Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

From the preceding Question it is clear that various heretics have shamefully erred concerning the equality of the three divine persons: but of all, Arius wandered from the truth most disastrously, who had many forerunners and followers of his error. That this may appear more evidently

Note 1. Tertullian above all carried the torch of the Arian error; for he judged that the Word of God was then begotten by the Father, and was made the Son, when He fashioned all created things out of nothing, and he used this very manner of speech. Thus he testifies in cap. 7. Contra Praxeam:

"This is," he says, "the perfect nativity of the Word (by which, to be sure, He brought forth the Word itself in its own species and adornment, when He said: let there be light), while it proceeds from God, being fashioned by Him first for His thought under the name Sophia: the Lord founded me at the beginning of His ways; then begotten unto effect; when He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him. Thence making him equal to Himself, of whom, by proceeding, the Son was made first-begotten, as begotten before all things and only-begotten, as alone properly begotten of God from the womb of His own heart.

He builds up things no less false, indeed even more absurd, against the eternity of the Son and His equality in lib. Contra Hermogenem cap. 3., where he asserts that God was indeed from eternity, and always God, yet was not always Father:

"The Father," he says, "God and Judge: He is God, yet not the same Father and Judge always, because He could always be God, but never Father before the Son, nor Judge before the offense; there was, moreover, a time when both the offense and the Son did not exist, which would make the Lord Judge and Father.

These words contain the same error which Arius afterwards disseminated, which St. Athanasius demonstrates from his book, which he entitled Thalia, in the book De Synodis:

"He who lacks a beginning," Arius used to say, "constituted the Son as the beginning of the things that were made, and brought him forth and adopted him for himself as his own Son; he has nothing of God according to the hypostasis of his property, for he is not equal, nor even consubstantial. The Father is alien to the Son according to substance, since He is without beginning. Understand that the Monad was at the beginning, namely the Father: but the Binary, namely the Son and the Holy Spirit, did not exist before it came to be; indeed, with the Son not existing, the Father is God; finally, when the Son was not, he came to be by the Father's will, etc.

Note 2. That Arius, born in Libya, namely that part which borders on Egypt, because he was a participant in the Meletian schism, was first cut off from communion by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, as Baronius proves from the acts of the same Peter the Martyr, at the year 301., but afterwards reconciled to the Church, was made a deacon by the same Peter. But when he had again returned to the schism, he was again deprived of communion. Nay more, Peter, arrested in the persecution of Maximinus, while he was in chains, learned from Christ that Arius was a desperate case; wherefore he warned Achillas and Alexander, whom he knew by divine revelation to be destined as his successors, never to receive Arius into communion anywhere. Nevertheless, when he had feigned repentance, under Bishop Alexander he was made a priest, and was appointed curate of a certain Church, or Parish, named Bauculis, in the city of Alexandria. But when that Alexander, disputing in a certain assembly of Clerics about the mystery of the Trinity, explained more subtly in what manner the Unity was in the Trinity, Arius began to contend against him and to impute the Sabellian error to him. Hence it came about that around the year 317., as Orosius notes in lib. 7. C. 28., he began to disseminate and defend his heresy. At first there adhered to him seven Priests, twelve Deacons, one Bishop, namely the second of Pentapolis, as well as seven hundred virgins, as Epiphanius teaches in Heresy 69., all of whom Alexander cast out of the Church. Thence he wrote encyclical Letters to each of the Bishops, seventy in number, upon receiving which, the Bishops, each according to his own talent and character, replied variously. Some approving the deed, and urging him to persevere in it; others, on the contrary, began openly to profess themselves patrons of Arius, and to admonish him to receive the ejected back into favor, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia, to whom at length Eusebius of Caesarea and Patrophilus of Scythopolis adhered, who, convening Synods, restored Arius in full, as Sozomenus narrates in lib. 1. cap. 15.

