one regards, properly, the worship of God, the other the neighbor; and the former are as much more excellent than the latter as God excels men.

But among all the fruits which faith universally brings forth in all truly Christian men, prayer, in our judgment, easily holds the first place: that is, the invocation of the name of God through Jesus Christ. Nor do we think any work more pleasing to him, whether we ask something of him, or sing his praises, or give thanks for benefits received.

But in prayers we require these things which we now set down.

First, that they proceed from a mind which does not doubt that it will be heard, so far as is expedient. For, as James says, God is to be asked with confidence, without wavering; for he who wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed about. Let no such man, then, think that he will receive anything from God.

From this follows another thing: that prayers which do not agree with the will of God are useless. For prayers without faith are nothing else than sins, nor can there be any faith where no word and commandment of God is present, but only a vain and foolish imagining, as we proved a little before. Whatever prayers, therefore, are framed by anyone in a language he himself does not understand are to be held a mockery of God; and those by which we ask something repugnant to the nature and will of God are joined with blasphemy against God, so far are they from being a work acceptable to God.

Moreover, from what we have said it follows that prayers which are directed to any other intercessor or mediator than the one appointed between God and men, namely Jesus Christ, redound to the utmost dishonor of God and of his saints. For first, not a tittle will be found in the sacred writings to confirm that custom; indeed, on the contrary, it is enjoined by the express Word of God that whatever we ask of God we ask in the name of Christ our only Mediator.

Besides, if an intercessor is to be sought who embraces us with some singular love, whom shall we find to be compared with him who laid down his life for us, and that when we were his enemies? But if we need one who is so gracious by his own authority, whose power, in the end, can be compared with his authority, who sits at the right hand of the Father?

By whom would the Father rather let himself be entreated than by his most beloved Son, in whom alone he rests, and loves all his own?

Finally, since the spirits of the departed saints are in heaven, and their bodies on earth, how at last shall we maintain that our prayers are understood by them, without either, if we say they are present, making them at the same time infinite, or, if we prefer that, though absent, they look into our mind, supposing them to be knowers of hearts?

But to be infinite, and to be a knower of hearts, belongs to the one God; so that we cannot invoke the saints departed from this life without at the same time making them gods. For as to what some prattle, that the saints behold all these secret things in the Trinity as in a mirror, how ineptly and absurdly is this said! For who taught them this?

And granting it to be so, surely the saints would then also behold what God has decreed to do or to threaten, so that there would be no need at all for them to interpose their prayers. But in Christ, who by his Spirit remains among us, and whom alone we are bidden to invoke with sure confidence, no such argument has any force. That invocation of the dead saints, therefore, is utterly empty, and displeasing to God, inasmuch as it rests on no word of God, and is joined even with the dishonor and disgrace of Christ; and so it has arisen partly from ignorance and partly from the distrust of men.

But (they say) charity never fails, and therefore the spirits of the saints, dwelling in heaven, thirst for our salvation. This indeed we grant; but who of sound judgment would gather from it either that they hear our prayers, or that, even if they hear them (which concerning the angels we must in any case confess), they therefore arrogate to themselves the office of the one Mediator, or are to be invoked by us as a kind of subordinate to him?

But (they say) miracles were of old wrought at the tombs of the martyrs. Granted: the Lord willed thus to commend to us the faith of the martyrs, not that it should be invoked, but that in them his own power should be adored, which testified that the martyrs live in heaven through him whom, living, they worshiped, and whose truth they sealed with their blood.

Yet this we frankly confess, that those who have too curiously commended these miracles seem to us to have done Satan vigorous service in establishing this superstition; nor do we trouble ourselves how ancient this superstition is. The adversaries object again that it is lawful for us, and even commanded, to pray for one another, and yet that Christ is not thereby said to be robbed of his office, since (as they say) he is indeed the one Mediator of redemption, but not of intercession.

But we read throughout that Christ is not only the only Redeemer, but also the only Advocate with the Father. Nor, when we say this, do we imagine Christ as a suppliant pleading for us, but as reconciling us to the Father by the perpetual fragrance of his one sacrifice, and making our prayers effective before God. And when we frame mutual prayers, one for another, we subordinate no mediators to Christ, but on the contrary, with joined minds, as the rule of charity and the Word of God commands, relying on the one Mediator, we invoke the common Father; which cannot hold good in the case of those who have departed this life.

And if they refuse to believe us, let them at least believe Chrysostom and Ambrose. Thus, then, Chrysostom, discoursing of that woman of Canaan: “Tell me, woman, how did you dare to approach him, since you are a sinner and full of iniquity? ‘I know,’ she says, ‘what I shall do.’ Behold the prudence of this woman. She does not pray to James, she does not entreat John, she does not go to Peter, nor does she look to the company of the apostles, nor seek any advocate among them; but in place of all these she joins repentance to herself as a companion, and hastens to the fountain itself.”

The same Chrysostom, in the same place: “When you have besought some man, you first hear that he is asleep, or that he has not leisure enough, or perhaps even a servant refuses to answer you. But with God there is no need of these things; for he alone hears you in whatever place you are. Here we have no need of a spokesman, or of an intercessor, or of a servant; but only this: Have mercy on me, O God.”

And the same elsewhere: “There is no need of a patron with God, nor of any roundabout approaches; but even if you are alone, destitute of every patron and advocate, if you pray to God by yourself, you will obtain what you ask.”³

Ambrose, too, rebuking this very comparison, which nevertheless our opponents have almost always in their mouths, says: “They are accustomed to use a wretched excuse, namely that, God being everywhere neglected, men come to him through the saints, as one reaches the king through his counts.

Is anyone, then, so mad, or so forgetful of his own salvation, as to render to a count the honor due to the king, when, if any were even found to deal with such a matter in their mind, they would by law be condemned as guilty of treason? The reason men go to kings, tribunes, and counts is that the king is, after all, a man, and does not know to whom he ought to entrust the commonwealth.

But to win the favor of God (from whom nothing whatever is hidden, for he knows the merits of all) there is no need of a spokesman, but of a devout mind. For wherever such a one shall have spoken, he will answer him.”⁴

And so, to bring this discussion to a close in few words, we judge, on the authority of the divine Word, that no work of man is more pleasing to God than the invocation of his name, if only it be rightly framed.

For this work regards the first table of the Law, and embraces an express confession both of the divine power and of the divine mercy, together with the fear and reverence which are owed to his majesty alone.

On the works of charity toward the neighbor.

To the second rank we assign the works of charity toward the neighbor, prescribed by the second table; yet on this condition alone, that they proceed from the true love of God, who has reconciled us to himself in Christ, and on whose account we follow our brothers with a singular love, even when they hate us.

For unless this foundation be laid beneath them, we do nothing but sin, however specious our outward show, as Christ indicates by the example he sets forth of the Pharisees.

On indifferent works.

There is a third kind of works, which in their own nature are properly neither good nor evil, but only in respect of the end for the sake of which they are undertaken, namely insofar as they make us fitter to perform the things that are good, or more steadfast in doing our duty.

Of this kind are fasting, sobriety, and any other things by which the wantonness of the flesh is restrained, and likewise the pursuit of keeping virginity, in those who have the gift of continence. And so we say this in general: that they are praiseworthy exercises, only provided the thing that is chief and primary be present, namely a mind swollen with no ambition, and steeped in no superstition, but endowed with the fear of God and the love of the neighbor; and provided they be used so that we may become readier and more eager, both for the worship of God and for the helping of the neighbor, according to the measure of our calling.

Nor indeed do we doubt that all Christians are bound to avoid whatever can make them slower to the duties of the Christian life. But far be it from us to approve the error of those who are stupefied at these outward things, as though the sum of piety consisted in such exercises. For we prefer to assent to Paul, who testifies that the kingdom of God consists neither in food nor in drink, and that all these things are of small moment compared with the pursuit of piety and the duties of charity.

Article 17. The second controversy concerning good works: their beginning and origin.

The second controversy concerning good works asks about their true origin. We do not, indeed, deny that faith and good works flow from our understanding and will, which the grace of God goes before, renews, helps, and accompanies. But we affirm this above all: that when it is asked about the first origin of the good which is in any way begun in us, so far is there from being any disposition of nature in us to receive the first grace (a disposition which, when a further grace supervenes, might be helped), that on the contrary nothing else is in us by nature; so that, as things now are, we are all born corrupt, with nothing in us but darkness and hatred of God.

It is necessary, therefore, first and before all, not that God should merely anticipate our weak and feeble free will (as the Semipelagians speak), but that he should draw us, holding us fast with all his might, that is, so far as concerns the qualities of our faculties, that he make us wholly new men. And this comes about when he enlightens us, not partly but wholly blind in the things that pertain to redemption, with the light of his Spirit; when he changes our stony hearts into hearts of flesh; when he creates a clean heart in our inward parts, that is, restores our wholly depraved will; and finally when he works in us both to will and to perform.

And so it is established that the Apostle spoke truly when he said that we are not even fit of ourselves to think anything that is good, and that the sons of God have nothing at all which they have not received: received, I say, not by being born, but by being born again, not from the grace of nature, but from the grace of regeneration, which grace works freely in them day by day, that we may escape the cavil of the Pelagians.

It is necessary, therefore, that grace make us, out of rotten and dead stumps, living and fruitful trees, before we bring forth any good fruits.

From which it follows that there can be no concurrence of grace and free will, since the Spirit of God, by his mere grace, sets us free from sin when he engrafts us into Christ by faith, from whom we draw the new life by which we may live to God.

For what would free will contribute (free will, which is nowhere to be found) before it has been set free from the servitude of sin? Next, this also must be added: that our will, once set free, begins to will well, and perseveres in that course; and this, again, is owed wholly to the grace of God. Finally, when, set free from sin, we begin to do well, we say that no merit is here to be thought of, but a freely promised reward freely given.

