confirmation in particular, it resolves and decrees, that it must discuss and treat of the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, and also, as regards reformation, of the other matters which pertain to the more easy and convenient residence of prelates. And it admonishes and exhorts all the fathers, that, meanwhile, after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, they give themselves to fastings and prayers, as far at least as human weakness will permit, that so God, who is blessed for evermore, being at length appeased, may deign to bring back the hearts of men to the acknowledgement of His own true faith, to the unity of holy mother Church, and to the rule of living righteously.
SESSION THE THIRTEENTH,
Being the third under the Sovereign Pontiff Julius III., celebrated on the eleventh day of October, 1551.
DECREE TOUCHING THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.
The sacred and holy, œcumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same legate and nuncios of the Apostolic See presiding therein,—although it was unto this end that it assembled, not without the special guidance and governance of the Holy Ghost [to wit], that it might set forth the true and ancient doctrine touching faith and the sacraments, and that it might provide a remedy for all the heresies, and the other most grievous troubles with which the Church of God is now most miserably agitated, and rent into many and various parts; yet, even from the outset, this especially has been the object of its desires, that it might pluck up by the roots those tares[1] of execrable errors and schisms, which the enemy hath, in these our calamitous times, sown in the doctrine of the faith, in the use and worship of the sacred and holy Eucharist, which our Saviour, notwithstanding, left in His Church as a symbol of that unity and charity in which He would fain have all Christians be mutually joined and united together. Wherefore, this same sacred and holy synod, here delivering, on this venerable and divine sacrament of the
- ↑ Matt. xiii. 28, 30.
