Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

That the third Person in the divine Trinity is called the Holy Spirit by a peculiar name is well known to all the faithful without further proof; For although, says St. Ambrose in the Symbolum cap. 1., the Father is spirit, and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy, and the Son is holy, yet only the third Person is called the Holy Spirit. St. Jerome gathers the propriety of this appellation in the 4. cap. ad Galatas from Ps. 50., where the Royal Psalmist, calling the three divine Persons Spirit, designates them by three peculiar titles; for that holy Doctor says:

He calls the Father the principal Spirit, because the Son is from the Father, and not the Father from the Son; but by the right Spirit of truth and justice he signifies Christ the Lord, because the Father has given all judgment to the Son, as David says: God, give Thy judgment to the King. Moreover, he calls the Holy Spirit by its open name.

But the New Testament declares this appellation, proper to the third divine Person, more clearly, in which as often as explicit mention is made of the divine Persons, so often the third is called the Holy Spirit: thus in the last chapter of Matthew, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; 1. Ioan.

5. There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit: whence St. Chrysostom, hom. 3. De Spiritu sancto, says: He is called spirit; for this is the first and proper appellation; and, as having a more evident meaning, it manifests the nature of the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the Theologians hold that this appellation of Spirit is derived rather from respiration, or spirative breath, than from spirituality and immortality: and indeed fittingly, on account of the singular analogy and likeness which its procession has with breath and the emission of vital spirit; for just as (to omit the rest) the breath itself takes its origin from the heart and the mouth, so, says St. Cyril, lib. 13. Thesauri cap. 3., the Holy Spirit comes forth from the very substance of God, just as the breath which comes forth from the human mouth: this Job openly teaches, saying cap. 33.: The Spirit of the Lord has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life. Therefore Christ the Lord, Ioan. 20., breathed upon the disciples and said: Receive the Holy Spirit: which the same Cyril weighs thus, lib. 9. cap. 14.: Therefore Christ breathed corporally, showing by this sign that just as the human spirit proceeds corporally from the human mouth, so from the divine substance, in a manner befitting the Deity, the spirit which is from it is poured forth.

But this deduction and appropriation of the name spirit, although it be proper, nevertheless does not agree with breath by an altogether complete, but by a very imperfect analogy; for, as St. Basil wisely observes in his single book De Spiritu sancto cap. 16.: Neither is the Word a significant stroke of air, brought forth through the instruments of the voice; nor is the Spirit a breath of the mouth flowing out from the respiratory parts; but the Spirit of the mouth of God is the Spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father.

Concerning which three things especially remain to be resolved here: 1. Whether He truly proceeds from the Father and the Son; 2. Whether, on the hypothesis that He did not proceed from the Son, He would be really distinguished from Him; 3. What are His properties and peculiar endowments.

That the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father is acknowledged by all who confess His divinity: for Eunomius, who asserted that He draws His origin from the Son alone, dreamed that He was not God, but a creature of the Word, just as the Word itself was a creature of the Father, as St. Basil relates and refutes in book 2, Contra Eunomium, saying: If anyone is raised from creatures to the comprehension of the substance, he understands that the Son is a creature of the Unbegotten (that is, of the Father); and the Paraclete, of the Only-begotten.

But a celebrated controversy still remains between the Greeks and the Latins concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit Himself from the Son; and in order that this contention may be resolved more evidently, first its origin must be uncovered. Therefore

Note 1. It is not yet ascertained who first asserted that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, as the deviating Greeks contend. For that some think the first assertor of this error was Macedonius, the impugner of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, scarcely has the appearance of truth; nor does that Epistle of Justinian, Bishop of Sicily, to Peter, Bishop of Antioch, which is found in the fifth General Council, lend anything to this assertion, in which it is read: Macedonius breathes the Holy Spirit from the Father alone; for certain most learned men think that in place of the word "breathes" one should read "separates," and this agrees very well with the heresy and opinion of Macedonius, who, since he denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, likewise denied His consubstantiality with the Father; and so tore Him away from the Father and separated Him.

Nevertheless, by the more common reckoning of the ecclesiastical historians, Theodoret is believed to be the first assertor of this error while he was still a Nestorian; for, writing on behalf of the Nestorians against the Anathematisms of Cyril of Alexandria, by which the errors of Nestorius were condemned, and attacking the ninth anathematism, by which Cyril had said that the Holy Spirit is proper to the Son, Theodoret replies thus: that the Spirit is proper to the Son if indeed, as Cyril said, He proceeds from the Father as being of the same nature, we likewise confess at the same time; but if he says that He has His existence and essence as from the Son, or through the Son, we say that this is blasphemous and impious. This certainly futile and interjected erroneous opinion of Theodoret, Cyril deliberately omitted in his response, so as to pursue the disputation he had undertaken, namely by showing that the Holy Spirit is proper to the Son, that is, not adventitious and bestowed upon Him by accident; the contrary of which Theodoret taught along with the Nestorians, for which reason he was anathematized by the Council of Ephesus: but shortly after, coming to his senses and abjuring his former opinion, he was received and proclaimed a Catholic with the greatest applause of all in the Council of Chalcedon. Wherefore this error concerning the procession of the Son from the Father alone seems at this very time to have been expunged and lulled to sleep.

Note 2. This error was renewed again around the year 766; for around this time our Annals relate that the Council of Gentilly was celebrated, near Paris, in which, besides the question of the cult to be shown to the sacred Images, this also was agitated: whether the Holy Spirit, just as He proceeds from the Father, so also proceeds from the Son, as Ado of Vienne hands down in the Chronicle: the cause of convoking this Synod was this, namely that when the Emperor Constantine Copronymus the Iconoclast had sent legates to Pippin, King of France, to obtain his confederation, it happened that while the Franks reproached the Greeks for their contempt of their images, the Greeks, on the contrary, reproached the Franks and the Latin Church for having added the word Filioque to the Creed; wherefore, lest these sown tares of impiety creep further, the Council decreed both: that the sacred Images are to be venerated, and that the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from the Father and the Son. But these seeds of error could not be so extirpated that they did not soon sprout again: for Ado himself relates that under the year 809 a Synod was celebrated at Aachen by the mandate of Charlemagne, in which there was action on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. This question a certain John, a monk, first stirred up at Jerusalem; for the settling of which, Barnharic, Bishop of Worms, and Jesse, Bishop of Amiens, and Adelhard, Abbot of the Monastery of Corbie, were sent to Rome to Pope Leo, etc., as the Annals of the Franks relate under the year 809. Moreover, John Pithoeus suspects that this John, the renewer of that error, was that most holy and most learned monk Damascene, who lived at Jerusalem around the year 730. Nor without reason: for he indeed seems to pronounce that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son in book 1, De Fide, chap. 11, where, after having several times said that He proceeds from the Father, toward the end of the chapter he adds: *But

we do not say that the Holy Spirit is from the Son, but we name Him the Spirit of the Son*: but how easily Damascene may be excused will appear below.

Nevertheless, it is to be noted in passing that in the Synod of Aachen there seems to have been action not so much on the procession itself from the Son, as on that addition of the four syllables Filioque to the Creed, as is gathered from the conference of Pope Leo with the legates of this Synod, as we shall say below.

Note 3. This error at length burst forth into open heresy with Photius as its author: for after St. Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, had been cast out, he was thrust into his see and place in the year 858; and being condemned for this cause by Nicholas I, the Supreme Pontiff, thenceforth raging against the Roman Church, he devised various calumnies against her, and cast up to her many heads of heresies, above all that the Latins asserted that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. For this man, says Hugh Eterianus, book 2, Against the Greeks, chap. 15, who after Theodoret, digging a well in the watery sand, burying not seeds but poisons, became the cause of the very enfeebled faith of Christians. For from that time almost all the Greeks conspired in that erroneous opinion, and held it as a kind of public token, by which they would tear the seamless tunic of Christ, withdrawing from the Latin Church, the firmest pillar of Catholic truth, by a nefarious schism, and even by various heresies. Thence it was attempted several times to recall them to the faith and unity of the Church: but, says Cardinal Hosius in the book De Communione sub utraque specie, So often were they led away from the faith by various and foreign doctrines, that as often as fourteen times they returned to the bosom of the Church, so often they abjured it. Wherefore we must strive to discuss this question most exactly, so that it may become more clearly known how senseless and how foul is the insanity of the Greeks. Therefore let it be

The single conclusion. — Truly the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

This is of faith, determined in various Councils, and defended by the holy Fathers of both the Eastern and the Western Church, to be set forth below.

It is gathered and proved 1. from Sacred Scripture. — First indeed from Ioan. cap. 16. v. 14., where Christ, promising the Apostles that He would send them the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, who would teach them all truth, says: He will glorify me, because he will receive of mine and will announce it to you. St. Ignatius weighs this text thus in the Epistola ad Ephesios, where he relates that the Son said to the Father: I have glorified you on earth; I have finished the work which you gave me to do; concerning the Holy Spirit he says: he will glorify me on earth, because he will receive of mine and will announce it to you: therefore each of the two glorifies Him from whom he also receives what he would do.

By these words Ignatius infers that, just as the Son glorified the Father because He receives from the Father by proceeding from Him, so the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son because He receives from Him by proceeding; for the word "will receive" signifies nothing other than procession: since in the Gospel it is never said that one divine Person gives to another, and that this one receives from that one, unless this one proceeds from that one; wherefore we nowhere read that the divine Father receives anything from the Son or from the Holy Spirit, nor the Son from the Holy Spirit, because neither does the Son proceed from the Holy Spirit, nor the Father from Him and the Son.

This St. Epiphanius clearly proves in the Ancoratus, where, after he had said at the beginning: The Holy Spirit is in the midst of the Father and the Son, from the Father and the Son, toward the middle he says:

But if Christ is believed, from the Father, to be God from God, and the Spirit from Christ, or from both, just as Christ says, who proceeds from the Father, and this one will receive of mine, etc. — It is confirmed from the following words in verse 15: All things which the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he will receive of mine: therefore the Son has from the Father not only the essence, but also the power of breathing, or the fecundity of producing the Holy Spirit. For all the substantial perfections of the Father are common to the Son Himself, with this one exception, that the Son is not the Father. Moreover, Christ therefore says that the Holy Spirit will receive from Him, because He Himself has all things which the Father has; for the particle "therefore" refers the cause why He said "he will receive of mine," namely because all things which He has etc. Whence St. Augustine: from whom the Son has it that He is God, from Him He has it of course that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from Him. And in book 3, De Fide, chap. 11: He who begot such a Son gave it by begetting, that the Holy Spirit should also proceed from Him. All of which Eugene IV lucidly explains in the Letters of Union: Since, he says, all things which are the Father's, the Father Himself gave to His only-begotten Son by begetting, except to be the Father; this very thing, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, the Son Himself has eternally, from Him from whom He was also eternally begotten. — To these things St. Damascene himself subscribes, whom the Greeks cast up to us for defending their error; for in book 1, De Fide, cap. 9 he says: All things which the Father has are the Son's, with this one exception, that He is not unbegotten. And chap. 11: In short, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are altogether one, except that the Father is not begotten, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit has proceeded. But if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, nor did this One breathe Him, He would be distinguished from the Father not only by generation, but also by the power of breathing: therefore, since St. Damascene affirms that the Father and the Son have all things in common except Paternity and Filiation, he undoubtedly thinks that they have the power of breathing in common, and so that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both.