For even our most excellent works, did not the grace of God intervene, would deserve nothing but eternal punishments, since the most holy men, if they were dealt with by the strict rule of right, would be found to have polluted and defiled the very gifts of God granted to them, even while they were striving to do well.

Article 18. The third controversy concerning good works: their worth and merit.

There remains a third controversy, by far the greatest, in which the worth of good works is disputed; concerning which we establish this. If it is asked by what right and title we become heirs of eternal life, we rest in Jesus Christ alone, offered to us and communicated to us by faith alone, and that out of the mere grace and mercy of God.

And so we shrink from the name of Merit, and with serious affection of heart we acknowledge and profess that, however much we pursue righteousness, we are unprofitable servants, and that eternal life is wholly and in every part the free gift of God; to which I will add one further argument. It is certain that good works flow from Christ dwelling in us, by whose power and free working we begin to will and to do well, just as, on the contrary, that inborn corruption of the old Adam, implanted in us, brings forth in us all the vicious motions out of which evil actions come.

For we must possess Christ, who makes us good trees, before we bring forth those good fruits, since Paul testifies that whatever is without faith is sin, and that the effect necessarily follows after its efficient cause. Since this is so, it is established that faith necessarily goes before good works. But whoever has faith is justified in that very moment. How, then, could it be that we are justified by good works, and so saved, when we must first be justified, and so made such as may be saved, before we can bring forth even a single good work?

But we are justified, and made worthy of salvation, as we said before, not in ourselves, but in Christ Jesus, to whom we are joined by faith alone, so that all his benefits, namely righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, are imputed to us. And so, to comprehend everything in few words, we acknowledge that eternal life is promised to none but those who pursue the works of righteousness, and that none are accounted righteous before God except those who have seriously repented; but we say that these are far different questions: who are justified, and by what righteousness they are justified.

And we say that the righteousness which the Spirit of God has begun in us is not the cause, but the witness, of that righteousness on which alone we rely in appearing before God; and we contend that eternal life pertains to us, as co-heirs of Christ, by right indeed, yet freely. Now this righteousness, if we look to the person in whom it properly inheres, is the righteousness of the person of Christ alone.

But since he was given to us, so that whoever embraces him by faith is made a partaker of him unto eternal life (because he was made for us, by God the Father, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption), therefore it is ours also, by imputation; and in it alone, as the only righteousness that is perfect, we wholly rest.

Article 19. To what end good works are useful to us, before God and before men.

From these things it can easily be known how shameless are those who slander us, as though good works were disparaged by us, when on the contrary we pursue nothing so much as this one thing: to show which works are truly good, and from what fountain they flow, lest wretched mortals deceive themselves. But although we rely on good works neither wholly nor in any part whatever, when it is asked by what right or title eternal life falls to us (in which respect we rest in Christ Jesus alone), we nevertheless acknowledge that the fruits of our regeneration bring us many and great benefits.

First, by this means we are accustomed either to gain our neighbors to Christ, or to keep them in Christ, and we even compel the sworn enemies of Christ to give glory to God. Secondly, by good works we are made more sure of our salvation, not as by causes (as I said a little before), but as by witnesses and effects of that instrumental cause through which we obtain salvation, namely faith, as was shown by us before.

This indeed is why God testifies that he will render to each according to his works, and why Abraham is said to be justified also by works. For these things are not so to be taken as though our works were the causes of our salvation, whether wholly or in part (for surely, if it were so, the foundation of our salvation would not be firm enough), or as though we could be accounted righteous before God by our works; but because our good works are effects from which our faith is known, the faith, I say, that apprehends Jesus Christ, our true and only righteousness, as we said before.

Thirdly, we must confess that there is a certain kinship between the water and the spring from which it flows. Since our regeneration, so long as we dwell in this world, never reaches the highest degree, and that perpetual contest of the Spirit and the flesh remains in us; since, I say, the thickest darkness still resides in our understanding, and the greatest opposition against God, it comes to pass that, if God should inquire by the strict rule of right into even the most excellent works of men, nothing else could be concluded of them than that they are mere pollutions of the gifts of God, just as it very often happens that a stream, otherwise clear and limpid, is fouled by the filth of the sewer through which it runs down.

This is why David cries out, “No living man shall be justified in your sight”; and why Paul pours out this complaint, “I do not the good I would, but the evil I would not, that I do. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” This rule of judgment concerning even our best works the holy servants of God prescribe to us, so far are they from using the name of Merit, which would never have crept into the Church of God if the proper meaning of that word had been sufficiently weighed by the old Latin theologians.

For as to the Greeks, although it was their perpetual fault to muddy the fountains of theology with the mire of philosophy (which is why they always exalted their “axioma” more than was right), yet I find among them no word that sufficiently answers to the glorious name of Merit.

Yet this we profess: that so great is the goodness of our God that, because he regards his adopted sons not in themselves but in his one most beloved Son Jesus Christ, to whom they are joined by that closest bond of faith, he does not, in estimating the fruits of his own gifts, have regard to that pollution which flows from the weakness of our flesh, but to that purest fountain from which they flow, that is, the Spirit of Christ in all believers, that, being dead to sin, they may live to righteousness.

So great, I say, is the goodness of our God, that for this reason he not only does not disapprove our works, however imperfect, but even approves them so far as to count them worthy of a reward, both in this life and in the life to come, as is declared in the parable of the talents; yet by no means as though this reward were owed to our works, but of his mere grace and mercy, as he testifies even in the Law itself, that he will do good, of his mercy and not by any debt of right, to those by whom he is loved and who keep his commandments.

Fourthly, since good works are the testimonies of our faith, it follows that from them also some testimony of our eternal election is in part to be sought, since election is necessarily followed by the faith that apprehends Christ, through whom, being justified and sanctified, we enjoy that glory to which we were destined before the foundations of the world were laid. And this doctrine is to be observed the more carefully the more it tends to be neglected by the world, as though the doctrine of particular election were either curious or could not be comprehended; whereas on the contrary faith is nothing else than that by which we are made sure that eternal life pertains to us, because, before the foundations of the world were laid, we were destined by God to the possession of this great salvation and glory through Christ.

And so whatever we have set forth before concerning faith and its effects would be useless, unless this doctrine of eternal election were laid beneath it, as the one foundation of the whole of Christian confidence.

As often, therefore, as Satan stirs up a dispute with us about our particular election, the resolving of that controversy is not to be sought at once in the eternal counsel of God, whose majesty we cannot bear; but on the contrary we must begin from the lowest step, namely from the sanctification which we really feel begun in us, that from there we may climb higher.

For since our sanctification, from which flow those good motions and good actions of which we spoke before, is a sure effect of faith, or rather of Christ dwelling in us by faith; and since whoever is united to Christ is also of necessity effectually called, and therefore destined to salvation, and the providence of God cannot fail, so that none of the elect perishes: from these things it follows that we take sanctification as, so to speak, the first step from which we begin to advance toward the declaration of the primary cause of our salvation, that is, of that eternal and free election of ours.

For whoever says that he believes, and yet does not live according to the Spirit, convicts himself as a liar. Therefore Peter diligently admonishes us to make our calling and election firm by good works; not, indeed, as though these rested on our works (since Paul affirms the contrary), but because good works surely testify to our conscience that Jesus Christ dwells in us, and that therefore we cannot perish, since we have been chosen unto salvation.

Article 20. The remedy against the last and most grievous temptation, in which it is asked whether we are of the number of the elect.

Besides the temptations of which we spoke before, there remains Satan’s last and most grievous, with which he assails us. For, first, it is established that it sometimes happens that Christ greatly defers the calling of certain of the elect, even to the very last moment of life, so that such persons do not seem sufficiently fortified with that defense sought from the things just mentioned, since they have never felt them; for how could they have felt the effects of that cause which they did not yet have within them?

Next, since even the most holy are sometimes brought into such straits that they find those effects of which we spoke very faint and almost null within themselves, Satan readily persuades them of one of two things: either that what they before thought to be faith was not faith, but only an empty image of faith; or else that, even if they did believe before, they have lost faith by their own fault and negligence.

We must therefore diligently inquire by what means we may overcome this most grievous of all temptations, although we have already said something of it in the last article above. And first, as concerns those whose calling is late, their hope must nevertheless rest on those same effects. For as regards the inward testimony, a late calling does not hinder it from resounding in their minds, and often indeed more clearly and loudly than in those who are called early, as experience itself showed in that famous thief.

And if the question is about the effects of regeneration, I answer that the most excellent of these are the works of Christ dwelling within us: contrition of heart, proceeding from hatred of sin and reverence for God, and trust in Christ and the calling upon him. Whoever, therefore, perceives these motions in himself, even at the very point of death, let him know that he has sure testimonies of his faith, and therefore also of his election and salvation.

But those who are thrust into such straits that (as happens even to the best men, and most dear to God) they find those effects very faint and almost null in themselves, let them diligently ponder these things, that they may emerge from this temptation. First, since those effects, which we said are twofold, are like two anchors by which we are held up on both sides, as often as we waver on the one side, we must lean the more strongly to the other, until we are made firm on both.

For what? When David and Peter had fallen so basely, were not the effects of regeneration and sanctification very faint in them? So it was indeed; but those same men, in this temptation, which was truly urging them toward despair, leaned upon the other anchor, namely the testimony which the Holy Spirit bore to their spirit, that they, though most foully fallen, were nevertheless counted in the number of the sons of God, and that therefore their sins were forgiven them.

Next, even if someone wavers on both sides, there is yet no reason for him to lose heart. For to become partakers of Christ, perfect faith is not required, but only true faith. And true faith does not cease to be such, however weak and feeble it is, even to the point that it is sometimes utterly buried. And so even a single spark of faith, and therefore even the least effect of faith in us, if only it be true and flow from the true fountain of faith, is so far effective as truly to make us secure concerning our salvation.

