CREED OF PIUS IV
- I most firmly admit and embrace apostolic and
ecclesiastical traditions and all other constitutions and observances
of the same Church.
- I also admit the sacred Scriptures according to the
sense which the holy mother Church has held and does hold, to whom it belongs
to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures; nor will I ever take or
interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the
Fathers.
- I profess also, that there are truly and
properly seven
sacraments of the new law, instituted
by Jesus Christ our Lord and for the salvation of mankind, though all are not
necessary for every one; namely, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance,
extreme unction, orders, and matrimony; and that they confer grace; and of
these, baptism, confirmation, and orders cannot be reiterated without
sacrilege.
- I also receive and admit the ceremonies of the Catholic Church received and approved in the solemn administration of all the above said sacraments.
- I receive and embrace all and every one of the things which have been defined and declared in the holy Council of Trent concerning original sin and justification.
- I profess likewise that in the mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrifice of the eucharist there is truly, really and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
- I confess also, that under either kind alone, whole and entire, Christ and a true sacrament are received.
- I constantly hold that there is a purgatory and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
- Likewise that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and incovated; that they offer prayers to God for us; and that their relics are to be venerated.
- I most firmly assert that the images of Christ and of the mother of God ever virgin and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained and that honour and veneration are to be given them.
- I also affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people.
- I acknowledge the holy Catholic and apostolic Roman
Church, the mother and mistress of all churches; and I promise and swear
true obedience to the Roman bishop, the successor of St. Peter, the prince of
the apostles and vicar of Jesus Christ.]
"The Council of Trent, by its Creed of Pius IV, makes it impossible for the Roman Catholic Church to change. It added . . . twelve new articles to the Nicene Creed. . . . This Creed of Pius IV is a millstone around Rome’s neck. It binds the Roman Catholic Church forever to all its pagan errors. It is its answer and challenge to the Reformation." (John J. Kelly, “Rome Never Changes.”)