Hence it came to pass that the fire kindled in the East by the continual bellows of altercations and wranglings took on greater growth day by day, and already the Christian Religion itself and the most sacred mysteries of the faith had come into contempt and mockery among the Gentiles, and the same were publicly traduced through the stages and theatres, as Eusebius reports in lib. 2. De Vita Constantini.

To settle these dissensions, the Emperor Constantine, first by letters sent to Alexander and Arius through Hosius, Bishop of Corduba in the Spains, urged them to concord. When Hosius accomplished nothing by these, he convened a Synod at Alexandria, as he had in his instructions, against the new heretics springing up. But when no hope of recovering peace and concord seemed to remain, Constantine, sending letters to the Bishops everywhere, convened the first Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea in Bithynia in the year of Christ 325., at which 318 Bishops gathered, and in which Arius was condemned, his error proscribed, and a profession of faith was published, by which the Son is asserted to be Consubstantial with the Father.

Note 3. That the heresy condemned in the Synod of Nicaea, and recanted by Arius and his disciples, gradually gathering strength, was spread far and wide not only through the spaces of regions and in the number of men, but was also divided into various sects and factions, and above all into three factions: the first of which was that of the Anomoeans, who openly said that the Son was a creature, and in no way like the Father, much less equal and co-equal; which was the very heresy of Arius himself: the second, that of the Semiarians, who by no means asserted that the Son was consubstantial with the Father, but only like Him in substance: the third, finally, lying between the two, was that of some who held that the Son was neither consubstantial, nor like in substance, but only like, and who either denied that He was a creature from the order of the rest, or did not dare to profess it openly, as Epiphanius, Athanasius, Hilarius, etc. report. Or, as Rufinus writes in lib. 1. Historiae cap. 25., this triple division of the Arian sect was marked by a triple and diverse name: for some were Eunomians and Anomoeans, who made the Son like in nothing at all; others, Arians, who said He was like by the largesse of grace, not by property of nature; the rest, Macedonians, who asserted Him like in all things; these Macedonians were also called Pneumatomachi, that is, impugners of the Holy Spirit, because they denied His divinity, and asserted that He was a pure creature. Two things, therefore, must chiefly be established in this Question, namely, the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit must be proved, and their consubstantiality with the Father must be defended; therefore let it be

First conclusion. — The Son is truly consubstantial with the Father and true God.

This is of faith, determined in various Councils and expressed in all the Catholic professions of faith, and in the first place all the testimonies of the Old and New Testament set out in the preceding Question for proving the plurality of persons in God prove it.

It is proved, moreover, by manifest oracles of the New Testament, the first of which is that celebrated confession of Peter, Matth. 16. Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God; for by asserting Him to be the Son of the living God, he professed Him to be the natural Son of God.

Add. that that divine Son is also elsewhere called the Only-begotten, Ioannis 3., and the Proper, ad Rom. 8.: but if He were only the adopted Son of God, as the Arians replied, He would be called neither only-begotten nor proper; for many are the adopted sons: moreover, if Peter had pronounced Christ to be only the adopted Son of God, there would be no reason why his confession should be preferred to the others, and why he should be proclaimed blessed by Christ on account of it; for those who thought Him to be Elias, or one of the Prophets, also confessed the adopted Son of God; Peter, therefore, must have acknowledged Him to be truly the natural Son; but if Christ is the natural Son of God, He must necessarily be in the same nature, that is, of the same nature with His principle; for in any other nature He could be nothing but adopted.

It is confirmed. from the fact that Christ Himself testified on many occasions that He is the true and natural Son of God: whence in Ioannis 19. they accused Him of having made, or proclaimed, Himself the Son of God: They said: We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God. Whence Ioann. 5.: The Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He did not only break the Sabbath, but also said God was His Father, making Himself equal to God: but Christ nowhere excused Himself for having said He was God, or the Son of God: nay, in that very chapter He adds: Amen I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing: for whatsoever He does, these the Son also does in like manner. By which words He not only does not answer the Jews as slanderers, but rather again asserts Himself to be the Son of God, and to have the same operation and power with the Father.