For although no one is saved but by the intervening of faith, yet our salvation does not properly rest upon our faith, but rather upon that one alone whom we apprehend by faith, namely Jesus Christ. And so great is the power of faith that, since God has so promised, even the least grain of it, as it were, brings the whole of Jesus Christ into us.

Yet this is established: that the fuller faith is, the greater is its power, by which we are knit more and more with Christ. And indeed we ought to be greatly ashamed when not only do we make no progress, but even fall back. Yet a believer is not thereby kept from being a victor over Satan, provided the matter itself shows that we drew back only to advance the more strongly afterward, that is, if (as is wont to befall noble minds) this disgrace has not extinguished virtue in us, but rather sharpened it, so that we have drawn strength from our very weakness.

Thirdly, as often as we languish thus prostrate, let us set before our eyes the examples of the saints, who were plunged in floods no less deep, and yet did not therefore cease to call upon God, by whom also they were heard, since they were of the number of the sons of God, even though they had sinned most grievously. Let us, I say, set such examples before us, not that we may go on in sins (for they by no means did so, after they were awakened by the Lord), but on the contrary that we may imitate their faith and repentance.

Finally, let us know that Satan’s conclusion is false whenever he infers that our faith was false from the fact that at a certain time its effects do not appear. For he argues just as if someone should infer that there is no true fire wherever no flame shines, or that trees in winter are not alive because they put forth neither leaves nor fruit.

Fourthly, we must flee to the true and certain remedy, namely to the firmness of our eternal election, which rests upon the immutable purpose of God. And that we may have a firm testimony of this so certain election, even at the time when we find almost no effects of faith in us, let us remember the days that are past, imitating David. For so it will surely come to pass that we find so many and so open testimonies of the divine goodwill toward us that we cannot rightly doubt his fatherly affection toward us.

Besides, we shall find that in former times so many and so illustrious effects of our faith, and therefore of our election, exerted themselves in us, that not even Satan himself can deny that we were at that time accepted by God, and therefore had true faith, since without faith no one can truly please God. And if Satan objects that we were then indeed endowed with faith, but, having lost it, were made enemies of God, let us answer him boldly that this doctrine is utterly false.

For these are two most certain axioms, without any exception: that God never changes his sentence; and that whatever he has once decreed is of necessity accomplished. And let us add a third axiom also: that faith is a gift of God, proper and peculiar to the elect alone.

And that this is so is proved from this, that whoever believes is truly united to Christ, and therefore can never die.

Since these things are so, we must of necessity confess that the gift of that true faith by which we are justified can never be torn apart from the gift of perseverance, although faith is sometimes shaken, and therefore perseverance also is interrupted in some, as it were, by intervals. For what the Lord testifies concerning Peter, that he had prayed for him that his faith should not fail, has place in all who, as concerns election and salvation, are in the same condition with Peter; and it plainly declares that, although Peter sinned not from faith nor from the Holy Spirit, but from flesh and blood, yet at that very time faith was not utterly taken from him, nor was the Holy Spirit utterly removed from him, but only so far that faith in him for a time lay as it were oppressed and hidden, while nonetheless the seed of the Spirit of adoption lay concealed within him.

The same appears also in David, when, being a prophet, he was, as it were, awakened from sleep by a voice. For the Lord did not then restore the Holy Spirit to him as though he had before utterly snatched it away, but stirred up in him the lulled powers of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise David would not have cried, “Take not your Spirit from me,” but would rather have said, “Restore to me your Holy Spirit”; which he could never have said in faith, had he been utterly destitute of the Holy Spirit.

And so, as for what some often urge against those who please themselves in a shadow and image of faith (who, from a false persuasion of faith, by which they deceive both themselves and others, snatch a license to sin, as though anyone could be justified without at the same time being sanctified), namely that faith and the Holy Spirit are shaken out by sins.

This must either be understood of that degree of faith to which even the reprobate can attain (so far, namely, that they are not only reckoned in the Church, but even taste the good gift of God, though they can never digest it or really become partakers of it, since this is proper to the elect); or it must be taken so that we understand that, as concerns the effects and fruits, faith can for a time be in some way taken away, yet so that the seed and germ itself remains, which afterward, in its own time, bursts forth.

On these foundations, therefore, being laid, I affirm that he who has even once in his whole life felt the sure testimony of true faith ought to be secure of it, as not only abiding, but also as about to abide to the very end, even at those times when it may seem to be utterly absent. For neither is a newborn infant therefore not endowed with a soul partaking of reason, because it experiences no use of it; nor do we say that a drunken man is stripped of reason and understanding, even if neither his mind nor his foot does its office; nor has every vital faculty deserted him who for a time is more like a dead man than a living one, not only in the judgment of physicians, but even by the very feeling of the sick man himself.

What then? Will those who have once believed sin with impunity? For I see that some defame this doctrine of particular election in this way; and yet, if it be taken away, what at last will be our consolation, since the faith by which alone we are justified looks upon the promises offered to all, that is, offered indiscriminately to any sinners whatever, in no other way than that the believer should apply them to himself individually?

Let Paul answer for me, that those are the sons of God who are led by his Spirit, and therefore that those who have been freed from sin do not remain in sin. For whoever is justified by faith is the same who is also sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, and therefore resists sin, even if for a time he sometimes seems forsaken by God, or rather to have forsaken God.

It is not, then, the voice of those who have truly believed; nor does this doctrine drag us into that precipice, but rather leads us to this: that the more precious the effects of faith are in us, and the more certain these weapons are for fighting against Satan in so perilous a contest, the greater the care and diligence with which we should strive to preserve them, that is, to live to God and to righteousness, out of the power of the Holy Spirit which we have received as the sure pledge of our adoption.

Finally, let those who oppose this doctrine, pretending that it opens a way to the license of sinning, know that they gather this no otherwise than if they were to say that men are taught to abstain from food and drink, or are set to idleness, because we affirm a certain and fixed term of our life which cannot be passed. Therefore, to conclude in few words, let each one of us settle this within himself: that our salvation hangs upon the eternal decree of him who gave the Son to us, or us to the Son, affirming to us for certain that he will lose none of those whom he received from the Father.

For it is altogether necessary that our salvation be deposited with him who can guard it far better than we ourselves could. Nor, however, am I ignorant that many things are alleged on the contrary side by some; but these can easily be dissolved, as has been shown at length in the books written in our day on this very subject.

Article 21. By what instruments the Holy Spirit creates faith in the hearts of the elect.

It was shown before by us that the Holy Spirit is the one who creates faith in us, that true instrument by which Christ is apprehended, so that from him we may draw whatever is required for our justifying and saving. Now it follows that we teach by what instruments the Holy Spirit uses to that end, and how far he uses them. These instruments, then, are two, namely the Word and the Sacraments, of which we shall treat separately.

Article 22. What is understood by the name “Word of God,” and concerning its two parts, the Law and the Gospel.

By the name “Word” in this place (for otherwise we know that the eternal Son of God is also so called) we understand the canonical books, as they are called, of both Testaments, dictated by God himself; and we divide it into two principal parts, or kinds, namely the Law and the Gospel, for the rest are to be referred to one of these two.

We call the Law (whenever it is taken for that part of the Word which is distinguished from the Gospel) the doctrine whose seed is naturally implanted in our hearts, although it was afterward, for the sake of a clearer and surer explanation, written by God himself upon tables and comprehended in the Ten Commandments, in which he describes that obedience and perfect righteousness which we owe both to his Majesty and to our neighbors; and that with one of two conditions added, namely either eternal life, if we have perfectly performed the Law, or eternal death, if we neglect even the least tittle of it.

And we call the Gospel (that is, the most happy message) the doctrine which is not born with us, but which surpasses the whole capacity of man, and is revealed to us from heaven, in which God testifies to us that he wills freely to save us in his only Son, provided we embrace him by faith as our life, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; in which doctrine, I say, the Lord declares all these things to us, and that in such a way that he at the same time renews us, so that we may most effectively embrace the benefits offered to us.

Article 23. What the Law and the Gospel have in common, and again in what things they differ.

These things which we have just said must be most carefully observed. For this we can truly affirm: that ignorance of the difference between the Law and the Gospel has given occasion to very many and very great errors, by which the Christian religion is troubled today. For as concerns the Law, most men, blinded by the just judgment of God, have never noticed to what curse the Law subjects us, and to what end it was instituted by God; and they have believed the Gospel to be nothing else than another, more perfect Law, from which error there afterward arose that distinction between Precept and Counsel, so that little by little the benefit of Christ was almost wholly blotted out among most men.

These things, therefore, must be weighed by us far more carefully. And first, the Law and the Gospel have this in common, that the one true God, ever like himself, is the author of both; whence it is by no means to be thought that the Law is abolished by the Gospel as concerns its substance, or the thing itself, but on the contrary established, as we shall presently show.

For both the Law and the Gospel set before us one and the same God, and, if you look to the thing itself, one and the same righteousness, namely that which is placed in the perfect love of God and of the neighbor. But there is a great difference in the things we shall now subjoin, and especially in the manner of obtaining that righteousness.

First, as we touched a little before, the Law is inborn in man, in whose heart God from the beginning engraved the knowledge of it; for that the Lord, long afterward, delivered it written on two tables was not done as though some new law were being enacted, but that the old knowledge of the Law, which that native corruption was gradually abolishing in men, might be restored.

But the Gospel is a doctrine transcending nature itself, which men could never even have suspected, so that even now they cannot approve it without the special gift of God. The Lord revealed it first of all to Adam, a little after his sin, as Moses recounts; then to the patriarchs and prophets, in the measure that pleased him, until at last he exhibited Jesus Christ himself to us in fact.