Secondly, it is proved from those texts of Sacred Scripture in which the divine Son promises the Apostles that He will send them the Holy Spirit. Thus in the same chap. 16. v. 7.: If I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you. And earlier He had said in chap. 15.: When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father: but the mission of one Person from another cannot be understood, unless He substantially proceeds from Him by whom He is sent, especially when the Persons are of the same nature and substance, as the Greeks themselves affirm of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: therefore the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from the Son, since He is sent by Him. Whence Gregory the Great, Hom. 26. on the Gospels: The mission of the Holy Spirit, he says, is the procession itself, because He proceeds from the Father and the Son. With this Athanasius agrees in the Epist. to Serapion, where he says: The Son came in the name of the Father; but the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, since the Spirit has such an order and nature toward the Son as the Son has toward the Father, etc. As if he would say: because the Son proceeds from the Father, He is also sent by the Father; so also the Holy Spirit is sent by the Son, because He proceeds from Him.

The Greeks reply, that the Son Himself is sent by the Holy Spirit, from whom He nevertheless does not proceed: therefore from the fact that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Son it does not follow that He proceeds from Him. The antecedent is proved from that passage of Isaiah 48.: And now the Lord and His Spirit have sent me: and of Luke 4.: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me, and has sent me to evangelize the poor.

But I answer. Christ the Lord is indeed sent by the Holy Spirit insofar as, by reason of the humanity He assumed, He is inferior to the Holy Spirit, and so He can be sent by Him with an authoritative mission; and although the denomination of this mission can be attributed to the Word through the communication of idioms, in truth, however, Christ is not immediately and precisely sent by the Holy Spirit insofar as He is the uncreated Word; and so from this nothing is evinced against the present assertion.

Thirdly, it is proved from all those texts in which the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ and of the Son; thus Romans 8.: If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. And Galatians 4.: God sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts; but He could in no way be called the Spirit of the Son, unless He were referred to the Son; nor be referred to Him, unless He proceeded from Him: for if either the identity of nature and power, or another cause, sufficed for Him to be called the Spirit of the Son, by the same reason the Son could be called the Son of the Holy Spirit. It is confirmed: for just as the Son quidditatively regards the Father begetting, so also the Spirit regards the one breathing; whence, just as the Word cannot be called the Son of a Person who is not the Father, so the Holy Spirit could not have been called the Spirit of a Person who were not a spirator.

Proof 2. from the definitions and doctrine of the Councils. — First indeed this truth was defined in the Epistle which Cyril sent with the Council of Alexandria to Nestorius, and which was received and approved by the whole Council of Ephesus, which is the third General Council; and it is the tenth among the Epistles of Cyril, where it is said: The Spirit of truth is named, and Christ is the truth, and He is poured out from Him just as from God the Father; or as it was had in the ancient compilation of the Councils: He proceeds from Him as from the Father. And in general all the synodal Epistles of Cyril were approved by the Council of Chalcedon, which is the fourth General Council, in the fifth action, and by the sixth Synod, which is the third Constantinopolitan, in the seventeenth action; and the seventh General Council, namely Nicaea 2., in action 7., referring to and approving the Nicene Creed written in the first General Council, adds: Who proceeds from the Father and the Son: although that Council was for the most part of Greek Fathers. — Nor does it matter that in the Council of Florence, sess. 6. and 7., the later Greeks said that in their codices of this Council the particle Filioque is not read; for Andrew, the theologian of the Latin Church, replied learnedly and most aptly, and in that sess. 7. testified that he had a most ancient manuscript codex, in which that particle was contained. Moreover, an ancient historian was cited there as a witness of the same particle. — Nor likewise does it matter that St. Damascene, who flourished at the time of the aforesaid seventh Council, wrote, We do not say that the Holy Spirit is from the Son, as was related in the third Note. For it is probable either that he died before the celebration of the aforesaid Council, or that he wrote that book Ex Filio Spiritum sanctum non dicimus before it; the indication of which is that in his works he cites the Councils only up to the sixth. — This truth likewise has been defined in several Latin Councils; for first, Pope Agatho in Epist. 2., which is also of the Roman Synod, and is contained in the sixth General Synod, says: He proceeds from the Father and the Son; a passage which Cardinal Julian complained had been corrupted by the Greeks in that Disputation which he held against them in the Council of Florence. Nor is it a wonder that this Pontiff with his Roman Council so decreed, since Leo the Great, older than he by many years, in the Epistle to Turribius, Bishop of Astorga, chap. 1., says: He proceeded from both. — Moreover, under Pope Anastasius, in the year of Christ 400., the first Council of Toledo was celebrated, in which this truth is likewise defined in these words: We believe that the Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is neither the Father Himself nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son: and also in the third of Toledo under Pelagius II., in the year 589., where in the confession of faith set forth by 150 Fathers, Can. 3., it is said: Whoever does not believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, let him be anathema. The same is defined in the fourth Council of Toledo, chap. 1., and in the 8th, around the times of Martin I., and in the 11th under Adeodatus the Supreme Pontiff; all of which Councils were celebrated before the sixth General Synod. — We read the same truth also in the Council of Gotfeld, in the year 650., in Bede, book 4. of the English History, chap. 17., where the Fathers openly profess the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Finally, the Council of Gentilly was celebrated in the year 766., that of Aachen around the year 809., that of Worms under the year 860., and around the year 1090., in the time of Urban II., a Council was celebrated at Bari of Greeks and Latins, as St. Anselm is the authority, who himself was present at it, and the writer of the life of the same St. Anselm, book 1., narrates the whole matter more fully as an eyewitness. — Likewise the General Councils defined this same truth: the Lateran under Innocent III., chap. 1., with the Greeks also present and consenting to the same, as is clear from chap. 4. of the same; the Council of Lyons under Gregory X., in which, with the Greeks present and consenting, this truth was defined, and the Nicene Creed was sung three times in Greek and in Latin with that explanation, He proceeds from the Father and the Son: finally the Council of Florence, in the year 1438., after long and exact disputations on this matter between the Greek and Latin Fathers, at length it was defined that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as is clear in the Letters of Union, to which the Fathers, both Latin and Greek, subscribed. — But, as the minds of the Greeks are light and fickle, they did not remain long in faith and concord; but soon after relapsed into their former schism and their errors, and swallowed back their own vomit, by which they are still defiled. Nor is it a wonder, since in the very first-fruits of the Church there was a murmur of the Greeks against the Hebrews, of whom alone the Church then consisted; so that from this there would be a fatal presage that the Greeks, prone to division and contention, would divide the Church, the seamless tunic of Christ, by their lamentable schism.

Proof 3. from the Greek Fathers. — First indeed from the Symbol of St. Athanasius, in which we read: The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

The Greeks reply 1. that this Symbol is not of Athanasius.

But on the contrary, first, Gregory Nazianzen, in the Oration on the Praises of St. Athanasius, testifies that he published a perfect confession of faith, which he offered to the Emperor, and which the whole East and West venerates: He offers to the Emperor, he says, a truly royal and magnificent gift, namely a written confession against the new dogma (namely of the Arians); and after a few words: Moved, as it seems to me, by the authority of this confession, both the Westerners and whatever is vital in the East, etc. Then St. Augustine, in Psalm 120., recites the preceding verse under the name of Athanasius: Concerning this sun, he says, Father Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, spoke thus beautifully: The Son is from the Father alone, etc. He also makes mention of the same Symbol in other places, but with the name of Athanasius suppressed, as in 5. De Trinit., chap. 8., and in the Enchiridion, chap. 35., etc. By which it is established that in the time of St. Augustine it was doubtful to no one that this Symbol was published by St. Athanasius. Finally, Genebrardus, in book 3. De Trinit., and Nauclerus, in the Chronology, affirm that there exists a most ancient codex in the Monastery of St. Germain of Paris, in which it is asserted that Athanasius published the aforesaid Symbol at Trier, while, because of the pressing persecutions of the Arians, he lay hidden in a certain well.

They reply 2. that the particle "and from the Son" was added by the Latins.

But on the contrary 1. this phrase is read also in the Greek text of the Athanasian Symbol. Then in the Fourth Council of Toledo, celebrated in the year 633, and consequently before the schism of the Greeks, the same Symbol of Athanasius is reported with that phrase, and the Son: what reason would there have been then for making this addition, when as yet no public dispute was moved between the two Churches? Finally, which is the chief point, Athanasius himself teaches this same truth in many places, especially in Oration 1. Contra Arianos: For we do not, he says, introduce three principles or three Fathers, as the Marcionists do: since we do not bring three Suns into comparison; but one only Sun, and its splendor, and one only light from both. With which he compares the Father to the Sun, the Son to the splendor, and the Holy Spirit to the light, arising not only from the Sun, but from the Splendor.

And in the Epistle to Serapion ad Serapionem he speaks thus:

The Apostle commands us to avoid a heretical man after one or another correction, even if you should see some flying through the air with Elias, and with Peter and Moses treading the seas with dry foot, unless they profess the Holy Spirit to be God existing essentially from God the Son, just as we profess the Son to be God naturally begotten, existing essentially from God the Father; do not receive them.

Secondly, St. Basil, book 3. Contra Eunomium, says:

Why is it necessary that, if the Spirit is third in dignity and order, He should also be third in nature? For the rule of piety hands down that He is second after the Son in dignity, since He has His being from Him and depends entirely upon that cause; but that He is third in nature we have neither learned from the sacred Scriptures, nor is it possible to gather from the things said before.

Likewise Epiphanius, in Heresy 62.: From the same essence, he says, from the same truth, from the Father and the Son, with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit is always in substance: and in Heresy 69.: By which, he says, Christ the Lord showed the Father to be light, and the Son light, and the Holy Spirit light, and a fountain from a fountain, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Only-begotten, for rivers shall flow from His womb. Cyril of Alexandria also subscribes, not only in the ninth anathematism, but also in many places, especially in the book De recta fide ad Reginam, where toward the end he concludes: From the Father proceeds the Son, in all things equal and like unto Him. But the life-giving Spirit also proceeds through both. And book 11. on John cap. 27.: Coming forth, he says, from the very substance of God the Father (the Holy Spirit), but poured out upon the saints through the consubstantial Word, from whom He has, according to the emission, to be and to subsist. Which he declares more clearly in book 13. of the Treasury, cap. 1., saying: It is altogether necessary to confess that the Holy Spirit is from the substance of the Father and of the Son: and cap. 2.: But we believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son naturally and essentially, just as from the Father. Nazianzen explains this same truth admirably in Oration 37., where he compares the divine Trinity to three persons of the human race: namely, the Father to Adam, because the Father derived His origin from no Person, as Adam from no man; the Son to Eve, because Eve proceeded from the substance of Adam alone, as the Son from the Father alone; the Spirit to Seth, because he was born of Adam and Eve, as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. I pass over the opinions of the other Greek Fathers, which you will be able to read abundantly in the Council of Florence, as also in St. Thomas, Opusculum 1. Contra Graecorum errores, cap. 32., Hugh Eterianus, Petavius, and innumerable others, both more recent and more ancient, who have shown that the Greek Fathers assent to this truth.