The Arians reply: that Christ excused Himself before the Jews who wished to stone Him, because He had said He was the Son of God; for when the Jews had said, Ioann. 10.: For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God, He excuses Himself by that testimony of Scripture: I said: you are gods, whence He inferred: If He called them gods to whom the word of God was made, namely the Prophets and the Patriarchs, why with a stronger right is He not called the Son of God, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? By which argument Christ names Himself the Son of God in the same way as the just and the Prophets; and so He proved Himself to be only the adopted Son.

But such was not Christ's reasoning, as Hilarius noted very well in 7. De Trinit.; rather He argued from the lesser to the greater in this way: if the Just and the Prophets can be called sons of God, how much more He whom the Father sanctified in a peculiar manner in the unity of the divine person, that is, through the humanity assumed by the Word? Chrysostom adds that Christ indeed first answered these things to the Jews, so that He might blunt their calumny verbally by saying: in vain you say that I have blasphemed by calling myself the Son of God, since the same name is given to those to whom the word of God was made, whom you nevertheless hold to be just and holy men: but once the calumny was repulsed, He afterwards showed by His works that He was not only the adopted Son, but also true God, in these words: *If I do not the works

of my Father, believe me not, that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in me*.

Add. that the Jews always remained in the same opinion, that He had made Himself equal to God; for the Evangelist adds: They sought to apprehend Him, certainly for the same cause for which they earlier wanted to stone Him; and they would without doubt have laid aside that intention, if they had judged that He was only asserting Himself to be an adopted son, since this appellation is attributed by Scripture to any just man.

It is confirmed 2. The true Son is the same as the natural Son: but Christ is called the true Son of God in 1. Ioann. last, That we may be in his true Son, this is the true God: therefore He is the natural Son. Then Moses, as a just and holy man, was the adopted son of God; and yet Paul ad Hebraeos 8. calls him a servant in comparison to Christ, whom he names the Son: Moses indeed, he says, was faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ as the Son in his own house: therefore Christ was not the Son of God by reason of adoption and justification, but by reason of eternal and natural generation. Finally, the Angels, on account of their eminent holiness, are sometimes called sons of God in the old Testament: but Christ is called the Son for a different reason than the Angel: For to which of the Angels, says Paul ad Hebraeos 1., did he at any time say: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? Which, however, was said to Christ. It is, therefore, a consequence that He is the true and natural Son, born by proper generation.

Proof 2. From that passage of Ioannis 10. I and the Father are one; for that word, One, in the neuter gender, without another substantive noun, signifies the same as one being; and of one being there is a single essence. Since, therefore, the Father and the Son are not one by accident, because God is incapable of accident, as also of change; nor are they one by relation — nay, they are distinguished personally and really by relations — St. Augustine rightly infers, in book De Trinitate chapter 2., that they are one in substance.

The Arians reply, both the old and the new, namely the Transylvanians, that the Father and the Son are indeed one, not in essence or substance, but by consent of minds and unanimous concord of wills. And they confirm it from Ioann. 17., where Christ prays that all the faithful may be one, as thou, Father, in me and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: and again: I have given them the glory which thou gavest me, that they may be one, as we also are one: but the faithful among themselves and with Christ the Lord are not one in substance and essence, but in consent of faith and concord of charity: therefore, from the aforesaid oracle, the Father and the Son are not proved to be one in essence, but in concord of wills.