And Christ most fully announced to us, and fulfilled, the whole Gospel, which now also he reveals, and will reveal to the end of the ages, by the preaching which he instituted in the Church.

Secondly, the Law sets before us the majesty and justice of God as it were naked, and therefore terrifies us, and indeed kills us. But the Gospel sets before us that same righteousness in God, yet a righteousness made peaceable to us through the mercy exhibited in Christ, as we showed more fully in article 26 of the third chapter.

Thirdly, the Law commands that we seek in ourselves that righteousness which it describes, namely that which is placed in the perfect fulfilling of the commandments, and therefore sets destruction before our eyes. But the Gospel shows us where at last to find what we otherwise do not have, and where, when we have found it, we may possess it; and therefore it frees us from the curse of the Law.

Finally, the Law pronounces us blessed if we have fully performed it; but the Gospel promises salvation if we believe, that is, if by faith we apprehend Christ, in whom there are far more things present than are lacking to us.

But both of these, namely to perform what the Law commands, and to embrace by faith the things offered to us in Jesus Christ, are, for us as we are corrupt, not only most difficult but utterly impossible; whence a fourth difference of Law and Gospel must be added.

The fourth difference, then, is placed in this: that the Law is so far effective in us as to point out our disease to us, and even to exasperate it; not, indeed, by its own fault (for it is good and holy), but rather because our nature, being corrupt, the more it is reproved, the more it boils with the desire of sinning, as the Apostle proves by his own example.

But the Gospel, besides setting before us a sure remedy against the curse of the Law, has this peculiar to it (as we shall presently show): that it has joined to it the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, by whom (as we said in its place) we are regenerated and changed, namely when he creates faith in us, that one instrument by which the offered benefit is apprehended.

But let us explain this still more plainly, concerning the Letter and the Spirit, which some have most perversely interpreted. The Gospel, then, I say, is not a Letter, that is, a merely dead doctrine which sets forth, nakedly and simply in writing, not the things that are to be done (for this is the office of the Law), but the things that are to be believed, namely that salvation in Jesus Christ is freely promised to those who believe; rather, it is Spirit, that is, that powerful and effective instrument of the Holy Spirit, which he uses to engender in us the very power of believing those things that are delivered in the Gospel, namely of embracing the free salvation in Christ Jesus; so much so, indeed, that the Law itself, which condemns and kills us in ourselves, justifies and saves us in Christ apprehended by faith.

This, moreover, is the reason why I affirmed before that the Law and the Gospel do not differ as concerns the very righteousness with which we must be clothed in order to be received by God and made partakers of eternal life, but rather in the manner of obtaining that righteousness. For the Law justly seeks that righteousness in us, since it has regard not to what we are able to perform, but to what we owe to perform; because man, by his own fault alone, has come to such a pass that he is insolvent, and therefore, from the very fact that he cannot pay, he is by no means absolved.

From which it follows that no injury is done to us by the Law, not even when it exacts of us what, by our own fault, we cannot perform. But the Gospel, tempering that most bitter right with a kind of honey of mercy, yet in such a way that nothing is taken from the supreme justice of God, shows us that Surety who not only in express words went surety for us, but also in our name paid whatever we owed, to the very last farthing; so much so that the very ordinance of the Law, which struck us down and plainly cast us off in ourselves, wholly raises and confirms us in Jesus Christ.

For since eternal life is owed to those who have perfectly satisfied the Law, and Christ Jesus fulfilled all righteousness for the sake of those who should embrace him by faith, it follows surely, even from the very rigor of the Law, that those who by faith are made one with Christ cannot be excluded from salvation.

Article 24. To what end the Holy Spirit uses the preaching of the Law.

From what we have said about the difference between the Law and the Gospel, it is easy to understand to what end, and for what purpose, the Holy Spirit uses the proclamation of each in the Church; for there is no doubt that he directs these two to the end for which they are appointed. Since, therefore, so long as that native corruption reigns in us, we are so blind that we are ignorant even of our own ignorance, and do not cease to extinguish whatever small sparks of knowledge are left in us, so that we please ourselves most in that wherein we ought most to displease ourselves, it is necessary, first of all, that God, supremely good and merciful, bring us to understand fully in what great, and how certain, evils we are involved.

And this can be accomplished by no better means than if, by a kind of pointer, he shows us what manner of men we must necessarily be, just as black is best known if it be set beside white. This, then, is why God begins with the preaching of the Law, in which alone it is granted to us to discern what we owe and yet can in no part discharge, and therefore how near we are to destruction, unless some most firm and certain help be brought to us from elsewhere.

And how necessary this is, that universal stupor sufficiently declares by which the world has long been held. For the Law was not given to justify us (for otherwise Christ would have died in vain), but on the contrary to condemn us, to set before our eyes the open gulf of damnation, and finally, when our pride has been shown to us, and our sins set in order, and the manifest wrath of God set forth, to crush us utterly.

Yet wretched mortals have long been reduced to such madness that, whereas they ought to have sought a remedy in Christ alone, by faith, against all those things for which they may justly be convicted before the tribunal of God, they not only seek salvation from that which condemns them, that is, from their own works (some wholly, some in part), but even of their own accord daily bind their consciences with new laws, as though that most absolute Law of God were not sufficient to condemn them.

And those who do this are surely no less mad than some captive who, the prison doors standing open, should think that he could be set free no otherwise than by casting himself into the innermost dungeon, and, for the liberty set before him, putting heavier fetters upon himself. Therefore, to conclude in few words, this is the first use of the preaching of the Law: that our innumerable vices be laid open to us, which being known, we may begin to displease ourselves, and to come to that first repentance, namely contrition of heart, which a full and open confession before the Lord may afterward follow.

For no one will ever go to the physician who has persuaded himself that he is in perfect health; and the most unfit of all men to admit the light of salvation are those who have persuaded themselves that they are sharp-sighted enough, since they do not understand that they were born in darkness, so far are they from having emerged from it, that on the contrary they never cease, knowingly and deliberately, to cast themselves out of darkness into darkness.

Article 25. On the other part of the Word of God, which is called the Gospel: what its use is, and to what end it was written.

To the Law succeeds the Gospel, whose use and necessity is best understood from the things we shall subjoin. First of all, just as there is one Savior, so also there is one doctrine of salvation, which is called the Gospel, that is, the happy and longed-for message, fully declared to the world by Christ and his apostles, and indeed set down with the utmost fidelity, as it were in public records, by the Evangelists, so that the frauds and wiles of Satan might be met.

For otherwise he would much more easily have set forth his own dreams to wretched mortals, adorned nevertheless with the specious name of the Gospel; which indeed he has not ceased to do, God being justly angry with men, as those who have always preferred their own darkness to the Light. Now when we say that the whole Gospel doctrine was written out by the apostles and evangelists, we mean to signify these three things.

First, as concerns the substance of the doctrine itself, that they admitted nothing of their own, but most simply obeyed this Word of God, teaching men to keep whatever Christ commanded them, as is plain from Paul’s own words. Next, that nothing at all was omitted by them of the things that are required for salvation; for otherwise they would have been treacherous (which it is wicked to think of them), and that they were scrupulous in this matter can be shown from the testimony of Paul and of Peter.

So Jerome, writing of this very thing, says: “Without the authority of the Scriptures, idle talk has no credit.” And Augustine even more expressly: “Although the Lord did many things, not all were written; as the same holy Evangelist himself testifies that Jesus Christ did and said many things which are not written; but those things were chosen to be written which seemed to suffice for the salvation of believers.”⁵

Third, that they so wrote the things they wrote that even the rudest and most unlearned of all men might gather from them, so far as it depended on the writers, whatever suffices for their salvation.

For why else, I ask, is the Gospel written in the language which could then be understood by those for whom it was written, and in that kind of speech which seemed most common and popular? This is why Paul testifies that, if the Gospel is hidden, it is hidden to those who are perishing, whose understanding the god of this world has blinded, that is, to the unbelieving.

And the very experience of all ages sufficiently shows that God did not call the most learned and the wisest, but on the contrary, for the most part, the most rude, so far was he from willing to obscure his doctrine that it might not lie open to all. Since this is so, we draw from it two conclusions most pertinent to the matter in hand.

The one is, that nothing is to be reckoned under the name of the Gospel which men have added to the written Word of God, that is, to the doctrine contained in the books of both Testaments; for all those things are rather mere superstitions and profanations of the true and only Gospel, as Paul has testified. And Jerome, speaking of this matter: “That which has no authority from the Scriptures is despised with the same ease with which it is approved.”

The other conclusion is, that those are truly Antichrists, and instruments of Satan, who, lest their frauds be laid open, cry out that it is lawful only for certain men to read the sacred Scripture, and therefore that it is wicked to translate those books into the common tongues, so that they may be understood even by simple women.⁵

Article 26. That the books of the Old Testament also belong, in part, to the Gospel.

Besides, so far are we from calling the Gospel, in the common manner, only certain particles rashly and for the most part without judgment plucked out of the four Evangelists or the epistles of the apostles, that on the contrary we signify by that name not only the books of the New Testament themselves, but also whatever was foretold of Jesus Christ in the volume of the Old Testament.

For the Gospel, as we said before, is that one thing through which God, from the founding of the world, saved his elect, and therefore it began to be proclaimed in the world immediately after Adam’s sin, as Moses testifies, although it was actually exhibited to the world long afterward through Jesus Christ himself and his apostles. And so, to conclude in few words, we call the Gospel that testimony by which God, out of his singular and infinite goodness, has testified to his Church from the very beginning of the world that those who should embrace Christ by faith would become, in him, partakers of eternal life.

Article 27. What the authority of sacred Scripture is, and why it ought to be translated into all the common tongues.