It is proved fourthly. from the Latin Fathers. — First indeed St. Martial, Epist. 1. To the Burdigalenses cap. 10., says: The Holy Spirit, glorious in divine equality, proceeded ineffably from Him who begot, and from Him who was begotten: and so the Spirit, the Lord of the Lord, is proceeding from the Father and the Word. Tertullian favors this, book De Symbolo cap. 8.: The Spirit, he says, is third from God and the Son, just as the fruit is third from the root, coming from the shoot, and the river and the stream third from the fountain, and the apex of the ray third from the Sun. — Likewise Hilary, book 8. De Trinit., asserts that for the Spirit to receive from the Son is the same as to proceed from the Son, just as the Son receives and proceeds from the Father. Ambrose subscribes, book De Symbolo cap. 3.: But the Holy Spirit, he says, is truly a spirit, proceeding indeed from the Father and the Son, but He is not the Son Himself, because He is not begotten, nor the Father, because He proceeds from both: not begotten, not unbegotten, not made. But best and most subtly of all, St. Augustine taught this truth in many places, especially in book 4. De Trinit.: Nor can we say, he says, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, for not in vain is the same Spirit called the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. And in book 15., cap. 26., he inculcates this truth more often: But concerning the splendor from both, he says, it is thus taught, because the Son Himself said: He proceeds from the Father: and when He had risen from the dead and appeared to His disciples, He breathed upon them and said: receive the Holy Spirit, so that He might show that He also proceeds from Himself. It would be futile to summon other holy Latin Fathers to bear witness to this truth, for they are innumerable, and all to a man conspire to the same dogma.

Wherefore all the Greeks are to be blamed most of all, because they give no credence to so many and such most faithful witnesses of the divine truth, whom nevertheless the Fathers of the Fifth General Synod proclaim are to be heard above all others, professing so openly: We follow in all things the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory, Augustine, Theophilus, John of Constantinople, Cyril, Leo, Probus, and we receive all things which they have written concerning the right faith and the condemnation of heretics.

All these things were proved by the lamentable loss of the Eastern Church, by which God Himself seems to have cast His vote for the Latins: for from the time when the Greeks withdrew themselves from their communion because of these quarrels about the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the Greeks have always fallen into worse state; and that nation, once conspicuous in doctrine to the point of envy, celebrated in holiness to the point of miracle, mistress of the nations by empire, today mourns under the dire captivity of the Turks, and without King, without Prince, without Academies and Schools, bears the barbarous yoke of the Saracens; and, what is a wonder, Constantinople was stormed and the Greek Empire overthrown in the year 1452, on the 28th day of May, according to the more celebrated authors, on which day had fallen the Feast of Pentecost, sacred to the Holy Spirit, so that that might be verified which Christ said, Matth. 12.: Whoever shall have spoken blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

It is proved by theological reason. from the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 11. q. 1.:

He who has a perfect productive principle, before he is understood to have a product, can produce by that principle, namely when the principle is so perfect that it does not depend on a passive subject, nor can it be impeded by anything: but the Son has the will, by which He is the productive principle of adequate love, and He also has it as prior to the produced act of the will: therefore He can produce by it: therefore He produces it.

He proves the minor:

Generation and Spiration have a certain order between themselves, so that in some way generation is prior to spiration, and in that prior moment every divine perfection is communicated to the one begotten, insofar as it is not repugnant to him, and so too the will: therefore he then has the will as prior to the act of the will, because as yet no production is understood to have been made through the mode or act of the will.

It is confirmed. from the fact that if one had to doubt about the influence of the Father and of the Son in the production of the Holy Spirit, it would rather seem that one should doubt about the Father than about the Son, since the Father, in the production of His Son, already has an action adequate to Himself, if you consider natural reason; for His productive action of the Son is infinite, and consequently adequate to the principle; therefore it seems that He cannot have any other action at least adequate along with it; for that reason it seems that He cannot further be occupied, by a new infinite action, for a new production of another Person: but the Son has no productive action antecedent to the production of the Holy Spirit, nor can He have any other ad intra than spiration alone; and so if natural reason is considered, this spirative action would seem to be conceded to Him rather than to the Father, if it were to be attributed to one divine Person only.

The Greeks object first indeed the sacred Scripture, which as often as it commemorates the procession of the Holy Spirit, so often makes mention of the Father alone; thus Ioan. 15.: When the Paraclete shall have come, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. Therefore they deem that He proceeds from the Father alone.

I deny the consequence: for as St. Augustine notes, book 3. De Trinit., by these words the Son is not excluded, but the Father is expressed as the principal author, because indeed He is the principle without principle, to whom He refers everything that He Himself has. In this manner He said in Ioannis 7.: My doctrine is not mine, but His who sent me, the Father's; which Augustine weighs thus in tractate 29. on John: Because, he says, the Word cannot be the word of no one, but of someone, and He calls His own doctrine Himself, and not His own, because the Word is the Father's. For what is so much yours as yourself, and what is not so much yours as yourself, if you are someone's, what you are? And so the divine Son refers everything that He is back to the Father, and therefore attributes to Him that productive fecundity of the Holy Spirit which He received from the Father. Which St. Augustine, book 15. De Trinit. cap. 17., explains admirably, saying: Not in vain, he says, is it not said in this Trinity from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds, except God the Father; but I added principally for this reason, because the Holy Spirit is also found to proceed from the Son, but the Father gave this also to Him.

He answers 2. St. Anselm, in the book De Processione Spiritus sancti, maintains that in asserting the Father to be productive of the Holy Spirit, the Son is not on that account excluded, because the affirmation of one is not the negation of the other: indeed, he says, even if it were said openly: No one produces the Holy Spirit, except the Father; that expression would not on that account exclude the Son, since exclusive expressions added to one divine Person do not exclude the other Persons, unless the predicate be opposed to them relatively, as is clear from these words of Matth. 11.: No one knows the Son, except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son: by which, however, the Son is not excluded from knowledge of Himself, nor the Holy Spirit from knowledge of both.

They object 2. In the Council of Ephesus the Symbol of the Nestorians was read before the Fathers, in which it was expressly contained that the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son; and yet none of the Fathers protested, and so they all seem to have consented to this proposition.

I answer 1. An argument from negative authority, which nowhere avails much, concludes nothing here, since the silence of the judges was engaged with something other than that proposition; for the Council then did not wish to dispute ex professo about this question of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, because it had convened on account of another matter, namely about the one Person of Christ the Lord, and about His Divinity, whom the Virgin Mary brought forth. For the rest, the Council signified its opinion quite openly enough when it approved the doctrine of Cyril and condemned the contrary doctrine of the Nestorians and of Theodoret.

They object 3. Various authorities of the holy Fathers; first indeed of St. Dionysius, book De Divinis nominibus cap. 2., where he says: The Father alone is the supersubstantial fountain of the Deity. Secondly of Nazianzen, Orat. 21., where he says: All things which the Father has, the Son also has, except the cause: or as others translate, Except the causality: therefore the Son does not have from the Father that He should be the cause, or principle, of the Holy Spirit. Thirdly of Basil, Epist. 43. to Gregory of Nyssa, where he says: The Son has no communion with the Father according to His proper notion: but if the Son spirated, He would have active spiration as a notion common with the Father: therefore etc. Finally they bring forward Damascene, book 1. De Fide cap. 7. and 8., where he says: The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and rests in the Son: and a little below: We say the Holy Spirit is from the Father; we do not say from the Son: and again: The Holy Spirit is indeed from the Father, but not from the Son: therefore in reality the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son.

I deny the consequence, and to St. Dionysius I say that he therefore calls the Father the supersubstantial fountain, because He alone is the principle without principle; but the Son is like a river flowing from that very fountain, from whom, as also from the fountain, the pool is derived, namely the Holy Spirit. In which sense Epiphanius also, in Heresy 69., calls the Son a fountain from a fountain. To Nazianzen I say that he speaks of the causality by which the Father and the Son are mutually related, not of that by which they regard the Holy Spirit. To Basil I answer that he there speaks not of every notion of these two Persons, but of the proper notion of each, namely of Paternity and Filiation, according to which they have no communion at all; for Paternity and Innascibility belong to the Father alone, just as Filiation is proper to the Son alone. Finally, to Damascene I say that although St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 36. art. 2. ad 3., answers that *many of the Greeks followed in this

the Nestorian Theodoret, among whom was also Damascene*, nevertheless he can be interpreted benignly, as Bessarion expounded, Orat. pro unione cap. 6., namely that Damascene did not absolutely deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, but only dissented from the Catholics in his manner of speaking, thinking it safer to say through the Son than from the Son; for the preposition from seemed to him to denote the first cause not proceeding from another cause, the contrary of which the preposition through denoted, which without doubt has causal force.

FILIOQUE TO THE NICENE SYMBOL.**

It is more than certain that the addition of the particle Filioque to the Nicene Symbol was that which divided the two seas — not to say the hemispheres of the earth — and likewise both Churches, the Eastern and the Western, and furnished the Greeks with an occasion for withdrawing themselves from union with and obedience to the Roman Church.

For thus Marcus of Ephesus, the Greek spokesman, in the Council of Florence, when he had professed that the addition made to the Symbol was neither true nor suitable, added: Which assuredly is known to have been the principal cause of our schism and dissension; and below: The Roman Church had devised a dogma of its own, and on that account it is beyond doubt that it was the cause of dissolving our friendship and the beginning of our quarrels; whence Photius, who is held to have begun the Schism, in his Encyclical Letter to the patriarchal sees of the East, put forward this as the principal cause of his withdrawal from the Roman Church:

This, he says, is the sum and apex of evils: the sacred Symbol itself, which has irrefragable force and authority from all the synodical and ecumenical decrees, they did not hesitate (the Latins) to adulterate with certain spurious and false disputations... teaching anew that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone, but from the Son.

This tragedy arose because in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon the Fathers decreed that no one might be allowed to hand down a faith other than the Nicene, and those daring the contrary seem to be struck with anathema; but in the Nicene Symbol this particle Filioque is not found, nor anything equivalent; and so the Latins already seemed to have incurred the censure hurled by the Council of Ephesus. Wherefore two things especially are to be established in this Appendix, namely that that addition was legitimate, and the time at which it was first made is to be inquired into.