Against this the holy Fathers reply, as many as have written on the divine Trinity: first, that in the sacred letters, whenever several things are said to be one in such a way that it is not added what kind of one they are, the same nature and essence is signified, because, as the cited St. Augustine notes in cap. 3., one and being are convertible. One being, moreover, is the same as a single essence, which is the abstract of being, the foundation of which signification he takes from 1. ad Corinth. 6.: He who cleaves to a harlot is made one body; he did not say one absolutely, but one body: and again: He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; he does not say one simpliciter, but one Spirit: nor will any place be found in which several things are said to be simpliciter one, without explaining what kind of one they are, unless they are one in substance and essence. Nor does it matter that in the same place it is said of the faithful that they may be one, without adding what kind of one, for it is sufficiently understood that that unity and identity is only through consent and mutual concord, both with one another and with God, when it is said: That they all may be one, and that they also may be one in us: for it is openly certain that the faithful cannot be one with one another by unity of essence, nor with God; whence this unity cannot be understood of the unity of essence, as the unity of Christ with the Father must be understood.

Add. that in that very context Christ wished to prove that He had the same power with the Father, and that therefore no one could snatch the sheep out of His hand, because He and the Father are one, and no one can snatch from the hand of the Father: whence it necessarily follows that they are of one and the same nature and will. Thus reason St. Chrysostom Ioann. 60., Hilarius lib. 7. De Trin., Ambrose lib. 3. De Spiritu Sancto, cap. 18., Augustinus Tract. 18. in Ioannem. And they confirm it from the fact that, if Christ the Lord had meant not one in power, but only one in concord, He could not have proved from that that no one could snatch the sheep out of His hand, unless the unity of essence constituted it.

Proof 3. From that passage of prima Ioannis 5.: There are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one: and there are three who give testimony on earth: the spirit, the water and the Blood, and these three are one. By which words St. John signifies that there are three witnesses in heaven, not indeed Angels — for they are more than three — but divine witnesses, namely the Persons of the Trinity, who are one, that is, one Divinity, essence and substance, as all the holy Fathers interpret.

The Arians reply: First, that those words There are three who give testimony in heaven are read by St. Jerome alone.

But this is an open lie, for Pope Higinius in Epist. 1., and Cyprianus in lib. De Unitate Ecclesiae, etc. also read it so.

They reply 2. That in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are said to be one by St. John, as the Spirit, the Water and the Blood: but these three are not one in essence, but only in testimony, because they testify the same thing, namely, that Christ the Lord endured the torments not by natural and human, but by divine power: the Spirit indeed, because, crying out strongly after so many tortures, He expired; the Water likewise and the Blood, which flowed from His side when He was already dead; wherefore the Centurion, seeing and hearing these things, rightly exclaimed, Marci 15.: Indeed this man was the Son of God. Therefore also the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are only one by unity of testimony, and not one by unity of substance and essence.

I answer 1. That that phrase, and these three are one, when the discourse is about the Spirit, the Water and the Blood, is not read in some exemplars. Second, that in the Greek idiom it is not read simpliciter, and these three are one, but and these three are in one, namely in one testimony; but of the three heavenly witnesses it is read simpliciter, these three are one, by which it is signified that they are one by unity of essence and substance.

Proof 4. From all those texts of Sacred Scripture in which the divinity of the Son is expressly set forth, such as Ioannis 1.: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, whence St. Ambrose, lib. 1. De Fide Trinitatis: Our Fisherman excluded all heresies in these four or five words; for what was in the beginning is not included in time, is not preceded in the beginning: therefore let Arius hold his peace, who denies that the Son is coeternal with the Father. But what was with God is not confounded by commixture; rather it is distinguished by the solid perfection of the abiding God with the Father, so that Sabellius and Photinus, who acknowledged no distinction among the divine persons, may be struck silent. But if the Word was God of sempiternal divinity, in the Father and the Son there is inseparable unity and consubstantiality, so that Eudoxius and Eunomius blush: behold how within one text he rightly concluded all, so as to render them incapable of fraud, although they were useless against captiousness.

It is confirmed. from that text of Isaiah 45.: They shall adore thee, and shall make supplication to thee; only in thee is God, and there is no God besides thee; truly thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Saviour: by which the divinity of Christ is openly signified. Secondly, from that text of Baruch 3.: This is our God, and no other shall be accounted of in comparison of him; he adds, however: After this he was seen upon earth, etc. who is over all things, God blessed for ever. We shall bring forth in passing many other contexts of Scripture hinting at the divinity of the Son in the course of this Work.

