states which heretofore professed, in piety and holiness, the Catholic faith transmitted to them by their ancestors, but are now gone astray, wandering from the paths of truth, and openly declaring that their best claims of piety are founded on a total abandonment of the faith of their fathers : there is no region however remote, no place however securely guarded, no corner of the Christian republic, into which this pestilence has not sought secretly to insinuate itself. Those, who proposed to themselves to corrupt the minds of the faithful, aware that they could not hold immediate personal intercourse with all, and thus pour into their ears their poisoned doctrines, by adopting a different plan, disseminated error and impiety more easily and extensively. Besides those voluminous works, by which they sought the subversion of the Catholic faith ; to guard against which, however, containing, as they did, open heresy, required, perhaps, little labour or circumspection ; they also composed in numerable smaller books, which, veiling their errors under the semblance of piety, deceived with incredible facility the simple and the incautious.
Object and authority of this workThe Fathers, therefore, of the general Council of Trent, anxious to apply some healing remedy to an evil of such magnitude, were not satisfied with having decided the more important points of Catholic doctrine against the heresies of our times, but deemed it further necessary to deliver some fixed form of instructing the faithful in the truths of religion from the very rudiments of Christian knowledge; a form to be followed by those to whom are lawfully intrusted the duties of pastor and teacher. In works of this sort many, it is true, have already employed their pens, and earned the reputation of great piety and learning. The Fathers, however, deemed it of the first importance that a work should appear, sanctioned by the authority of the Holy Synod, from which pastors and all others on whom the duty of imparting instruction devolves, may draw with security precepts for the edification of the faithful; that as there is "one Lord, one faith" [1] there may also be one standard and prescribed form of propounding the dogmas of faith, and instructing Christians in all the duties of piety.
Its subject matter.As, therefore, the design of the work embraces a variety of matter, the Holy Synod cannot be supposed to have intended to comprise, in one volume, all the dogmas of Christianity, with that minuteness of detail to be found in the works of those who pro-
- ↑ Eph. iv. 5.