When we affirm that the Gospel, as it was committed to writing by God for the Church’s sake, is the one ordinary instrument which God uses to save men (whence it is called the Word of life and of reconciliation), we do not attribute this power to the syllables, or to the ink, or to little papers hung about the neck, or to the recitation of certain words, or to volumes preciously bound and consecrated with much burning of incense; for far be it from us to approve such fortune-tellings and sacrileges.

But in the first place, by this we shut out all those fanatical revelations by which the Devil has long been accustomed to delude men. Next, we attribute these things to the Gospel rightly announced and explained, so that its genuine sense may be received without harm, and may there do its work, by faith, where it edifies true believers. For this the apostles plainly teach, whom Christ, when he sent them, did not address with these words, “Go, recite the Gospel in unknown tongues, and adore the book in which it shall be written,” but with these, “Go, announce the Gospel to any mortals whatever”; to say nothing of the things which Paul professedly discusses, against the Corinthians, concerning the use of tongues in the Church of God without prophecy and interpretation.

For indeed, since faith is from hearing, how at last will anyone believe what he has never known? And that which is sung in a foreign tongue, how can it be understood?

But this also may be asked: how at last will wretched men be able to be confirmed in true doctrine, and, propped up against temptations so various and so many, be fortified against false doctrines, unless, following David’s counsel, they spend nights and days in meditating on the Word of God, and in diligently comparing the testimonies of Scripture among themselves?

This indeed all Christians were accustomed to do, until, God being angry with us, the Devil took away this light from us while we were not thinking of it, and brought in again those thick shadows. That this is so, Peter testifies, praising the diligence of the faithful in that they gave heed to the prophetic words. For note that the saying of Christ, “Feed my sheep,” is understood of the preaching of the Word, as Paul himself explained and proved in fact.

Yet we by no means will that it should be lawful for anyone to teach or interpret the sacred Scripture publicly in the Church, since this office belongs properly to those who are rightly called to its function, as we shall say more fully below; but we say that Scripture is to be read and known by anyone, so far that, in the genuine explanation of the Word which is delivered in the Church, he may confirm himself, and may be able to discern false prophets and to beware of them.

And this we add: that so much reading of the sacred writings (with that being applied which is required of all faithful pastors, namely that they interpret faithfully, and not that they offer Christ anew, or cry out in a foreign tongue), so much, I say, is so far from breeding dissensions and heresies, that on the contrary we contend that by no other means can heresies be rooted out of the hearts of men.

Finally, whoever forbids men the reading of the sacred books, let him know that he is taking away from them all hope of sure consolation and salvation.

Article 28. How varied an effect the outward preaching of the Gospel has: unto faith in the elect, unto destruction in the reprobate.

Just as the outward preaching of the Gospel is a deadly odor to the rebellious who harden themselves against it, so to the elect it is a life-giving odor. And this does not happen as though that saving power were inherent in the very words, or in the ministers of the Word, but rather because the Holy Spirit (of whose office we are treating), using this outward preaching as a kind of channel and vehicle, penetrates even to the inmost parts of the mind, as the Apostle testifies.

And so, of his goodness and mercy, he first of all makes the understanding of the sons of God capable of knowing the mystery of salvation in Christ Jesus; then also that he may restore their judgment, so that they themselves approve, as the wisdom of God, that very thing which the sense of the flesh holds for foolishness; and besides, that he may change and correct their will, so that with ardent zeal they apply to themselves that one remedy, offered in Jesus Christ, against the despair into which they must otherwise fall and be driven by the preaching of the Law.

So, then, the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the Gospel, heals the wound which the preaching of the Law opened and made worse: the Holy Spirit, I say, through the gift of the Gospel, whose power is such that it immediately apprehends in Jesus Christ whatever is required for salvation, as we showed before.

Article 29. On the other effect of the Gospel: the change of life that follows.

We showed that this is no small effect of Jesus Christ dwelling in us: that he creates in us a clean heart, so that we may know, will, and do the things that are God’s, that is, that we may gladly strive to please God, whereas before we were the bondslaves of sin, the enemies of God, and wholly unfit for any good thought. And this is why, our condition being changed, the preaching of the Law also works otherwise in us, so that, whereas before it terrified us, it begins to console us; and whereas it showed us the condemnation prepared for us, it now goes before us, that we may enter the path of good works, for which we were prepared, that we should walk in them.

Finally, whereas before the yoke was to us hard and intolerable, it now becomes pleasant and delightful, if you except this one thing, that great sadness is left in us, because, on account of the remnants of the flesh striving against the spirit, we cannot in every part perform what we will.

Nonetheless, since the faith of which we speak is the testimony of the Spirit of God crying in our hearts, it certainly affirms to us that the curse of the Law has been blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ, with whom we are joined by faith; and since it makes us the more sure that at length the spirit will come forth the superior, and even that death itself opens to us the way to certain victory, therefore all that sadness begets no despair in us, but rather brings it about that we the more ardently call upon that heavenly Father, by whom we are day by day more and more confirmed.

So it comes to pass that, as it were by certain steps, the true conversion, or rather repentance, is wrought in us, which begins (as we said in its place) from a serious sense of sin (which they commonly call contrition), and ends in the true amendment of the inward and the outward man. Wherefore from this also we gather that those who seriously repent must necessarily confess their sins before those whom it concerns, that is, those whom they have privately offended, or even before the assembly of the Church when there is such need, and also make satisfaction to them so far as can be done; since, if these things be lacking, it follows that the repentance was feigned.

From these things it can easily be observed that the true confession which God appointed is not only not rejected by us, but even required as necessary; although we by no means will to torture consciences with that fabricated auricular confession devised by men. And as concerns satisfaction, we acknowledge no other than the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Article 30. On the other instrument which the Holy Spirit uses to make us partakers of Christ; and why the Lord was not content with the bare preaching of the Word.

We said that the sacraments are that other instrument which the Holy Spirit uses to apply to us whatever is required for our salvation. Now since by the word “Sacrament” is sometimes signified every kind of signs that are employed for signifying sacred and spiritual things, the meaning of that word is in the first place to be accommodated to the matter of which we have determined to treat.

First of all, then, we must know this: that our God, who of his supreme mercy determined to use our wretched nature for the declaring of his goodness and patience, willed not simply to reveal himself to us and to point out to us the way to salvation (although even in this he uses a certain incomprehensible clemency and mercy, while, to declare his will to us, he uses the works of men themselves, and as it were stammers with us after the manner of a nurse).

But besides this, that he might show himself infinitely good and gracious toward us, he willed to add to the preaching of the Word certain rites, by which men, even the most gross and dull, might be stirred up to persuade themselves for certain that God by no means trifles with men when he sets before them eternal life in the death of his Son.

For the power of those signs, or rites, is such that they compel all the senses to assent to the promises of the Gospel, no otherwise than if the thing itself were brought present before them. Not unlike this (if it be allowed to shadow forth the incomprehensible goodness of God by human likenesses), we see this custom obtain in the tribunals of most judges: that when they have assigned to someone the ownership or possession of some thing, they besides employ certain ceremonies by which he is put into possession.

So also in civil contracts, although a public notary has set down the names of the witnesses and has himself subscribed the instrument, yet the seal of the city or of the prince is added, that the instrument may be held altogether valid and authentic.

Our God, therefore, even from the beginning, not content to have signified to Adam that grace by which he determined to save the Church in his Son, added sacrifices, as living figures of that one sacrifice, by which the Church might be confirmed in the hope of the redemption to come.

Next, when he again ratified this same covenant of grace and mercy with Abraham, he joined to it the Sacrament of circumcision; and at last, even in the times of Moses, that Passover, with other ceremonies almost without number, which were so many images of the things which Christ in his time would fulfill, as the Apostle copiously and clearly shows in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

But at length, when the time appointed by God had come, Jesus Christ abolished all those figures of his coming; yet so that, although by his brightness he dispelled those old shadows, and taught the world to worship God in a purer manner, that is, in spirit and in truth, he nevertheless had the greatest regard for our gross and rude nature; and for that cause, that he might the better nourish and cherish our faith, he added a few outward signs to the eternal preaching of the Word.

For although Jesus Christ acquired for us by his death an eternal kingdom, yet, so long as we cleave in this world, we do not possess it otherwise than in hope and expectation, in which we must be daily more and more confirmed, lest we lose heart.

Article 31. The definition of a Sacrament.

From these things it is easy to understand what we call a Sacrament in this whole treatise: namely certain signs, or certain marks, and visible testimonies appointed by God himself for the perpetual use of the Church while it sojourns in this world. They are joined, by his authority, to the promises of the Gospel concerning the free salvation of Jesus Christ, that he might the more effectively demonstrate, as it were to our outward senses, what he declares to us by the Word and works in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, when he seals in our hearts that salvation which in this world we possess by hope and faith alone; and besides, that the sacred and solemn ceremony might daily renew to us the memory of all the duties by which we are bound, both to his Majesty and to our neighbors, according to the formula of the covenant by which we are held, namely, to fight strongly and constantly, by the power of his Spirit, against the flesh, the world, and Satan, and to worship him as our God, and to love our neighbors for his sake, no otherwise than we love ourselves.

Article 32. What difference there is between the sacraments of the old and the new covenant.

This definition of the sacrament is common to both covenants, in which nevertheless these differences are to be observed. First, that those old sacraments were appointed on this condition, that they should point out Christ to come, and therefore should cease at his coming; but the sacraments of the new covenant are established until the consummation of the age. The second difference is in the outward sign and the rites themselves, much different from one another, as the thing itself shows.

Thirdly, they differ in number, and in the very measure, so to speak, of signifying. For, as Augustine says excellently, “Our sacraments are fewer than those of the ancients, but easier, of richer signification, and therefore of greater power for confirming our faith and for sealing the promises in our hearts.”⁶ And these are the differences of the sacraments of the old and the new covenant; for otherwise one and the same God is the author of both, and the aim of all is the same, namely the partaking of Jesus Christ unto eternal life, as Paul testifies, and Augustine also expressly confirms.