The first, the Fathers affirm — Greek as well as Latin — in the Council of Florence; for all subscribed to the Letters of Union published in the name of all by Eugene the Fourth, in which among other things these words are read: We define that the explanation of those words, Filioque, was lawfully and reasonably added to the Symbol for the sake of declaring the truth, and because of the necessity then impending. Hence no room for doubting this truth now remains. But for fuller persuasion, I urge thus: the addition would be illicit, either because it asserts something false, or because it was made to the Nicene Symbol contrary to the laws sanctioned by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon; or finally because it was published without the consent of both Churches, the Eastern and the Western: but none of these stands in the way. — Not the first, indeed, for from what has been said it is clear that the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from the Father and from the Son; and so the particle asserting this truth savors of no falsehood. — Nor the second; otherwise the very Greeks themselves would first of all be to blame, who so often changed their Symbols after the Nicene had been published; for Mark of Ephesus, who defended the Greek cause most obstinately of all in the Council of Florence, confesses toward its end that no little time, to be sure, had intervened between the first Council, from which that divine Nicene Symbol had been published, and the second, in which interval of time almost thirty other Symbols had been produced by particular and private Councils. Then the Fathers of the Councils of Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon would have to be condemned and struck by their own thunderbolt; for if, as the Greeks will, it is not lawful to add even a Word to the Nicene Symbol, why then did they themselves add more? For, as was objected to the Greeks in the Council of Florence, the particles 'of heaven and earth' are found in the Constantinopolitan Symbol, which are not read in the Ephesine and the Nicene: similarly 'of the substance' is found in the Nicene, but is not found in the Ephesine and the Constantinopolitan: likewise 'of the Virgin Mary' is in the Constantinopolitan, but not in the Ephesine and the Nicene: moreover it is certain that in the Nicene Symbol no more was pronounced about the Holy Spirit than this, 'and in the Holy Spirit'; but afterwards those words, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, were added by the Fathers of the Council of Constantinople; yet of these the Greeks do not complain: therefore they also complain unjustly about the addition of the particle Filioque. Finally, an equal has no command over an equal, nor can anyone bind the hands of his successor; and so the Council of Ephesus and of Chalcedon could not forbid future Councils, when opportunity was given and necessity urged, to hand down a new explanation and addition of the Symbol; for it is free for successors, as being equals, to explain the faith in another way and in other words, provided they are willing to add or take away nothing against the right faith. — Not finally the third: since, as the Latins demonstrated in the Council of Florence, that addition of the Filioque was approved by the Greeks before it was approved universally by the Roman Church, namely in the 7th general Synod, which was almost wholly of Greek Fathers. Add, that just as the Greeks themselves, when opportunities were given, celebrated many Councils with no Father of the Latin Church present, in which they determined several things concerning the faith, proscribed heresies, and framed Symbols; why could not the Latin Fathers in like manner add this addition of the Filioque to the Symbol, namely for the sake of explaining the faith? Moreover, the Roman Church is by no means bound to convoke the others, especially since in old times many Synods were celebrated with a diverse number of Fathers and approved, sometimes with the Latin Fathers absent.

The second doubt, namely at what time this addition was made, has not yet been sufficiently explored; for some will that the addition was made by the Roman Council under Damasus, which Stanislaus Socolovius infers in this way in cap. 1. of the annotation Censurae Orientalis Ecclesiae factae per Hieremiam Patriarcham Constantinopolitanum, where he says that when Damasus had summoned to Rome the Fathers of the Eastern Church gathered at Constantinople, that they might there celebrate a universal Council with the Latins, and since on account of various inconveniences it was not permitted to proceed thither, they sent their faith to the Roman Council, which Damasus approved together with the Roman Council, only that particle Filioque having been added

to the Symbol of faith published in that Council for the fuller explanation of the Nicene Symbol; which the Constantinopolitan Fathers again confirmed. This, however, he proves from the Letter of the Council to Damasus, and from the Symbol of Damasus, which is found in Jerome, where the aforesaid particle is added. But this opinion rests on little: both because in the aforesaid Letter of the Constantinopolitan Council there is not even a word about the addition of the particle Filioque; and because among the decrees of that Roman Council, which are contained in the 9th book of the Tripartitae historiae, cap. 16., nothing is decreed about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, but by Canon 16. only he is condemned who has denied that the Holy Spirit is from the Father. What, however, is brought forward from the Symbol of Damasus helps little: both because it is not certain whether that Symbol is truly Damasus's; moreover it is far different from the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan: but here the question is not raised where this truth was first defined, but where the particle Filioque was first added to the Nicene Symbol, which is sung in the Church.

One might suspect, not without foundation, that this addition was made by the Fathers of the first Council of Toledo, celebrated in the year of Christ 400.; for in the Confession of faith, which Idatius of Limoges indicates was published in this Synod, we read: that the Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is neither the Father Himself nor the Son, but proceeds from the Father and from the Son. Which again is constantly affirmed in the third Toledan Synod. But since that Confession of faith is far different from the Nicene Symbol, which is sung in the Church, one cannot conclude from that that this particle Filioque was added from that time to the Symbol about which the Greeks complained.

Wherefore I judge it better to say that this addition was made by certain particular Churches about the year of Christ 620., and from there was adopted by others, the Supreme Pontiff approving: which I gather first from the words of Andrew the Theologian, speaking in the name of the Latins in the Council of Florence, session 7.: With a very great Schism impending in Gaul and in the Spains, when the Filioque was already celebrated everywhere, it was necessary for the Roman Pontiff, amid the concourse of many Westerners of ample dignity and the great concord of a Council of Fathers, the Ex Filioque having been added, to illustrate the Symbol more fully. Then in the 8th Council of Toledo, in the year 653., the same Nicene Symbol is recited with this addition: We believe also in the Holy Spirit, the life-giver, proceeding from the Father and from the Son, to be adored and glorified with the Father and with the Son. Finally, an indication of this truth is that in the Synod of Gentilly the question of the present controversy was debated between the Greeks and the Latins, and, which is the chief point, in the 7th general Synod, action 7., the Symbol is recited with this addition; and so it is likely that this addition was made earlier.

You will say: The Master of the Sentences, lib. 1. dist. 11. cap. 2., asserts that Leo the Third, who sat about the year 796., gave a refusal to the orators of Charlemagne, who sought in his name, and also in that of the Council of Aachen, the addition and the celebration of the particle Filioque in the Mass: therefore this is a sign that this addition had not yet been approved by the Roman Church; for why should Leo be loath to concede this, if it had been approved and conceded so many years before by his predecessors? He refused, nevertheless, for, as Baronius relates, tom. 9., for the year 809., he answered the aforesaid orators: If I had been asked before it was sung in that way, it would not have been introduced; I would surely have answered: and immediately, confirming his counsel and his judgment, he adds:

Is it more salutary to believe, or perilous not to believe, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, as from the Father — Him who is known to be the Son, Wisdom, God, begotten of Wisdom, God, Truth, God, of Truth, God — and yet that both are one wisdom, one truth, essentially God; since nevertheless it is certain that this was not added to that same Symbol by the holy Fathers?

Moreover, the same Master of the Sentences affirms that the Pontiff, immediately upon the departure of the aforesaid orators, had the Constantinopolitan Symbol written out on two silver tablets, on the one indeed in Latin, on the other in Greek, in both cases without that addition Filioque: therefore it follows that at that very time this addition had not yet been legitimately made, nor approved by the Roman Church.

I answer, that Leo the Third indeed rightly did these things, because perhaps at that very time this addition was not yet read by the Roman Church in the sacrifice of the Mass, although in some particular Churches the custom had grown strong of reciting this particle Filioque, long since added to the Constantinopolitan Symbol, amid the solemnities of the Masses: he did not, however, on that account condemn the addition, but he did not approve that it be sung in the Mass without the prior ordinance of the Roman Church. Nor does it matter that he had the Symbol written out in that way without the aforesaid particle: for he did this in order that the memory of the whole Constantinopolitan Symbol might be preserved, which could have been obliterated by the new explanation of the Symbol; and in order that it might be clear that nothing contrary to antiquity was taught, but that the whole ancient faith was retained, with only explanations newly added.

Note 1. From the Doctor in 1. distinct. 11. quaest. 2. nu. 2.: Godfrey, Quodlib. 7. quaest. 4., judged this question useless and unworthy of a solution, because it supposes an impossibility, namely, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son; but such a supposition does not seem to be admissible on the part of the respondent, because from it he could be refuted and driven to concede contradictories, which would press the respondent exceedingly and lead him into error. But all the other Scholastics made so much of this question that they wove accurate and subtle disputations in its resolution; nor was their labor in vain. For just as other similar questions are usefully debated in the Schools — for example, whether, if God were not immutable, He would be eternal; whether, if man were not risible, he would be distinct from a horse — the first indeed for investigating whether immutability is the formal notion of eternity, the second for knowing the formal principle constituting man and distinguishing him from brutes, although those suppositions are impossible; so likewise, although the supposition made by us is impossible, yet because it conduces exceedingly to perceiving the formal notion distinguishing the Son from the Holy Spirit, therefore it ought to be judged neither superfluous nor self-contradictory. Add, that St. Augustine, lib. De Trinit. cap. 6., admits a similar impossible hypothesis, teaching that if the Father had not begotten the Son, nothing would prevent Him from being called unbegotten; for it is certain that the Father's not begetting the Son is altogether impossible; nevertheless from this impossible supposition St. Augustine rightly concludes that even if a Person in the divine were not generating, that Person would no less be unbegotten.

Note 2. From the same Doctor, ibidem, illative propositions are of two kinds: some are inferred through a first intrinsic predicate, others through an extrinsic locus. Of the former kind are those from which, through an intrinsic locus and an essential consequence, one thing follows from another; as from this, "a man exists," this follows intrinsically: "therefore he is rational," because rational is an intrinsic and essential predicate of man. Of the latter kind are those which are inferred from the other only by a consequence as it were accidental, yet necessary; thus from this, "a man exists," it follows only extrinsically, although necessarily: "therefore he is risible," because risibility is not of the primary intrinsic and essential notion of man, but is something extrinsic to his essential constitution. In the former hypothetical suppositions, it is certain that, the latter being removed, the removal of the former follows through an intrinsic locus; e.g., if Peter were not rational, the intrinsic consequence would follow that he is not a man: in the latter, however, however much the latter is removed, the removal of the former does not follow through an intrinsic locus; e.g., in this hypothesis, if man were not risible, it does not follow through an intrinsic locus that he is not a man, because, risibility being removed, the intrinsic and essential constitutive principles of man still remain, namely, animal and rational. Whence, to the point, this proposition, "the Son is the Spirator," is said to be of the latter kind with respect to the constitution of the Son, and consequently with respect to His distinction from any other, because, active spiration being removed, the adequate constitutive principle of the Son still remains, namely, the essence and filiation.

Note 3. This question gave occasion to the Angelic Doctor, 1. p. quaest. 36. art. 2. For in order to prove against the Greeks that the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from the Son, he used especially this reason, namely, that the Holy Spirit would not be really distinguished from the Son, if He truly did not proceed from Him. Weighing this reason in the cited question, the Doctor shows it to be weak, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit would be really distinguished from the Son no less even if He truly did not proceed from Him: for two relations are to be distinguished in the Son, namely, filiation and active spiration, formally, or at least modally, distinct from each other; by the former of which the Son is constituted not only in the notion of divine Son, but also in the notion of a divine Person altogether complete and perfect: the latter, however, results as it were from the former and supposes it; and so it supposes also the Person of the Son altogether complete and distinct from every other Person. That this may appear more evident, let it be

The single conclusion. — Even if per impossibile the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, He would nonetheless in reality be really distinguished from Him.