Since, however, the Arians shamelessly boasted that none of the Fathers had remembered the divinity and consubstantiality of the Son before the controversy arose, it is worthwhile to bring forward some Fathers of the nascent Church who professed the divinity and consubstantiality of the three divine Persons: these are chiefly Clemens Romanus, lib. 8. Constit. Apostol., Ignatius in the Epistola ad Antiochenos, ad Philadelphos, ad Philippenses, Dionysius Areopagita, lib. De mystica Theologia cap. 2. and lib. De divinis Nominibus cap. 1., Iustinus, lib. De Fide and in the Apologia ad Antonium and in the Dialogo cum Tryphone., Irenaeus, lib. 3. c. 8. 9. 16. 19. 20. and lib. 1. cap. 11., Clemens Alexandrinus, lib. 1. Paedag. cap. 6. and lib. ult. cap. ult., Tertullianus, lib. Contra Praxeum, Cyprianus, lib. 2. ad Quirinum cap. 6., and other orthodox writers of the earlier centuries before the Council of Nicaea: after whom so many Doctors wrote for this truth that it would be long and useless to enumerate them.

The Arians object first the various contexts of sacred Scripture in which the divine Son is said to be created and a creature: thus Proverbiorum 8. we read in Greek of Wisdom, The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways in his works; similarly, Colossians cap. 1. Christ is called the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, that is, the first and most excellent of all creatures, as the Arians interpret it; therefore he is not truly God, nor consubstantial with the eternal Father.

I deny the consequence. and to the first context I answer 1. that the Greek version in this place does not seem to agree with the Hebrew text, which in place of "He created" has "He possessed me", as our Vulgate expresses it: But between possession (says Jerome, Epist. 139., in which he treats the same place) and creation there is much difference; for possession signifies that the Son was always in the Father and the Father in the Son: but creation is the beginning of the condition of him who previously was not: hence Basil of Seleucia, Orat. 1. De Adamo in Paradisum translato, says: Man was made the possessor of those things of which he had already been the creator.

I answer secondly. that since in Christ there are two natures, namely the human and the divine, in a certain

Certain things are attributed to him according to one nature which do not belong to the other; and so according to the divine nature he is truly the uncreated Wisdom, but according to the human he can be called the created Wisdom, as very many holy Fathers interpret, especially Athanasius, Orat. 3., where, treating this passage, The Lord created me, he says: We must not so think that the whole Word is by its own nature a creature; but that he put on a body that is a creature, and that for our sake he was created by God.

Or, as Ambrose says, lib. 3. De Fide cap. 5.: The Arians, like Jewish tavern-keepers, mix water with wine, because they confound the divine and the human generation, referring to the divinity what was said of the flesh. For this reason St. Augustine lib. 1. De Trinitate, cap. 11. commends this rule for understanding the Scriptures concerning the Son of God, that we should distinguish what in them sounds according to the form of God, in which he is equal to the Father, and what according to the form of the servant, which he received from the Father.

Similarly I answer to the 2. context, that Christ, as incarnate Wisdom, is called the firstborn, because he was beforehand destined by God, for all things are on account of Christ; and his incarnation was, as it were, the motive for God to fashion man and the world.

They object 2. those texts of Scripture in which the Son is said to be inferior to and subject to the Father, such as Ioannis 14.: The Father is greater than I. And Matth. ultimo: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth: and ad Philippenses 1.: Made obedient unto death: therefore he was not truly equal to the Father in divinity, authority and power.

I answer 1. That here all these things are indeed true according to the assumed humanity, but not according to the divinity, or, as St. Athanasius speaks in the Creed, Equal to the Father according to Divinity, etc. For in putting on humanity he also put on servitude: whence after the Apostle had said, He did not think it robbery to be equal to God, he adds: He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, etc. And in this way it can be verified that he was subject to the Father and that authority in heaven and in earth was given to him, which he did not claim for himself by right of human nativity.

