salving and rejecting the Christian religion, and denying the true God and His Christ, the minds of many have sunk into the abyss of Pantheism, Materialism, and Atheism, until, denying rational nature itself and every sound rule of right, they labour to destroy the deepest foundations of human society.
Unhappily, it has yet further come to pass that, while this impiety prevailed on every side, many even of the children of the Catholic Church have strayed from the path of true piety, and by the gradual diminution of the truths they held, the Catholic sense became weakened in them. For, led away by various and strange doctrines, utterly confusing nature and grace, human science and divine faith, they are found to deprave the true sense of the doctrines which our Holy Mother Church holds and teaches, and endanger the integrity and the soundness of the faith.
Considering these things, how can the Church fail to be deeply stirred? For, even as God wills all men to be saved, and to arrive at the knowledge of the truth; even as Christ came to save what had perished, and to gather together the children of God who had been dispersed, so the Church, constituted by God the mother and teacher of nations, knows its own office as debtor to all, and is ever ready and watchful to raise the fallen, to support those who are falling, to embrace those who return, to confirm the good and to carry them on to better things. Hence, it can never forbear from witnessing to and proclaiming the truth of God, which heals all things, knowing the words addressed to it: 'My Spirit that is in thee, and my words that I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, from henceforth and for ever' (Isaias lix. 21).
We, therefore, following the footsteps of our predecessors, have never ceased, as becomes our supreme Apostolic office, from teaching and defending Catholic truth, and condemning doctrines of error. And now, with the Bishops of the whole world assembled round us and judging with us, congregated by our authority, and in the Holy Spirit, in this Œcumenical Council, we, supported by the Word of God written and handed down as we received it from the Catholic Church, preserved with sacredness and set forth according to truth,—have determined to profess and declare the salutary teaching of Christ from this Chair of Peter and in sight of all, proscribing and condemning, by the power given to us of God, all errors contrary thereto.