Article 33. By what marks true sacraments are distinguished from counterfeit ones.

Since from the very definition it is plain that the sacraments are appointed by God as the seals of the Gospel doctrine which is proclaimed in the Church of God, it follows that where there is no word of God, there no place is left either for faith or for the sacraments. From this, again, two things result, greatly to be observed. The one: that all ceremonies and rites devised by men, as though they were a part of the divine worship, are so many sacrileges.

For as it belongs to the one God to promise, so the authority of appointing the sacraments, and of joining them to his promises, resides with him alone. Whoever, therefore, have broken out into such audacity as either to fabricate new sacraments, or to add anything to, or take anything from, those appointed by God, are held guilty of forgery; whence it comes that in our churches we rest in the things which God has appointed by his Word.

The other: that wherever the Word of God is not preached in the very administration of the sacraments, but is only recited, and that in a foreign and unknown tongue, and contaminated with countless inventions and even blasphemies, there a horrible pollution of the sacraments of God comes in, which all the faithful must abhor with their whole heart.

Article 34. On the things that are common to the Word and the Sacraments.

To the things of which we have spoken we must add a discussion from which it may be understood what the Word and the Sacraments have in common, and what each has proper and peculiar to itself. First, then, this is common to both: that both are instruments which the Holy Spirit uses to the same end, namely to make us more and more one with Christ, from whom we afterward draw our salvation.

Secondly, that the Holy Spirit so uses both the preached Word and the Sacraments, as the instruments of his grace, that he nevertheless does not transfer his own efficacy to those instruments, but all the efficacy and power flows from him alone. Thirdly, just as we said before that the preaching of the Word does not help us at all unless, first, it be so announced to us that it can be understood by us, and next, unless that which is set forth and offered through it (that is, Jesus Christ with all his gifts) be applied by faith to the hearts of the hearers, so also we must judge of the Sacraments.

For unless we bring faith to them (that is, that one instrument by which we receive what the Sacraments themselves announce and testify to us), so far are they from profiting us to salvation that they rather harm us, since we either neglect them, or rather despise Christ in them, though they seal to us the promises of God. Yet meanwhile, just as the Gospel is always by its own nature the word of life and salvation, although by the unbelieving it is turned into a deadly odor, so also the Sacraments in themselves do not cease to be Sacraments, although they be administered or received by unworthy, or even reprobate, men; for the wickedness of men cannot pervert the nature of the divine ordinance.

Fourthly, just as the most excellent seed does not bring forth fruit at the very moment in which it is sown, but must needs lie a while in the earth, so also he will act ineptly who would recall the power and fruit of either the Word or the Sacraments to that moment of time in which the Word is preached and the Sacraments are administered, since the fruit both of the one and of the others exerts itself in the souls of the elect at that time which is appointed by God.

Article 35. What the sacraments have proper to themselves, in respect of the end for which God appointed them.

These are the things chiefly common to the Word and the Sacraments, to which we shall now subjoin what is proper to the one and to the others. First, since it is established that the sacraments are, as it were, appendices of the Word, and are employed to this use, that they may seal that which is already in us, namely our communion with Jesus Christ, it follows also that, in adult men, the preaching of the simple Word must go before, with a clear profession of faith, before the sacraments are duly administered to anyone.

For as concerns the baptism of little children, a peculiar account of them is to be had, as we shall say in its place. And so in no rightly constituted Church was any pagan ever admitted, unless he had been a catechumen, and had first made a profession of faith, before he was received to Baptism; for which cause also Paul, treating of the Lord’s Supper, requires that each one examine himself, which indeed he cannot do who does not hold the rule of examination, that is, the doctrine.

Secondly, the Word can be without the Sacraments, as in the daily explanation of the Word, both private and public, and that an effective one, as appeared in Cornelius; but the Sacraments cannot be without the Word. For instruments are sometimes valid even without a seal affixed; but a seal is useless, and does not even deserve the name of a seal, unless it be affixed to an instrument for the sake of confirming it.

Thirdly, since without faith no access lies open to anyone to Christ and to eternal life, and the preaching of the Word is the ordinary instrument of the Holy Spirit for creating faith in us, it follows that the preaching of the Word, and that an effective one, is required in all adults, that they may be saved, except when it has pleased God to work in their hearts beyond the ordinary course.

But the case of the Sacraments is otherwise. For since the very thing of the Sacraments is received by faith alone, faith must be brought to the receiving of them, lest they be received unworthily. Now whoever has faith has Christ, and therefore eternal life; whence it comes that we must first have, as it were, the right and title (as they say) to the heavenly kingdom, before we can worthily receive the Sacraments; so far is it from being true that one who has faith, and yet has not been able to obtain the Sacraments, therefore falls from the sure hope of salvation.

And so the necessity of receiving the Sacraments does not reach so far that, without exception, whoever has not obtained the Sacraments falls from salvation, but only so far that he who has despised them, since he thereby declares himself unbelieving, is guilty of eternal death, unless he acknowledge his fault and repent. Rightly, therefore, did Bernard testify that it is not the privation of baptism, but the contempt of it, that condemns.⁷ But he cannot be regarded as having despised the Sacraments to whom it was not permitted to receive them as they were appointed by the Lord; and far be it from us to imagine any cases of necessity in which it is lawful to violate the ordinance of the Lord, as those do (so it seems to me, at least) who transfer the ministry of baptizing to women or to any private persons, and who administer the Lord’s Supper outside the public assembly, at times not prescribed by the Church.

Fourthly, since the simple preaching of the Word strikes only one of those five senses of ours, but the Sacraments besides fall under the eyes and rouse our other senses also, and indeed are administered with rites of the greatest moment, it can easily be understood how much their use confers upon our faith, inasmuch as they bring us, as it were, into the very presence of the thing, so that we may in a manner handle Christ with our hands, and discern him with our eyes, and feel him with our whole body.

So far, then, is it from being true that we despise the Sacraments, that on the contrary we confess that their use and their benefits cannot be sufficiently commended, nor proclaimed according to their worth.

Article 36. That there are only two sacraments of the Christian Church.

Such sacraments, whose use in the Church is perpetual and universal, we reckon from the Word of God to be only two (Augustine and Ambrose also expressly agreeing by name): namely Baptism, which succeeded Circumcision and the other purifications of the Law; and the Lord’s Supper, which the Paschal lamb foreshadowed. These, that they may be thoroughly known by us, we shall treat first in general, and then each one separately.

Article 37. That there are four chief heads to be considered in the explanation of the sacraments.

We consider four chief heads in this treatment of the sacraments. First, what, and of what kind, the signs are, and in what sense they are called signs. Secondly, what that is which is signified by them. Thirdly, what is the conjunction of the signs and the thing. Fourthly, how we receive both the signs and the things themselves.

Article 38. The first head: what a sign is, and why God chose utterly common things in appointing the sacraments.

We use the name “signs” in explaining the Sacraments, not to signify something empty, as if some thing were signified to us by a picture, or by some bare mark or figure, but to declare that the Lord, of his signal goodness, uses external and corporeal things, for the relieving of our weakness, to shadow forth to our outward senses the greatest and most divine things, which he inwardly and truly communicates to us by his Spirit; so that he gives the thing itself (of which we shall presently speak) no less truly than those external and corporeal signs.

Besides, by the word “signs” we comprehend not only those corporeal things, such as water in Baptism, bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper, but also, under this name, the ceremonies themselves, or the very rites of the mysteries, which are by no means empty, so that we think nothing is to be added to them or taken from them. And this also must be observed: that the Lord, to whom the vanity of our nature, prone to idolatry, is thoroughly known, willed to appoint very few Sacraments in the new covenant (that is, only two), and those consisting of the simplest signs and rites.

For he used water, bread, and wine for the signs; and the rites are to sprinkle, to eat, and to drink, than which nothing is more common among men, namely lest wretched mortals, in the use of those mysteries (appointed that they might raise themselves up even to heaven), should on the contrary cleave to earthly things and be stupefied. This counsel of God either they did not understand, or deliberately strove to hinder, whoever, not content with that heavenly simplicity, thought they could adorn the dignity of the Sacraments with their own inventions; which preposterous judgment of theirs has brought it about that the Sacraments have degenerated into a foul and execrable idolatry.

Article 39. On the error of those who abolish the substance of the signs in the sacraments.

The signs, besides being, as it were, the subjects of the mysteries of which the thing itself is truly predicated (so that, the signs being taken away, the whole action is emptied), also have a wonderful fitness and analogy with the things whose living images they are, on account of the character impressed on them from the Word of God. From these things, therefore, it follows that the whole reckoning of the Sacraments is taken away by those who teach that the substance of the signs is, as it were by some magical incantation, either changed or destroyed.

Article 40. On the change of the corporeal things in the sacraments.

The signs in the Sacraments, then, are changed neither as to substance, nor as to their natural qualities or quantities, but only as to the end and use for the sake of which they are set forth in the Word of God; namely because they begin truly to signify to us things wholly heavenly and divine, and that not from their own nature, but from the ordination of the Son of God.

For water, if you regard its natural use, is fitted for washing away the filth of the body, and bread and wine for sustaining this life; which things are employed in the Sacraments for a far different end, namely that they may set before our eyes, as it were, the mysteries of our salvation, as we shall presently explain. And if it please anyone to illustrate those so sacred things by certain human likenesses, we will say that it is a case not unlike that of wax, which is wont to be employed, with the impressed sign of a prince or of some city, for confirming public instruments, inasmuch as it differs nothing in nature or substance from any other wax, but differs far and wide in use, so much so that whoever should corrupt such a sign is held guilty of the capital crime of treason.

Article 41. Whence the change of the things in the sacraments proceeds.