This is the teaching of the Doctor and of all his disciples, and it is gathered first indeed from the holy Fathers, who teach that the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Son, not precisely because He proceeds from Him, but because His emanation is of another notion from the emanation of the Son; thus St. Augustine lib. 5. De Trinitate, cap. 14. bringing forward the reason for which the Holy Spirit is not the Son, says: For He goes forth not as born, but as given; and therefore He is not called the Son, because He was not born as the Only-begotten. Gregory of Nyssa also favors this, praised by Bessarion in the Oration for the union, from lib. 1. on the Gospels, not yet published in Latin; where among other things he has this: The Spirit is conjoined with the Father, and conjoined inasmuch as both are uncreated, and inasmuch as both have their substance from the first principle: He is distinguished by His own property, which is that the Only-begotten was not produced from the Father, and that through Him the Son is made manifest. By which words he assigns an open reason for the distinction of the Father from the Holy Spirit, not from spiration, but from their constitutive property. The same is to be said of the Son: and so the doctrine of those is not true who trace back the distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son to active and passive spiration alone.

Anselm openly subscribes, in the Treatise against the Greeks on the procession of the Holy Spirit, chapter 2., where he says: Since the Son exists from God by being born, and the Spirit by proceeding, by the very diversity of nativity and procession they are referred to one another as diverse and other from one another. Again, ibidem:

But the Son (to pass over for the present another cause, since it is not yet established that the Holy Spirit is from Him and proceeds from Him) is therefore not the Holy Spirit, nor is the Holy Spirit the Son, because the Son has being from the Father by being born, but the Holy Spirit not by being born, but by proceeding.

This reason he thus urges in c. 3.: They are other from one another through what has been said, as for example because one is born, the other indeed proceeds; and therefore when one is born, he who is thereby other from him, because he is not born in like manner, but proceeds, cannot be born with him; and when one proceeds, he who is thereby other from him, because he does not proceed in like manner, but is born, cannot proceed at the same time. Whence in cap. 4. he concludes: If the Son and the Holy Spirit were not more than one through something else, through this alone they would be diverse, namely, because one exists by being born, the other by proceeding. By which words certainly he approves our opinion most clearly and most subtly: whence Urban the Pontiff, who in the Council of Bari approved the doctrine of St. Anselm with the whole assembly of the Fathers and with applause, does he not seem to have likewise defined the doctrine of Scotus from that time on?

But, which is the chief point, the Angelic Doctor himself approves this very opinion, Quodlib. 4. artic. 3., where he teaches that a thing is distinguished by its form not only from an opposite, but from a disparate; and he gives the example of a sapphire, which he says is distinguished by its form not only from other stones, but from plants: whence he concludes:

Thus, then, it must be said that the Son is distinguished from the Father by His filiation according to the relative opposition of filiation to paternity: but from the Holy Spirit He is distinguished by filiation, through the fact that the Holy Spirit does not have the filiation which the Son has: therefore he truly judges that the Son is distinguished from the Holy Spirit by filiation, not indeed precisely by active spiration; and so even if, per impossibile, active spiration were removed from the Son, He would no less be really distinguished from Him by filiation.

The Doctor proves the conclusion first: by the same principle by which a thing is constituted, it is also distinguished from any other; because, he says, by the same thing something is a being and one with a unity suitable to such an entity: but what is one in itself is also distinct from anything else; and so the constitutive principle of a thing is also its distinctive principle; whence man is distinguished by animality, by which he is constituted in the being of an animal, from anything not having animality; and by rationality, by which he is constituted in the being of a man, he is distinguished from everything that is not a man: but the divine Son is constituted in personal being by filiation: therefore by filiation He is also distinguished from every Person in which that divine filiation is not. But in the hypothesis in which the Holy Spirit would not proceed from the Son, He would not for that reason really include filiation: therefore in that case He would no less be really distinguished from the Son.

The subsumption is proved, in which alone the difficulty seems to lie: the Holy Spirit, from His intrinsic notion, must be produced through the will: but what is produced through the will cannot be the Son; since the divine Son must be produced in the notion of Son through an assimilative faculty from His formal notion, such as the intellect alone is: but what is produced through the intellect cannot be produced through the will, and vice versa: therefore the Holy Spirit, produced through the will, cannot be produced through the intellect; otherwise the same thing would be produced by a double total production, which implies a contradiction; and so in no case can He be the Son, and consequently in every case He is necessarily really distinguished from the Son.

It is confirmed. — Personal distinction is from the form and personal property: but filiation alone is the personal property in the second Person: for the Son is not constituted in personal being by active spiration, because He has it in common with the Father: therefore by filiation alone, not indeed by active spiration, is He personally distinguished from the Holy Spirit. Next, filiation by its own notion is really incommunicable to the Holy Spirit; otherwise it would not be a personal property: therefore by its own notion it really distinguishes the Son from the Holy Spirit. Finally, the Son is really distinguished from the Holy Spirit by that by which He is formally constituted in the being of Son: but He is not constituted in the being and notion of Son by active spiration; otherwise the Father also would have to be called the Son, since the Father also has that active spiration; but He is so constituted by filiation: therefore by it also He is distinguished from the Holy Spirit.

He proves 2. One and the same thing cannot receive being by two total and adequate productions: but passive generation and passive spiration, if they were from the Father alone, would be made by two total and adequate productions: therefore even in that case they would not be one and the same really; and so they would be really distinct. The major is evident, for otherwise neither of those productions would be adequate, if it admitted the partnership of the other in producing the effect. The minor is proved: production through the intellect in the divine, and production through the will are two adequate productions, for each of those faculties with the divine essence is able to produce an infinite term: but passive generation, or filiation, even in that case would be made through the intellect, and passive spiration through the will: therefore both would be made through an adequate production, and so they cannot be one and the same.

It is confirmed. — Filiation and passive spiration are really distinguished from their intrinsic notion: therefore, although they proceeded from the Father alone, they would no less be really distinct. The antecedent is proved. If they were not so distinguished, they could from their formal notion coincide in the same Person: but this is false. Proof. Because if they coincided in the same Person, it would follow that that Person would have being through two adequate productions, each of which would adequately produce it. Proof. For filiation is produced through the intellect, and passive spiration through the will: but each faculty is infinitely productive, and so productive of an infinite term separately, because each is infinite separately, and not only jointly: but a faculty productive from itself of an infinite term is productive adequately and totally; therefore if filiation and passive spiration coincided in the same Person, it would follow that that Person is produced by two total and adequate productions; since this implies a contradiction, it also implies that one and the same Person would be at once the Son and the Holy Spirit: therefore, although the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, it would not for that reason follow that He is really the same as the Son.

He proves 3. If per impossibile the Father did not spirate, nor produce the Holy Spirit, but the Son alone did, He would nevertheless still be really distinguished from the Son and the Holy Spirit by paternity, which would not be in the Son nor in the Holy Spirit: therefore similarly, if the Son did not spirate, He would still be distinguished from the Holy Spirit by filiation, by which He is constituted in the being of person, and which is not found in the Father nor in the Holy Spirit. The consequence is evident by parity of reason.

It is confirmed. — Passive spiration now, and in fact, is not identified with paternity: therefore neither then, in the aforementioned hypothesis, would it be identified with filiation, or passive generation. The antecedent is evident, because paternity and passive spiration constitute two distinct Persons, namely, the Father and the Holy Spirit. The consequence is proved: paternity is therefore not identified now with passive spiration because they are disparate and personal relations: but in the proposed case passive spiration and filiation would also be personal and disparate relations: therefore the same reason which urges that there is not now an identification of the former urges that neither would there then be an identification of the latter. The minor is evident by parity of reason. The major is proved: paternity is not identified now with passive spiration either because it is relatively opposed to it, or because it is a relation disparate from it: not the first, for paternity is relatively opposed to filiation alone, because it is correlative to filiation alone, not indeed to passive spiration: for the first Person is referred through paternity to His Son, not however to the Holy Spirit: therefore paternity is not really identified with passive spiration for no other reason than because it is a relation disparate from it.

Some Thomists reply, that paternity is therefore distinguished from passive spiration, not because it is disparate from it, but because it is identified altogether with active spiration, by which it is correlatively opposed to passive spiration. But the falsity of this reply is openly evident, for if this sufficed, active spiration could not be in the Son; but the consequent is false, and so also is that from which it follows.

Others reply, that paternity is therefore distinguished from passive spiration, because it is in a Person who, by reason of active spiration, or of the spirating Person, is distinguished from passive spiration, or the spirated Person.

Against 1. If this reply stood, it would follow that whatever is in the spirating Father would be really distinguished from the Holy Spirit: but this is false: since the same essence which is in the Father is also in the Holy Spirit. Next, that active spiration is really distinguished from passive brings it about only that the concrete Spirator is also really distinguished from the spirated: but paternity is not formally something of this concrete; for the concrete Spirator says only two things, namely, the essence and the relation of active spiration; but paternity is neither of these: since paternity with the essence makes the generator to be the Father, and refers Him to the Son alone in the notion of generator and Father: therefore paternity contributes nothing to the notion of spirator. Finally, the spirative principle is the same in the Father and the Son; but paternity is not the same in both: therefore paternity is not something of this principle, and so formally contributes nothing to the formal notion of spirator.

1. The Thomists object the authority of the Councils: first indeed of the First Council of Toledo in the Confession of faith: We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is neither the Father nor the Son, because He proceeds from the Father and the Son. But in our case He would not proceed from the Son: therefore in that case He would not be distinguished from the Son. Second, of the Eleventh of Toledo: This alone implies number, that they are toward one another, and in this they lack number, that they are toward themselves: but they are not toward one another except according to relations of origin: therefore where those relations would not be (as they would not be in our case), there would also be no number and distinction of Persons. Third, of the Council of Florence, last session: For those believing that the Holy Spirit in no way proceeds from the Son must needs understand that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and consequently that He is the Son. It is confirmed by the following words: Those who assert that the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Son, and at the same time proceeds from the Father alone, separate the substance from the hypostasis and imagine a partition of the divine substance. It is urged from sess. 18. where we read: According to all the Doctors, both Greek and Latin, the sole difference of processions, which is said more principally, multiplies the Persons in the divine, to which alone are accommodated he who is from another, and he from whom another is, etc. These words are brought forward by a theologian of the Latins, to prove that, since the Greeks admit that the Holy Spirit is really distinguished from the Son, they must also admit that He proceeds from Him: therefore in the case in which He would not so proceed, He would not be distinguished from Him.

To the first I answer, that the words of the Council are not faithfully cited, since the causal particle eo quod is not found, but it is said absolutely, Who is Himself neither the Father nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son, which we freely admit.

To the second, I say that the Council wills nothing other than that the divine Persons are truly many by reason of relations, not indeed by reason of essence and of absolutes, in such a way that they are many because they are relative, whether those relations are opposed or only disparate: whence that "toward one another" ought not to be understood determinately and formally of an opposed relation, but of relation as such, and inasmuch as it abstracts from opposed and disparate; for the Council there opposes being toward one another, or relative, to the mode of being from oneself, or absolute: but this division and opposition would not be adequate, if under the former member it comprehended only opposed relations, not indeed also disparate ones; for these cannot be comprehended under the latter member, because they are not toward themselves: therefore this authority does not stand against us.

