CHAPTER I.
OF GOD, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS.
The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, Almighty, Eternal, Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfection, who, as being one, sole, absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from the world, of supreme beatitude in and from Himself, and ineffably exalted above all things which exist, or are conceivable, except Himself.
This one only true God, of His own goodness and almighty power, not for the increase or acquirement 'of His own happiness, but to manifest His perfection by the blessings which He bestows on creatures, and with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing, from the very first beginning of time, both the spiritual and the corporeal creature, to wit, the angelical and the mundane and afterwards the human creature, as partaking, in a sense, of both, consisting of spirit and of body.
God protects and governs by His Providence all things which He hath made, 'reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly' (Wisdom viii. 1). For 'all things are bare and open to His eyes' (Heb. iv. 13), even those which are yet to be by the free action of creatures.
CHAPTER II.
OF REVELATION.
The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things; 'for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made' (Romans i. 20), but that it pleased His wisdom and bounty to reveal Himself, and the eternal decrees of His will, to mankind by another and a supernatural way: as the Apostle says, 'God, having spoken on divers occasions, and many ways, in times past, to the fathers by the prophets; last of all, in these days, hath spoken to us by His Son' (Hebrews i. 1, 2).
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