I answer 2. that the Son is also said by some Fathers to be less than the Father according to divinity, namely inasmuch as he has a principle from the Father, who is therefore called greater because he lacks a principle: thus St. Hilary, although he explains the aforementioned passage of the assumed human nature in 9. lib. De Trinit., nevertheless also interprets it of the divinity, saying: Therefore the Father is greater than the Son, and plainly greater, to whom he gives as much being as he himself is: or, as Sabadius more briefly has it, lib. Contra Arianos: The Father, he says, is greater than I, rightly greater, because he alone is here the author without an author. But St. Augustine explains the matter most clearly of all, lib. De Fide et Symbolo, saying that Christ said these things partly on account of the administration of the assumed man; partly because the Son owes to the Father what he is, owing this also to the Father, that he is equal or like to the same Father: but the Father owes to no one whatever he is.

You will object 3. True divinity does not suffer a defect of knowledge: but in the Son such a defect of knowledge and ignorance is found; as is evident from that text of Mark 15., where Christ, speaking of the day of judgment: But of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the Angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.

I answer 1. That St. Ambrose, lib. 5. De Fide cap. T., believed that the codices of the Gospel had been falsified by the Arians, because that phrase, "nor the Son", is absent from the ancient copies; Jerome also, in the Commentario ad cap. 21. Matthaei, says that in certain Latin codices "nor the Son" was added, although it is not found in the Greek exemplars and especially in those of Adamantius and Pierius.

Secondly I say that this restriction of knowledge in the Son is to be understood of him according to the humanity specifically, not reduplicatively, that is, not denying that the humanity of Christ knew the aforesaid day, but that he did not know it with human knowledge; for he did not know it except through knowledge divinely infused, or through revelation: whence Athanasius, Orat. 3., where he at length weighs this oracle, says:

It is manifest that he knows the end of all these things, inasmuch as he is the Word; but inasmuch as he is man, he is ignorant, for it is proper to man to be ignorant, and especially of such things: but this is peculiar to the kindness of our Saviour: for after he was made man, he was not ashamed, on account of the flesh, to say, I do not know, so as to show that he, who as God knows, does not know carnally.

So likewise very many holy Fathers think, especially Hilary, Augustine, etc.

They object 1. the various opinions of the holy Fathers; first of all St. Ignatius' Epistola ad Magnesianos, where he says of Christ: He announced his one and only true God as his Father: therefore, they say, the Father alone is the true God, not so the Son. Secondly, the Epistola ad Tharsenses, where he likewise says of Christ: He is not that one who is God over all things, but his Son. Thirdly, the same author's Epistola ad Philippenses, where he proves that the Father is one God by that text of Deuteronomy 6.: The Lord thy God is one God, and about the middle he introduces Christ speaking with Satan at the time of the temptation in these words: I know him, namely God, I acknowledge one only, to whom I do not deny service, from whom thou, Apostate, wast made; I am not Antitheus, that is, contrary to God, I confess his eminence. From which the Arians gather that the Father alone is God, to whom service is due.

I answer. that by these and other similar words of Ignatius the other persons are not excluded by him from the fellowship of Divinity with the Father; nay, he himself openly affirms the Divinity of the Son in the cited Epistola ad Tharsenses; for he adds of Christ: How then is such a one a pure man, having at last from Mary the beginning of his existence, and not rather God the Word and the only-begotten Son, of whom it was said: in the beginning was the Word? Whence also in the earlier words Ignatius deliberately did not say: because he is not God over all things, but because he is not that one who is God over all things; so that the pronoun "that one" designated the person of the Son distinct from the Father, who is therefore especially called over all things, because he is doubtless the fount of all Divinity. We shall solve the other cavils and objections of the Arians in the course of this Treatise.

