The Second Helvetic Confession
CHAPTER III
Of God, His Unity and Trinity
GOD IS ONE. We believe and teach that God is one in
essence or nature, subsisting in himself, all sufficient in himself, invisible,
incorporeal, immense, eternal, Creator of all things both visible and invisible,
the greatest good, living, quickening and preserving all things, omnipotent and
supremely wise, kind and merciful, just and true. Truly we detest many gods
because it is expressly written: “The Lord your God is one Lord”
(Deut.6:4). “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before
me” (Ex. 20:2-3). “I am the Lord, and there is no other god besides
me. Am I not the Lord, and there is no other God beside me? A righteous God
and a Savior; there is none besides me” ((Isa. 45:5, 21). “The Lord,
the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast
love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6).
GOD IS THREE. Notwithstanding we believe and teach that
the same immense, one and indivisible God is in person inseparably and without
confusion distinguished as Father, Son and Holy Spirit so, as the Father has
begotten the Son from eternity, the Son is begotten by an ineffable generation,
and the holy Spirit truly proceeds from them both, and the same from eternity
and is to be worshipped with both.
Thus there are not three gods, but three persons,
cosubstantial, coeternal, and coequal; distinct with respect to hypostases, and
with respect to order, the one preceding the other yet without any inequality.
For according to the nature or essence they are so joined together that they
are one God, and the divine nature is common to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For Scripture has delivered to us a manifest distinction of
persons, the angel saying, among other things, to the Blessed Virgin, “The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow
you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God”
(Luke 1:35). And also in the baptism of Christ a voice is heard from heaven
concerning Christ, saying, “This is my beloved Son” (Math. 3:17).
The Holy Spirit also appeared in the form of a dove (John 1:32). And when the
Lord himself commanded the apostles to baptize, he commanded them to baptize “in
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).
Elsewhere in the Gospel he said: “The Father will send the Holy Spirit in
my name” (John 14:26), and again he said: “When the Counselor comes,
whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds
from the Father, he will bear witness to me,” etc. (John 15:26). In
short, we receive the Apostles’ Creed because it delivers to us the true faith.
HERESIES. Therefore we condemn the Jews and Mohammedans,
and all those who blaspheme that sacred and adorable Trinity. We also condemn
all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name
only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate
to another in the Trinity, and that their is something unequal in it, a greater
or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different
with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son
and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as
the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata,
Aetius, Macedonius, Anthropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought.
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