This change by no means depends on the recitation of any words, as the Sophists and impostors teach, but on the ordination of God, comprehended in his Word. The Word, then, that is, the very institution of Christ, as it is explained by the Evangelists and by Paul, is, as it were, the very soul of the sacramental signs; since, as is declared to us in the Word, water, bread, and wine become Sacraments, that is, true signs and seals of those things which are promised to us in the Word and are truly signified through them.

Article 42. That this change is not perpetual.

Since this change regards only that public use in the Church, it follows that outside the administration of the Sacraments, or the very action of the mysteries, no place is left for it; whence it comes that whoever attach any holiness to the water of Baptism, or carry about and adore the bread of the Supper as some heavenly thing, much more as the very body of the Lord, are held guilty of a double idolatry, for which they have absolutely nothing they can justly pretend.

For first, the superstition is to be execrated which transfers to signs that are on earth the honor which belongs to the One who is in heaven. Next, since outside the action of Baptism the water is not a Sacrament but simple water, nor are bread or wine the symbols of the body and blood of the Lord, but only bread and wine, these religious men, when they adore these things, do not adore even the Sacraments, but mere and simple creatures of God, which, if they could speak, would doubtless reproach so great a crime to their worshipers.

Article 43. The second head, in which the thing itself of the sacraments is treated.

The promises to which the Sacraments are applied, as it were certain authentic seals, point us to Christ. Christ first of all, and then all the riches which he has in himself, are that one thing which the most merciful Father gives us unto eternal life, even as through the visible signs he truly and certainly signifies it to us, and as the Word joined to the signs sounds it forth, so that faith (by which alone we can receive that offered treasure) may be more and more stirred up and confirmed in us.

And since this our conjunction with Christ concerns each several member of the Church, therefore that mutual conjunction which ought to flourish among the members of the same body is the other end of the Sacraments.

Article 44. The third head, in which it is asked how the thing itself, that is, Jesus Christ, is said to be joined with the signs.

There is no doubt that God, who is supremely faithful, besides the visible signs, always offers also the thing itself, that is, Jesus Christ, together with all his riches, to be truly enjoyed, and without any deceit; on which account it can and ought to be said (in respect, namely, of God who promises) that the thing itself is always and truly joined with the signs.

But this comes about not by any power of the words or syllables, as magicians and enchanters suppose; nor by any natural or local mode of conjunction (as they speak), for the body of Jesus Christ is neither imaginary, nor invisible, nor uncircumscribed, nor, in short, in any way infinite; nor on account of any holiness of him who performs these sacred rites (since these things depend on the authority of God alone, and not of men); but by the sole power and virtue of the Holy Spirit, who brings it about that that same Jesus Christ, who now, inasmuch as he is man, is nowhere but in heaven (as the Scripture testifies), is nevertheless given to us who are on earth no less truly than the signs themselves of which we have spoken; inasmuch, namely, as our faith, contemplating him in the Sacraments as in an express mirror, ascends up to heaven, where it truly embraces him more and more, and instills him into the souls of believers.

Article 45. The distinction of the signs and the thing.

This conjunction is indeed most true and most close, but in which, nevertheless, this must be greatly observed: that the substance, or matter, of the signs is not to be abolished, nor are the signs to be confounded with the things, but distinguished, inasmuch as they are given to us by God conjointly indeed, yet distinctly; so that very often, as we shall presently show, one who takes the signs is far from receiving the thing itself.

Article 46. The fourth head: how we receive both the signs and the things themselves.

Since, as we just said, the things themselves are so joined with the signs that yet the one is distinguished from the other, we affirm that the outward signs are received in a natural manner, both by the faithful and by the unbelieving, but with an altogether contrary outcome. For since the faithful, besides the signs, receive also the things themselves, they thence obtain the confirmation of their faith unto salvation and eternal life; but the unbelieving, since they receive the signs alone, and that in such a way that, as far as in them lies, they pollute by their contempt the very things which God offered to them no less truly than the signs, and treat them with insult, take to themselves judgment and condemnation.

And this concerning the receiving of the signs. But as concerns the thing itself, that is, Jesus Christ with all his riches, we have shown before that faith is that one instrument by which Christ is apprehended by us. From this it follows that the thing itself of the Sacraments cannot be received by one who does not bring faith, and, on the contrary, is truly received by one who brings true faith; and that not with the teeth, or the belly, or in any gross and corporeal manner, or in any manner repugnant to the truth and the ascension of the body of the Lord, but in a spiritual manner through faith, and that no less certain and effective than if it were natural.

For so great is the power of faith, or rather of God, in whose Word and Sacraments faith believes, not that it draws down the flesh of Christ from heaven (for there it will remain until he comes to judge the living and the dead, as Scripture testifies, against which faith neither will nor can strive), but on the contrary that it raises itself up even to heaven, relying on the promises of God, and there truly and effectively unites those persons to Christ, and, so to speak, incorporates them into him, in whose souls Christ himself dwells.

For which cause also, in the ancient liturgy, that saying was long ago received, “Lift up your hearts,” by which words the faithful were bidden not to rest in the outward signs, but rather to use them as ladders, that they might mount up even to heaven, to Christ.

Article 47. Application of the foregoing doctrine to the Sacrament of Baptism.

We call the signs of Baptism, first of all, water, then its substantial ceremonies, written in the Word of God, to which we judge it wrong to add anything or to take anything away: namely, the sprinkling of water, the delay under the water, and the emergence out of the water. The thing itself of Baptism is the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of all sins and the imputation of his righteousness, which are set, as it were, before our eyes by the applied outward sign of sprinkling.

Besides, it is the mortification and burial of the old man, that is, of our native corruption, which is slain and buried in us by the power of the death and burial of Jesus Christ; for which cause we are said to put on Christ in Baptism, and to be crucified and buried with him, as that delay under the water represents to us in Baptism, until the one who is baptized emerges.

Finally, it is the regeneration of the new man unto the sure hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ (in which sense Paul seems to me to say that those who are baptized are baptized for the dead), which is truly represented by the fact that the baptized person emerges from the water as from a tomb. Besides, Baptism comprehends the outward and solemn profession of the Christian religion, by which we bind ourselves to Jesus Christ, acknowledging him as the true and only Savior, and bind ourselves to a life to be passed in mutual charity, since we are baptized by one Baptism into one Spirit, that we may grow together with the one Christ.

We call the Word, in Baptism, the ordinance of Jesus Christ joined with the promise of eternal life, of which this is the form: “Baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; whoever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved.” The analogy, or agreement, of the Thing with the sign is most fitting and clear. For there is no element more apt for washing away the filth of the body than water, and therefore none more fit for representing to our faith the blood of the Son of God, by which alone the Church is purified.

Besides, the one and the same form of Baptism, common to all unto one and the same end, testifies that highest conjunction of all the members of the same body.

The mode of receiving the signs is natural. But the things themselves are communicated to us (in respect, namely, of God who gives) through the one Holy Spirit, who works freely in all the elect.

And the Holy Spirit, accommodating himself to our weakness, uses first a mortal man, appointed to this ministry in the Church, the minister of God; next the Word, pronounced and explained, that it may be apprehended by faith; thirdly, the signs and rites of which we spoke a little before. But this above all must be observed: that all the power and efficacy flows wholly from the Holy Spirit, so that we may keep that general saying of Paul, “Neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.”

And faith is that one thing by which men apply to themselves the Thing of the Sacrament; so that Augustine truly said that we are cleansed by the Word, not because it is merely pronounced (for that is magical), but because, when pronounced, it is believed.⁸ Moreover, this faith does not arise from us, but is freely communicated to the elect at the time when it pleased God to call them effectively.

And God is the one who knows his own elect, which secret we leave wholly to him, as is fitting, whenever the matter concerns our neighbors. Yet meanwhile charity bids us acknowledge as believers all who truly make a confession of faith, until the hypocrites be laid open.

Article 48. On the baptism of infants.

As concerns infants, although it is not clear to us that they are endowed with that habit of faith which we said is required for receiving the Thing of the Sacraments, nor is it likely that those can be endowed with that habit who have no use of understanding (unless perhaps God works in them peculiarly, beyond the ordinary course, concerning which it is not clear to us), nevertheless we admit them to Baptism; and indeed we affirm that the Anabaptists, who reprehend the baptism of infants, labor under a great error.

First, because we say that the reckoning of Baptism and of Circumcision is the same, which is called by Paul the seal of the righteousness of faith, and yet, by the express command of God, all males were commanded to be circumcised on the eighth day.

Secondly, there is a peculiar reckoning of infants born of believing parents. For although they do not have in themselves that habit of faith which is in adult believers, yet they cannot but have the seed and germ of faith, whom the Lord has sanctified from the very womb, and has separated from the children of unbelievers, since the promise apprehended by the parents through faith comprehends also their children, even to a thousand generations.

By what right, then, should anyone deny them the sealing of that thing which the Lord has already imparted to them? And if anyone objects that not all are elect, and therefore that not all who are born of believing parents are sanctified, since the Lord chose not all the children even of Abraham or of Isaac, we have what to answer. For although we by no means deny that this is so, yet we say that this secret of God’s judgment is to be left to him; and in general, from the formula of the promise, we presume that those are sanctified who are born of believing parents, or even of one believing parent only, unless something stand in the way from which the contrary may be gathered.

For in adults we require an express confession of faith, not content with that bare profession of which we spoke, whether they ask to be admitted to Baptism (if perchance they have not yet been baptized) or to the Lord’s Supper; since, being endowed with understanding, a more certain judgment can thence be made whether they are fit for worthily receiving the Sacraments, so far as human judgment reaches; for we cannot judge hypocrites before the Lord lays them open.