Second conclusion. — The Holy Spirit is true God, and therefore consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

This is inferred from the preceding conclusion, and is specially proved by those texts of Scripture, first those by which it is commanded that baptism be conferred, In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: Matth. ultimo, and Titus 3.: He saved us by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Spirit: from which St. Gregory of Nazianzus gathers: If the Holy Spirit is not God to be adored, how does he make me God through baptism? As if he would say: if I am sanctified through baptism and, by the invocation of the Holy Spirit, am made God by participation of divine holiness: therefore he is God to be adored, because no one can remit sins, nor sanctify, except God alone.

Secondly, Acts 5. Peter thus addresses Ananias: Why hath Satan tempted thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? soon after he declares to whom he had lied: Thou hast not lied to men, but to God, where Epiphanius, Heresy 74.: Therefore God is from God, and the Holy Spirit, he says, is God, to whom they lied who had embezzled from the price of the field.

Proof 2. To have a temple and to be the beatitude of a rational creature, and its ultimate end, belongs to God alone: but these things are attributed in Scripture to the Holy Spirit; for of the first it is said 1. ad Corinth. 6.: Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? And of the other, 1. Peter 1.: the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, on whom the Angels desire to look. But he on whom the Angels desire to look is their Beatitude and ultimate end: therefore, etc.

Thirdly. He is truly God to whom the operations and properties of Divinity belong: but all those belong to the Holy Spirit: for first, it is a property of Divinity to be everywhere; but at Sapientiae primo: The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world. Secondly, creation is the work of God alone: but to the Holy Spirit is attributed Psalm. 13.: Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created: Judith. 16.: Thou sentest thy Spirit and they were created, etc. Thirdly, to raise up and quicken the dead is an operation proper to God, as is evident from that text of Ioannis 5.: As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth, so the Son quickeneth whom he will: but this power belongs to the Holy Spirit, for as St. Paulus speaks, Rom. 8.: He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Finally, it belongs to God alone to foretell and announce future things through the Prophets: but from 2. Peter 1. cap.: Holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit: therefore the Holy Spirit is true God, since indeed he has operations proper to God; not by ministry alone, as the Macedonians once said, but by authority; for Paul says, 1. ad Corinth. 10.: All these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will. Whence it must be inferred with St. Fulgentius, lib. 3. Ad Trasimundum cap. 25.:

Let it be said therefore, he says, if he who is not God could fix the power of the heavens: if he who is not God can sanctify in the regeneration of baptism: if he who is not God can bestow Charity: if he who is not God can dwell in believers: if he who is not God can give grace: if he who is not God can have the members of Christ as a temple; then the Holy Spirit will worthily be denied to be God... But if these things were never possible to a creature, and are found in the Holy Spirit, to whom, however, they belong to God alone, we must not say that he is naturally different from the Father and the Son, whom we cannot find different in the power of works, and so from the unity of the work the unity of power is to be acknowledged.

The Macedonians object: First, that text of John: All things were made by him, namely by the Word: therefore the Holy Spirit also was made by him. Secondly, that text of Rom. 8.: The Spirit asketh for us: but if he were God, he would not ask, but would give: therefore he is not true God. Thirdly, Ioann. 16.: Whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak, and he shall announce to you: but he who must hear and be instructed, so as to speak to others, is not God: therefore, etc.

I answer to the first. with Nazianzen, Orat. 5. on Theology, that not all things were made through the Word, but whatsoever things were made; and that the Holy Spirit is outside the order of those things which were made, for otherwise the Father also would have been made through the Word.

To the second I say with St. Augustine, Epistle 121., that Paul asserts that the Holy Spirit asketh for us, because he makes us ask, aiding our infirmity with his graces and helps, so that we may ask: whence Paul, Galatians 4.: God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father.

To the third I say with St. Basil, lib. 1. Contra Eunomium, that the Holy Spirit hears from the Father and the Son those things which he speaks and announces, not through instruction and a discipline begged from one wiser and more learned, but through the communication of that very essence and divine knowledge which he received from the Father and the Son through eternal procession.