2560

Late 1246 / early 1247. Another Latin version of the Confession of Father Ignatius, patriarch of the Eastern Christians who are called Jacobitae, for himself and for the people committed to him: ‘We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one nature and three persons. The Father is the one Who begets, the Son begotten of Him, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, receiving from the Son. In the last times by the will of the Father and the Holy Spirit the eternal Word descended from heaven, and dwelled in the womb of the Virgin, and was born of her by a second birth, and preserved her virginity post-partum; therefore we believe and confess her [to be] the bearer of God. He was circumcised, and purged circumcision; He fasted, and was tempted by the Devil, and suffered and died according to the flesh, and arose again; and forty days after His resurrection He appeared to the world to justify (verify) His resurrection: He ascended into heaven, He is seated at the right hand of the Father; thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. And He in truth is perfect God and perfect man, one Christ from two natures, divine and human. And the divine nature is preserved in (its) holy essence and in its properties; and the human nature is preserved in its essence and in its properties; and the union between them [is] without confusion, without mixture, without corruption. We agree with Saint Peter and confess him to be the foundation of the Church, as Christ named him petra saying: ‘Upon this rock I shall build my Church’; and thus the Church, in which his body is reposed, is the mother of all churches in the whole world: and we say and preach that she is the shining light from which all other lamps are lit. We also say that the souls of the just who have fulfilled the will of God, when they are separated from the body, rest in the kingdom of heaven. Sinners who die without confession are flogged in hell. But those who have sinned but have confessed their sins, but have not completed their penance, are afflicted until the completion of the penance. We say that a Christian disciple of Jesus Christ must love his Christian brother just as Christ loved us and placed his soul for us. But a Christian who hates his brother is not a Christian, because he is a transgressor of Jesus Christ’s commandments, but rather a disciple of the one who envied Adam and hated him. These are what we have said in brief to show our faith.’