Besides, it is established that the prayers of the Church are by no means empty when the infants of the Church, to be brought in through Baptism, are presented in the public assembly; of which signal consolation we say it is wrong to deprive either the parents themselves or their children. And this custom, the ancients testify, has flowed down from the apostles themselves even to us, so that there is no doubt that the Lord, by this impressed seal (which is joined with the prayers of the Church), seals eternal adoption in those infants whom he has chosen from eternity, whether they die before they grow up, or reach that age in which they bring forth the fruits of true faith, being effectually called by the Lord at the time and moment that pleased him.

Article 49. That Baptism is not to be repeated.

We said that Baptism is the Sacrament of our engrafting into Christ and his Church, and that its efficacy does not depend on the person of the one who baptizes. Now since whoever is once truly given to Christ, although he sometimes turns aside, is yet never cast out, and is therefore once for all truly his, we by no means agree with those who rebaptize those who were baptized by heretics or by other impure ministers; nor do we doubt that true Baptism exists in the Papist Church, although it is administered by ministers by no means fit, and is contaminated with countless pollutions.

For since it pleased the mercy of God to preserve the remnants of his Church within the Papacy itself, until he should raise it up again, he therefore willed not to allow Satan so much as to overturn utterly the Baptism by which all the elect are associated together. Yet it does not follow that those do rightly who offer their children to Papist mass-priests to be baptized, since they cannot do this without defiling themselves with the same sacrileges and corruptions; and it is rather the duty of pious parents either to offer their children to be duly baptized by true ministers of the Word in the true Church of God, or, if this is not permitted, rather to defer the Baptism of their children, since their salvation does not depend on Baptism (as we taught before), nor can they be regarded as having despised Baptism to whom it was not permitted to seek it except with offense to God.

Yet those will have to answer before God who, while indulging too much their own weakness, and cleaving to the Papists, prefer either to deprive themselves and their children of the benefit of Baptism, or to defile them with the profanation of Baptism, rather than openly to profess and embrace Christ. For the necessity of such men, which they are wont to pretend, is not forced but voluntary, and therefore inexcusable before God.

Article 50. Application of the foregoing doctrine concerning the sacraments to the Lord’s Supper.

We call the signs in the Lord’s Supper the bread and wine, which the minister blesses from the Word of God; then the ceremonies, or the essential rites of the action (so to speak), to which we judge nothing is to be added or taken away: namely, that the minister, after a clear explanation of the divine ordinance and the invocation of the name of God, breaks the bread, and distributes the broken bread to each in order, and likewise afterward the cup; and those who come to the Supper are bidden to take the bread and eat it, and to drink from the cup, announcing the death of the Lord with concordant minds.

The thing itself, which is truly and effectively signified by those signs, is that very thing which is set forth both in the simple Word and in the other Sacrament, that is, in Baptism: namely Jesus Christ himself, conceived, born, crucified, dead, buried, who rose again and ascended into the heavens, that to all believers he might be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And so we by no means doubt that (as the words of the institution testify) the true body and the true blood of the Lord, that is, Jesus Christ himself with all his riches, is truly and without any deceit offered, to be received not with the mouth but by faith, through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, unto eternal life; and that no less truly than the bread and wine are offered to our bodily senses, which for that reason are also called the body and blood of Jesus Christ, since they are sure marks, and visible and corporeal tokens, of those things which the Lord spiritually offers us, that is, of the true body and blood of Jesus Christ.

For it is usual, when the Sacraments are treated, in order to declare the efficacy and truth of the sacramental signification, to attribute to the symbols the names of the things themselves. For so the cup is said to be the New Testament, that is, the true and certain symbol of the New Testament, which was ratified by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ.

So Circumcision is called the covenant, that is, the true pledge of the covenant. So in one place the Lamb is called the Passover, and the Rock in the desert is called Christ, because they truly and effectively represented Christ, although his flesh did not yet exist in the nature of things; so certain is the presence even of absent things, when it rests upon the Word of God and upon faith.

So also, in Paul, the bread is called the communication of the body of Christ, and the cup the communication of the blood of Christ; which words must needs be explained by some interpretation, namely that they are sure symbols and seals of our communication with Christ. What more? That this manner of speaking is drawn from the very usage of common people can be shown even from Homer, who, in the third book of the Iliad, where he describes the rite of ratifying a treaty, in that very verse does not hesitate to call the victims by which treaties were ratified “treaties.”

Nor otherwise did Virgil say “to deceive right hands,” for to deceive the faith and the oath which is conceived by the giving of right hands. This figure of speech, then, which we have laid down in explaining the words of Christ, is not invented by us, nor alien to the usage of Scripture, but altogether in agreement with the Word of God and with the very nature of the Sacraments; and that the mystery of the Lord’s Supper was explained no otherwise by the ancient and orthodox writers has been most copiously shown by many writers of our own times.

Now we explain the analogy of the Thing and the signs thus. The breaking of the bread represents to our senses the passion of our Lord, who was broken with the sorrows and the anguish of death and of the judgment of God, which he underwent for us all, both in body and in soul. The distribution of the same bread, and likewise of the cup, testifies to our senses that Jesus Christ, with all his riches, is given to each of us by the Father unto eternal life.

And that we take and eat the bread, and drink from the cup, testifies that Jesus Christ is truly communicated to us, as we said before. For the Holy Spirit knows how to join most closely, by the bond of faith, the things which otherwise, if you regard distance of place, are very far apart. Therefore, just as in a natural manner we take, eat, and drink the natural symbols, which afterward, by the power of the natural faculty, coalesce into our substance, so also, in a heavenly and spiritual manner, Jesus Christ, who is now in heaven and not elsewhere according to the flesh, is truly communicated to us, that we may be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones, that is, that, being made one with Christ and grafted into his body by faith, we may thence draw eternal life; and that, being sanctified also by his Spirit, we may consecrate ourselves wholly to his worship, and to the loving of our neighbors in him.

Finally, that we all eat of one bread, and drink from one cup, signifies that by one faith we coalesce more and more with one Christ; and this sets before our eyes that highest conjunction which ought to flourish in the mystical body of Christ, and to which we bind ourselves by solemn profession. The analogy of the signs and the Thing is perfectly manifest, especially because one bread is made of many grains, and wine of many berries, which thing best represents our coalescing with Christ, and the mutual consent of the members of the same body.

The Word, which as it were gives life to this whole action, is that which is expressed by the three Evangelists and by Paul, not indeed in the same syllables, but altogether in the same sense: “The Lord, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me.

Likewise also the cup, after he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you announce the Lord’s death until he come.”

The instrument by which Christ is received is faith, as we taught before. Rightly, therefore, did Augustine write that the body of Christ is not eaten by one who is not in the body of Christ, and that heretics, who are outside the Church, can indeed receive the Sacrament, but not the Thing of the Sacrament.⁹ Hence, then, it follows that each one must examine himself, as the Apostle commands, namely whether he repents of his past life, and depends wholly upon Christ as the one Mediator.

Yet here faith is not required to be perfect (for what mortal is endowed with that?), but only true, that is, unfeigned. And so there is no doubt that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, whoever bring true faith coalesce more and more with Christ when they come to this sacred action by the command of God, even as the Apostle testifies that Circumcision was the seal of the righteousness of faith in Abraham.

But on the contrary, those who bring another mind, since they laugh at and despise both the signs and the promises joined to the signs, and indeed Jesus Christ himself, are deservedly made guilty of the contemned body and blood of the Lord, from whom they are more and more alienated, to remain so forever.

The announcement, or open confession and approval, of the death of Jesus Christ (and therefore of all the things which he fulfilled for our sake), and likewise the giving of thanks for all the benefits conferred by him upon us, are no small part of the Supper itself; whence it comes that they can neither be omitted nor perverted without manifest sacrilege.

And from this it follows that the use of the Supper does not belong to those who cannot examine themselves, whether because they have no use of reason (as happens with infants and the insane), or because they are not sufficiently instructed in the mysteries of faith; nor likewise to those of whom it is not established whether they are sufficiently Christian, inasmuch as they have not made an express confession of faith; nor, finally, to those who by the lawful judgment of the Church have been cast out of the communion of the Church, and have not yet made satisfaction.

Article 51. Conclusion of the matter of the sacraments.

From all these things it follows that the Sacraments were not instituted by the Lord that we should offer him anything (if you except the Sacrifice of thanksgiving), but rather that, out of his mere grace and bounty, we should receive what is more precious than heaven and earth, namely the confirmation of our faith, that day by day we may be more and more united to Christ our head, and cleave to him unto eternal life.

Article 52. Why the Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete, and what the use of our afflictions is.

From what we have said it is easy to understand why the Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete, that is, the Comforter. For since it is he who applies Christ to us by faith, and whoever has Christ can require nothing further for salvation, it follows that by him alone our consciences are pacified, so far that even in afflictions themselves we glory, since we have learned that they do not befall us by chance, but are sent by him who, having reconciled us to himself, partly chastises us kindly with these scourges, and partly also conforms us to the image of his Son, and little by little, by this means, teaches us to hate sin, to despise the world, to call upon the heavenly Father with groanings that cannot be uttered, to acknowledge ourselves, and to be more and more confirmed; to whom, finally, it pleases to show forth in us (as in certain spectacles set before the whole world) what is the power and efficacy of his Spirit in these frail vessels, unto the everlasting glory of his name.

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Footnotes

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A note on this translation. This English text was prepared for Reformed Dogmatika directly from Beza’s Latin (Confessio Christianae Fidei, London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1575; first published in French, 1558) with the help of AI (Anthropic’s Claude); no copyrighted English translation was consulted, and in particular nothing is drawn from James Clark’s 1992 version. It is offered for unhurried reading rather than scholarly citation; for academic work, cite that published edition. The Fathers, councils, and liturgy that Beza quotes are translated from his own sixteenth-century Latin and identified as his citations; Scripture is given in the ESV; and difficulties in the Latin are flagged in the footnotes rather than smoothed over. Corrections from readers of the Latin are warmly welcomed.

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