Regarding the Council of Florence I say that the two earlier texts are cited in bad faith, for in the former the Council does not hold that He is the Son, but rather the contrary, namely that He is not the Son, as is evident in all the exemplars published so far. Nor is it true what some reply, namely that if the particle "not" is placed there, the sentence will have no meaning: for the meaning is clear, namely that the Greeks, saying that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son but from the Father alone, must nonetheless necessarily admit that He is not the Son, lest they contradict the mystery of the Trinity: whence that word "consequently" does not there have the force of an inference, as if from the fact that the Greeks admit that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, it would follow according to them that the Holy Spirit is not the Son, for this would be a foolish inference; but that particle signifies the same as "consequently" or "furthermore," or "besides." Likewise in the second text that phrase, "to be distinguished from the Son," is not read; but rather: those who maintain that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Person of the Father alone, these without doubt separate the substance of the thing from the hypostasis, etc. These words do not oppose us.

Regarding the later text I say that the Council speaks of what is in fact the case, namely, that now the reason for the distinction of one Person from another is more apparent, because one proceeds and is referred to another: yet from this it is not to be inferred that another reason of distinction would not be at hand, if such a procession of one from another were not present.

They object 2. From Boethius, libro 1. De Trinitate, cap. 22.: Essence contains unity; relation, however, multiplies the Trinity: therefore no Person is distinguished from another except one that is referred to it. Moreover from St. Anselm, libro De Process. Spiritus sancti, cap. 3.: Unity does not lose its consequence where no opposition of some relation stands in the way, whence the common axiom: All things in the divine are the same where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way. Finally St. Augustine, libro 2. De Civit., cap. 10.: Therefore God is simple, because what He has, that He is, except that whereby each Person is said relatively to another, as the Father has the Son, and is not the Son. Therefore if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, He would be the Son, because then He would not be said relatively to Him.

I answer the first, denying the consequence; for it is one thing that a Person is distinguished only from that to which it is referred, and another that no Person is distinguished unless it has a relation through which it is distinguished: in that case, moreover, the Son would also have Filiation, through which He would be constituted and distinguished from the other Persons. Add. that even through Filiation in that case He would be referred to the Holy Spirit, not indeed after the manner of one producing or produced, but after the manner of one really distinct from that from which He is distinguished.

To the second I say that St. Anselm also admits an opposition of relations among disparate relations: for in the same chapter, a little before the words cited in the objection, he says that that opposition of relation is the opposition of Nativity and Procession, which, as is well known, is not relative but disparate: whence he also purposely did not say that all things in the divine are one where a relative opposition does not stand in the way, but an opposition of relation; which opposition, of course, embraces both the relative and the disparate. Add that he himself openly defends our conclusion, as has been said.

To the third the Doctor denies the consequence; for St. Augustine does not will that any Person would be that other to which it had no correlation: but only that it has whatever the other has, except its Personal relation. In our case, however, the Holy Spirit would not have Filiation, nor the Son passive Spiration: therefore there would not be one single Person, but two really distinct from one another.

They object 3. If the relation of Filiation would be a sufficient reason for distinguishing the Son really from the Holy Spirit in the proposed case, it would do this either according to its quiddity and formality, or according to its real and entitative being: not the second, because as such it is the same as the divine Essence: therefore the first. But a relation, insofar as it is a relation, formally regards only its opposite: therefore it distinguishes only insofar as it is a correlation: but in the proposed case there would not be in the Son and the Holy Spirit correlations, or opposed relations: therefore the Son would not be distinguished from the Holy Spirit.

I distinguish the minor. It regards the opposite relatively — I deny; disparately — I concede. To the subsumed proposition: in that case there would not be opposed relations, that is, true correlations — I concede; there would not be opposed relations, that is, really distinct ones — I deny: since indeed passive Spiration and Filiation are disparate relations, and really distinct from one another, as has been said, which disparate reason suffices for that Personal distinction. Thus, just as Paternity would distinguish the Father from the Holy Spirit in that case in which He would not proceed from the Father, although the Holy Spirit would not have a correlation opposed to it relatively, but only disparately; so the Son would be distinguished from Him, because the Holy Spirit has a relation really distinct from Filiation, although that relation in the Holy Spirit would not be the correlation of Filiation, that is, Paternity.

You will insist. A relation distinguishes in that way in which it constitutes: but it constitutes only in order to its term: therefore it distinguishes only from its term. But the term of a relation is that which has the correlation: therefore it distinguishes only from that which has the correlation: but the Holy Spirit in that case would not have the correlation of Filiation, nor would He be its term: therefore the Son through Filiation, insofar as it is a relation, cannot be really distinguished from the Holy Spirit.

I answer 1. By distinguishing the major: it distinguishes in that way in which it constitutes, that is, if it constitutes essentially, it distinguishes essentially; if it constitutes accidentally, it likewise distinguishes in the same way — I concede the major: that is, if it constitutes relatively in order to only one term, it distinguishes only from that one — I deny the major; for although Paternity constitutes the Father formally in order to the Son, nevertheless it also distinguishes Him from the Holy Spirit.

I answer 2. With the major admitted, distinguishing the minor: it constitutes in order to a term which it regards only after the manner of its proper correlative, as the Father has the Son as correlative — I deny: one which it regards after the manner of a term in some way — I concede. Likewise I distinguish the subsumed proposition: in that case the Holy Spirit would not have Filiation as a term which He would regard after the manner of one producing — I concede: one which He would regard after the manner of a Person really distinct from Himself — I deny.

They object 4. If disparate relations, which were not correlations, sufficed for the distinction of the Persons, it would follow that Paternity and active Spiration should constitute two Persons: but this is false according to all: therefore disparate relations do not suffice for the Personal distinction. It is confirmed, because Paternity and passive Spiration should no more constitute two Persons than Paternity and active Spiration: but these do not constitute: therefore neither do those; and consequently in the proposed case the Son would not be really distinguished from the Holy Spirit.

The Doctor denies the sequel of the objection and the antecedent of its confirmation, and says that the reason of these two combinations is disparate, namely, of Generation and active Spiration as compared with Generation and passive Spiration; because two active productions with respect to diverse terms do not conflict in the same supposit; for it can well be understood that someone has several productive actions of several things, as in fact happens not only in the eternal Father, who is productive of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but also in the sun with respect to several effects; but two total passive productions conflict in the same supposit, because it would follow that at one and the same time one thing would be produced twice by a total production, which implies a contradiction: from the fact, however, that Paternity and active Spiration are in the same first Person, nothing else follows than that that Person has two total productions with respect to two diverse terms; but if Filiation and passive Spiration were in one and the same Person, it would follow that there are in it two passive productions, and that it is produced twice, which implies a contradiction; and so if one does not conflict, it does not follow therefrom that the other also does not conflict.

You will insist. Two relations are not of themselves incompossible unless they are opposed to one another: but Filiation and passive Spiration are not opposed: therefore they are not of themselves incompossible.

I distinguish the major: unless they are opposed formally after the manner of two correlations — I deny the major: for two total passive productions of the same effect from the same or a diverse cause are not correlations, and yet they conflict in the same effect, or the same thing: unless they are opposed disparately, so that one requires the exclusion of the other — I concede the major: and likewise, with the minor distinguished, the consequence must be denied.

They object 5. In the divine things no distinction is to be asserted except where either faith establishes it or reason proves it: but in that supposition, neither does faith assert nor does reason prove that there would be a real distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Son: therefore it is not to be asserted.

I answer first that in the minor the principle is begged, for this is precisely the question, whether reason proves it or not. Then the argument can be turned back in this way: in the divine things no identity is to be asserted unless either faith teaches it or reason proves it convincingly: but in the posited case, neither faith nor reason evinces that there would be an identity of the Son with the Holy Spirit: therefore neither is that to be asserted.

Finally they object: among the divine relations four disparate oppositions can be conceived: the first indeed between to generate and to spirate; the second between to be generated and to be spirated; the third between to generate and to be spirated; and finally the fourth between to be generated and to spirate: but none of these is a sufficient formal distinctive principle of the Persons; not indeed the first or the second, because then it would follow that the Generated and the Spirated are two Persons, and likewise the Generator and the Spirator two others, which is false. Not even the third or the fourth; for those disparate oppositions would be distinctive of the Persons either insofar as they are such: not the first, for if it belongs to a disparate opposition of relations, insofar as they are disparate, or insofar as it is disparate, to be a formal distinctive principle of the Persons, then already every disparate relative opposition will distinguish, and so to generate and to spirate, just as to be generated and to be spirated, will constitute two Persons: not even the second, because there does not appear to be a stronger reason why these rather than others should be distinctive of persons: therefore, etc.

I answer first that it could be said that they are distinctive of the Persons precisely insofar as they are disparate; nor does it follow therefrom that all disparate relations must thus be distinctive of the Persons: especially since not even all relatively opposed relations are distinctive of the Persons; for active and passive Spiration are correlations and relatively opposed, and yet they do not distinguish personally; for active Spiration in the Father is not Personal, since He is already conceived before it as constituted in the being of Person through Paternity and active generation, which in the instant of origin precedes Spiration. Second I say that not indeed all disparate relations are distinctive of the Persons, but only those which are Personal, or by which the divine Persons are constituted, such as are Paternity, passive Spiration, and Filiation compared with passive Spiration itself.

Corollaries. — From these things it follows first, that although the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, nevertheless He could absolutely proceed from a single Person. For the Father and the Son separately have a sufficient productive principle of the Holy Spirit, namely the infinite will made fecund by an infinite object, namely the divine essence: therefore even if in fact He does not proceed from two, nevertheless He could truly proceed from a single Person, equally perfect.

Gather 2. That the Father and the Son are the single principle of the Holy Spirit: both because, as St. Augustine says in lib. 5. De Trinit., cap. 14.: Just as the Father and the Son are one God, and referred as one to the creature, so relatively to the Holy Spirit they are one principle; and because, just as the Father by begetting communicates to the Son the same essence, so also the same spirative power: therefore by reason of that one spirative power, they are to be called one principle of the Holy Spirit. The consequence is evident; for just as from this the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are called one God, because they have the one single Divinity; and one Creator, because they have the one single creative power; so also the Father and the Son are to be called one Spirator, or the single principle of the Holy Spirit, because they have the one single spirative power.

Gather 3. That the Father and the Son cannot indeed be called two Spirators, but well two Spirating ones, as the Doctor teaches in 1. dist. 12. q. 1.: because, he says, the plural term "two" joined to the noun "Spirator" would signify that the spirative power in the Father and in the Son is distinct and double, since the word "Spirator" formally designates the power of spirating: but it is otherwise with the participle "Spirating," which signifies the Person having that spirative power; so that just as there are two persons producing the Holy Spirit, so they can be called two spirating ones, that is, two Persons having the spirative power. The reason of the disparity, moreover, is that for the plurality of concrete substantive nouns, the plurality of supposits does not suffice, but a plurality of forms is also required: but for the plurality of adjectives and participles, the plurality of supposits suffices. Hence these propositions are true: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one Creator, one Cause, one Governor, etc.; because they have the one single and same power of creating, causing, etc. Likewise, on account of the plurality of supposits, these too are true: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three Creating, Causing, and Governing ones.

