poses to expound to all the faithful of Christ the true and sound doctrine of the said Justification; which the sun of righteousness[1] Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith[2] taught, the apostles transmitted, and the Catholic Church, the Holy Ghost reminding her thereof,[3] has continually retained; most strictly forbidding that any henceforth presume to believe, preach, or teach, otherwise than as by the present decree is ordained and declared.
CHAPTER I.
On the Inability of Nature and of the Law to justify Man.
The holy synod declares first, that, for the correct and sound understanding of the doctrine of Justification, it behoves that each one recognize and confess, that, whereas all men had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam,[4] having become unclean,[5] and, as the apostle says, by nature the children of wrath,[6] as [this synod] has set forth in the decree on original sin, they were so far the servants of sin,[7] and under the power of the devil and of death, that not only the Gentiles by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter itself of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated, or to arise, from thence; although in them free will, attenuated and bent down as it was in its powers, was by no means extinguished.
CHAPTER II.
Touching the Dispensation and Mystery of the Advent of Christ.
Through the which it came to pass, that the heavenly Father, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort,[8] when that blessed fulness of the time was come,[9] sent unto men Jesus Christ, His own Son, who had been, both before the Law, and during the time of the Law, declared and promised to many of the holy fathers, that He might both redeem the Jews who were under the Law,[10] and that the