We have already said in the prelude of this Disputation that the name Spirit, insofar as it signifies the Love that is breathed forth, is proper to the third divine Person alone; but the difficulty remains to be resolved concerning especially the three names which are attributed to Him both by Sacred Scripture and by the Fathers, when He is called Holy, Gift of God, and Charity, and Love: whether these names are proper to Him, or only appropriated, is to be resolved at present. Wherefore

Note 1. "Holy" is taken in three ways: First, indeed, for that which is pure and cleansed of every uncleanness; and thus sanctification is said to be the cleansing from sin through grace. Second, "Holy" is the same as that which is deputed and consecrated to divine worship; and in this way the Temple is said to be sanctified, as also the vessels which serve in the ministry of the Temple; but much more is a rational creature called holy when it is applied to divine service. Third, "Holy" is the same as that which is firm, or confirmed in the good. It is certain, however, that in these three ways sanctity is effectively appropriated to the Holy Spirit, for He cleanses the rational creature from every defilement of flesh and spirit through the infusion of sanctifying grace, and, cleansing it from the flood of earthly affections, raises it up into God, the center of all purity; from which raising up the second ray of sanctity bursts forth, namely consecration, and being made over and applied to divine worship: for love is the principle of ordination into God, and through it we are especially dedicated and consecrated to God; whence it finally comes about that the soul is strengthened and made firm in virtue, and attains a certain immobility in the good, which is the character of all sanctity. But whether, beyond this appropriation of effective sanctity, the divine essential sanctity also belongs to the Holy Spirit under a peculiar title, must be determined here.

Note 2. From Aristotle, lib. 4. Topicorum, cap. 4., gift is said of something and to someone, and giving is said of something and to someone: but giving is the genus of gift: for a gift is an irrevocable giving, that is, a liberal one without any hope of retribution: from which definition it is gathered that three things are found in a gift: First, the thing itself which is given; Second, the relation of the thing given to the giver; Third, finally, the respects both of the giver and of the given to the one to whom the giving is made. It is not necessary, however, that a real distinction intervene between the giver and the given, for one and the same person, when he gives himself to another, is at once both giver and given. Moreover, it must be observed that although the notion of gift in divine matters primarily and per se connotes a relation of reason to creatures, nevertheless it also secondarily connotes the procession in the mode of liberty: whence in that connoted there are found two things, namely emanation and the mode of emanation, so that what is given in divine matters must first emanate from the one who gives; second, so emanate that it is produced freely, that is, through the will; on which two things the relation of reason of gift is especially founded, a relation which is terminated at the creature to whom the giving is made only in time.

Note 3. That "dilection," or "Love," in divine matters is taken in three ways: First, indeed, essentially, insofar as it signifies the act of willing and of dilection which is common to the three Persons, for just as to understand and intellection is essential to God, so to love and love is something essential, absolute, and common. Second, it is sometimes taken notionally, insofar as it signifies the productive action of the term produced through the will; and thus to love is the same as to breathe forth, and its term is none other than the Person Himself who is breathed forth, who is called

the Holy Spirit. Third, finally, it is taken in a certain mixed way for the habitude of the one loving toward the things loved: which again can be taken in two ways, namely principiatively and formally; insofar as the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit, who is the Lover (if one may so speak) or the love of everything lovable; they are also said principiatively to be the Love of everything lovable: insofar, however, as the Holy Spirit, through the Love communicated to Himself by force of His procession, regards whatever is lovable, He is deemed to be formally the lover of everything lovable: on which account He has a double respect; one real, toward His productive principle, the other of reason, toward the things loved or lovable. But in what way the name of Love properly belongs to Him is to be resolved below; in the meantime let there be

First conclusion. — Sanctity is especially appropriated to the third Person in the divine. This is of faith, since this adorable Person is constantly called the Holy Spirit not only by the oracles of Sacred Scripture, but also of the Councils and of the holy Fathers; wherefore St. Augustine, lib. 10. De Civitate, cap. 24., calls Him the sanctity of the Father and of the Son, which appellation, indeed, he thus weighs in lib. 11. cap. 24.:

Whether the Holy Spirit, because He is common to both, can rightly be called the goodness of the good Father and of the good Son, I do not dare to rush a rash judgment; yet I should more readily dare to call Him the sanctity of both, not as a quality, as it were, of both, but as the very substance itself and the third Person in the Trinity. For I am led to this more probably by the fact that although the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy, nevertheless He Himself is properly called the Holy Spirit, as the substantial and consubstantial sanctity of both.

St. Cyril sings in accord with him, lib. Dialogo 7. De Trinitate;

"He is holy," he says, "the Spirit of Himself, not by participation, nor by an external habitude toward the Son, but by nature and truth: for just as it is stupid and insipid that a man be called a man, and yet something other than him be understood, so it is quite foolish to name the Spirit indeed holy Spirit, and yet to exclude Him from being holy by nature, and absurdly to shut Him out into another nature. For that name will not signify to Him some mode of glory or excellence, as do these, Principality, and Throne, and Dominion, which are attributed to those things that were created by Him: but rather it expresses a substantial quality, like that name Father to the Father, and Son to the Son, etc."

By which he openly seems to say that sanctity is not only appropriated, but also as it were proper to the Holy Spirit, just as Paternity is proper to the Father, and Filiation to the Son.

And indeed reason also persuades this, if one attends to the mode of love by which that third divine Person proceeds: for all sanctity, or malice, takes its origin from love and the will: whence also it pertains in a peculiar way to that third divine Person to sanctify men and Angels; wherefore St. Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 18. Thesauri, cap. 4.: "The Spirit," he says, "is called holy, because He is said to be holy essentially; for He is the natural, and living, and subsisting operation of God, which perfects creatures by sanctifying them through participation in Himself." And a little below: "We call the Holy Spirit the very power of sanctifying, which naturally proceeds from the Father, and sanctifies and perfects creatures." But in what way the sanctification of creatures is appropriated to Him has already been sufficiently said in the second Note.

Second conclusion. — The name and notion of Gift is especially appropriated to the Holy Spirit. St. Augustine proves this Conclusion by very many texts of Scripture, lib. 15. De Trinitate, capite 19., but especially from the following: Ioannis 4., Christ, addressing the Samaritan woman, says: "Woman, if you knew the Gift of God"; but Christ was speaking of the water of life, which John, in chapter 7., says is the Holy Spirit in these words: "Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly; but this He said of the Spirit, whom those believing in Him were about to receive": likewise Acts 8.: "May your money be with you unto perdition, because you thought the Gift of God could be possessed with money." But St. Peter said this when Simon Magus, seeing that the Holy Spirit was given through the imposition of the Apostles' hands, offered him money. St. Augustine proves this same thing from the very reason of the origin of the Holy Spirit, who, he says, lib. 5. De Trinitate, cap. 14., "went forth not as one born, but as one given, because He proceeds as love, which is the first root of gratuitous giving." For we therefore give freely, because we will the good of the person receiving; wherefore love has the notion of the first gift, through which all gratuitous things are given; since, therefore, the Holy Spirit, by force of His procession, formally proceeds as love produced through the will, it follows that a certain peculiar notion of gift belongs to Him by reason of His personal property, because by force of His origin He formally proceeds according to the first root of gratuitous liberality.

You will say 1. The Holy Spirit is from eternity: but from eternity He cannot have the notion of gift: therefore the notion of gift does not belong to Him by reason of His personal property. The major is evident. The minor is proved: a gift necessarily imports a double respect, one toward the person from whom it is given, and another toward the person to whom it is given: but from eternity there was no creature to whom the Holy Spirit could be given: therefore neither could He have the notion of gift.

Some answer that the Holy Spirit has the notion of Gift not only with respect to creatures, but also with respect to the Father and the Son, for He is as it were a gift which the Father gives to the Son, and in turn the Son to the Father, insofar as the one spends and repays his love to the other.

I answer 2. That a gift is said not from the fact that it is actually given, but from the fact that it has the aptitude of being able to be given: whence from eternity the divine Person is called a gift, although it is given only in time, as St. Augustine explains, De Trinitate, cap. 15.: "Because He proceeded as giftable, He was already a gift even before there was one to whom it might be given; for it is understood otherwise when "gift" is said, otherwise when "given" is said: for a gift can exist even before it is given, but "given" can in no way be said unless it has been given": and after a few intervening words: "Eternally the Spirit is a gift, but temporally He is given."

You will say 2. The Holy Spirit is given not only by God, but also by creatures, since we read in Acts 8. that the Holy Spirit was given through the imposition of the Apostles' hands: therefore He is not only the gift of God.

St. Bonaventure answers in 1. distinct. 14. artic. 2. quaest. 2. that the Holy Spirit can be given in four ways: either as from one preparing, or ministering the Sacraments; or as from one announcing salutary teachings; or as from one impetrating through operation, or through good works; or as from one producing. In the first and second way He is conferred as much by the good as by the wicked: in the third way He is conferred only by the good: in the fourth way He is given only by God, since He is produced by the Father and the Son alone, and is given to creatures as the greatest of all gifts, and the inexhaustible origin of all the goods which flow from God into us. For, says St. Basil in the book De Spiritu sancto:

Through the Holy Spirit is given restoration in Paradise, return into the Kingdom of Heaven, recovery into the adoption of sons: there is given the confidence of calling God Father, of being made a partaker of grace, of being called Christ, a son of light, of being a partaker of eternal glory, and, to say everything at once, of being in the fullness of every blessing:

since, as St. Chrysostom adds, homil. 2. De Spiritu sancto: He is the reformation of our image, the spiritual perfection of the mind, the sun of our mental eyes, the light of our inner man, the bond of our union with Christ, the exultation of souls, the rejoicing of the heart, the rest of the mind, the communication of wisdom. By Him Prophets are enlightened, Kings are anointed, Priests are ordained, Doctors are illuminated, Churches are sanctified, altars are founded, ointment is consecrated, waters are purified, demons are driven away, diseases are cured, sinners are reconciled to God.

Third conclusion. — The name and notion of divine Love especially belongs to the Holy Spirit. This is likewise gathered from Sacred Scripture, especially from those places in which He is called charity and love; thus Romans 5.: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is given to us." Which St. Augustine thus weighs, lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 18: "The dilection which is from God and is God is properly the Holy Spirit, through whom the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, through whom the whole Trinity inhabits us"; and cap. 19. he calls the Holy Spirit the Charity and the Love of both, namely of the Father and of the Son: "And if the Charity," he says, "by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father ineffably, shows the communion of Both, what is more fitting than that He be properly called Charity, who is the common Spirit of Both?" But although he affirms that charity properly belongs to the Spirit, I do not deny that he has used "properly" for "appropriately," for he subjoins:

Just as in that Trinity He is not alone either Spirit or Holy: but the Father is Spirit, and the Son is Spirit, and the Father is holy, and the Son is holy, which piety does not doubt, and yet He is not in vain properly called the Holy Spirit: for because He is common to both, He Himself is properly called that which both are in common.

Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit can be named Love not only appropriately, but also properly, both by reason of the procession, because He proceeds through the will, by which love is properly breathed forth; and by the addition of some predicate, if indeed He be called love produced, or breathed forth. St. Peter Damian excellently explains the first in his first Opusculum, cap. 2., saying:

And this is that supreme Charity by which the begotten is loved by the begetter, and loves his own begetter: and therefore they are no more than three, both essentially undivided and distinguished by a threefold property: one loving him who is from him, one loving him from whom he is; and the dilection itself, of which it is said, because God is Charity.

But the second St. Augustine impresses in many of the places cited.

However, the Holy Spirit is so to be thought the Charity, or love, or dilection of the Father and of the Son, that He nevertheless is not the essential Charity itself by which the divine Persons love one another, for 1. Ioan. 4.: "God is Charity"; whence certain persons, as St. Augustine relates, lib. De Fide, et symbolo cap. 9., in order to deny that the Holy Spirit is a Person distinct from the Father and the Son, used… to believe the Holy Spirit to be the communion itself of the Father and of the Son, and, so to speak, the Deity… etc.

Thus the Holy Spirit is love appropriately, because He proceeds through the will, whose it is to love; and properly, because He is the term breathed forth through love, or love produced; and effectively, because the Charity of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Which St. Bernard thus weighs, Epistola 107.:

O the twin and most firm argument of love toward us! Christ dies; He merits being loved: the Spirit affects, and makes Him to be loved: the one makes why He should be loved; the other makes that He be loved: the one commends much dilection in us; the other gives it: in the one we discern what we may love; from the other we take whence we may love: Charity, therefore, from the one is the occasion, from the other the affection.

Moreover, here it must be noted that since the Holy Spirit is the mutual love of the Father and of the Son, or the fruit and term of mutual love, He is called by Augustine not only the unity and communion of both, 6. De Trinit. cap. 5., but He is also called by some the kiss, the embrace, the bond of each: thus St. Bernard, serm. 8. in Cantica: "If," he says, "the Father is rightly understood as the one kissing, the Son as the one kissed, it will not be beside the point to understand the Holy Spirit as the kiss, as being of the Son, who is the undisturbed peace, the firm glue, the undivided love, the undivided unity." And serm. 1. in Octava Paschae: "The Spirit is the indissoluble bond of the Trinity, through whom, just as the Father and the Son are one, so also we are one in them." Likewise Lawrence Justinian, in the book De Obedientia, calls the Holy Spirit the indissoluble bond of Charity, and the most sweet kiss of peace, and the most blessed embrace of mutual love.

There are other appellations of this divine Spirit, some of which the Seraphic Bonaventure thus weighs in the Theological compendium, lib. 1. cap. 9. For He is called 1. Living Fountain, because He flows into us by a sevenfold stream of gifts (which Isaias 11. enumerates). 2. Fire, because He enkindles the affection in us. 3. Charity, not only because He is the love of the Father and of the Son, but because He makes us loving. 4. Spiritual unction, because He makes all worldly tribulations sweet and clean, according to that of the prose: in labor, rest; in heat, temperateness; in weeping, solace. 5. Finger of God's right hand, because just as corporeal things are shown by the finger, so spiritual things are shown through the Holy Spirit to the spiritual eye. 6. Paraclete, because He instills heavenly consolations into minds. 7. Best of teachers, because He illuminates the intellect unto the knowledge of God and of itself.

Divine Wisdom attributes many other characters to Him, cap. 7.: for the Spirit of intelligence is called Right, because (says Cornelius Mussius, lib. 3. Historiae sacrae) He turns the crooked into the straight, and the rough into plain ways: Good, by whom all evils are driven away, or cooperate unto good: Principal, because He makes us princes, lords of the perturbations, conquerors of vices: Sweet, through whom all bitter things become sweet, while Charity is poured forth in our hearts: Holy, by whom sins are remitted, and sinners are sanctified: Clean, than whom nothing is cleaner, who makes men clean, to whom none please but the clean: Simple, who flees the feigned, and sees every deceit: Subtle, for slipping into, and for searching and examining the deep judgments of God: Modest, the author of holy shame and reverence: Eloquent, who opens the mouths of the mute, and makes the tongues of infants eloquent: Secure, of the future and of the present: Certain, because He neither is deceived nor deceives: Agile, breaking off all unjust delays, impatient of impious idleness, of negligence, and of tardiness: Kind, loving the souls of all men.

DE MISSIONE DIVINARUM PERSONARUM.

That some of the divine Persons are sent by others to creatures is established by faith, being set down in many texts of Sacred Scripture: for Ioan. 3. Christ says: God sent His Son into the world, not to judge the world, etc. And 15.: Whom the Father sanctified, and sent into the world. And 16.: I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world; for, says Augustine, 2. De Trinit. cap. 5., to go forth from the Father, and to come into this world, this is to be sent. Likewise, of the Holy Spirit the same Son says: When I shall have been taken up from you, I will send Him to you, Ioann. 16.; and to the Galatians 6.: God sent the Spirit of His Son. 1. Petr. 1.: The Holy Spirit being sent from heaven. And Psalm. 103.: Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created, etc.

Add that the definition of mission to be given below befits the divine Persons. It remains, therefore, to be determined what that divine Mission is, and to which divine Persons and in what manner it belongs, which, that they may be made more evident

Note. From St. Bonaventure, in 1. dist. 15. part 1. quaest. 1., mission is transferred from creatures to divine things according to some analogy. But mission in created things expresses especially a threefold respect: first indeed to the principle, or to the one sending: second to the term, to which some thing is sent: third to the one sent, or to him who is sent. In the order, however, of the principle, or of the one sending, the comparison of Mission can be varied: either as to one giving existence to another; thus a ray is sent by the sun, a root or flower by the tree: or as to one giving power; and thus a javelin is sent by a thrower: or as to one giving jurisdiction, or authority; and thus a messenger is sent by a praetor, and a legate by the Pontiff. According to this threefold acceptation, however, Mission truly exists in divine things, for the Son is sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son, as having existence and power, and hence also authority, from the one sending.

But according to the other comparisons, by which the one sending relates to the one sent — as giving counsel, just as councillors send the King to war; or as commanding, just as a master sends a servant — mission manifestly does not fit the divine Persons, for to receive counsel is an indication of inexperience; and to be subjected to command is of diminished power.

Likewise, in the order of the term, Mission can have a threefold respect; for someone is sent to something, either as to a place in which he may rest; thus a stone is sent downward; or as to a possessor; thus a gift is sent to someone: or as to an operation to be performed in someone, or with someone; in this way, however, the divine Person is sent, that He may be with us, or rest in us through an internal indwelling; that He may be possessed by us, and that He may work good things with us; for the Holy Spirit is said, first, to dwell in our hearts: second, to be the Gift of the Most High God: third, to work in us all things, as He wills. Moreover, for the perfect understanding of the things to be said, three imperfections of created Mission must be removed from divine Mission. First, indeed, in created Mission there is a separation of the one sent from the one sending: second, a subjection of the one sent to the one sending, and the authority of the one sending over the one sent: third, a change in the one sent, while he leaves one place and acquires another: these imperfections, however, are removed from the divine Persons by the unity, immensity, and equality of their essence; for unity excludes separation, equality excludes submission, and immensity excludes local change. These things being thus noted beforehand from the Seraphic Doctor,

I say firstly. Not only the created gifts, which are appropriated to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, but also the very Persons of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are truly sent; which indeed.

It is clear from Sacred Scripture, of which it suffices to weigh one or another text. Ioannis 14.: But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance; but the office of consoler, teacher, and reminder is not exercised except by a subsisting Person: therefore the one who is sent is truly the Person of the Holy Spirit. Likewise cap. 15.: When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of me; therefore the same one, who proceeds from the Father, and who by infallible authority bears witness of the Son, is the same who is sent by the Son together with the Father: therefore mission is understood not only of His gifts, but also of the Person Himself. Finally, to the Romans 5.: The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us. By which it is clear that the Spirit Himself is given to us, who is distinguished from the created gift of charity, as its author.

It is confirmed from the holy Fathers, especially Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 26., where, proving the Divinity of the Holy Spirit from the fact that Christ commanded all nations to be baptized in the name of the Father, he concludes: He is therefore the one who was also given from heaven on the day of Pentecost: how then is He not God, who gives the Holy Spirit, nay, how great a God is He, who gives God? By which he openly teaches that the Spirit Himself, in whose name we are baptized, and who is truly God, was given on the day of Pentecost. Likewise serm. 43. On the words of the Lord: Great, he says, is the mercy of God, He gives a gift equal to Himself, because the gift of God is the Holy Spirit, and one God is the whole Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: he confirms this, moreover, with the words of the Apostle The charity of Christ is poured forth, etc.

It is also proved by reason. If only the gift were sent, and not the Person of the Holy Spirit Himself, it would follow that He could not be called a gift by reason of personality: but this is false, from what has been said, because the personal notion of the Holy Spirit is to be the gift and the spirated Love: therefore just as it belongs to Him to be Love in Himself, and not only in effect, so also it belongs to Him to be given. Then, if He were sent only with respect to gifts, the mystery of the Incarnation could be evaded, and it could be said that the mission of the Son was made in some gifts: for why would this one be so explained, and that one not, since Sacred Scripture equally expresses both under the name of mission?

I say secondly. Mission presupposes the procession of the Person sent from the one sending.

It is likewise gathered from Sacred Scripture, for Ioannis 7. Christ says: I have not come of myself, but He is true who sent me, whom you do not know: I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent me. Likewise cap. 16.: I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world, which text Cyril of Alexandria weighs thus, book 11. on cap. 9.: To have gone forth, he says, from God is nothing other than to have been born, to have shone forth from the substance of the Father by that procession by which He is, and is understood in His own subsistence… or He says that He went forth from the Father, that is, I was made Man, and I descended on behalf of your nature. Whence Augustine, Tract. 102. on John: He went forth from the Father, who is of the Father, and came into the world, because He showed His body to the world.

The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son is proved and gathered from the fact that He is sent by Him, as we said above: therefore procession is presupposed to mission. St. Anselm confirms this in the Treatise De Processione Spiritus sancti, saying:

It is exceedingly difficult, indeed impossible, to show how He does not proceed from both; for whence could the Son together with the Father give, or send, the Holy Spirit, and He be of both, if He is not at the same time of both? For why does the Son give the Holy Spirit more than the Holy Spirit gives the Son? Or why is He more the Spirit of the Son, than the Son is of the Holy Spirit, unless because the Son is not so of the Father and of the Holy Spirit together, as the Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son together?

In the same way John the Theologian proceeded in the Council of Florence, session 24., where, weighing that text of Ioannis 15.: Whom I will send you, he says:

I will send — what else, I beseech you, does it signify than that it is sent from someone? But he who sends something is seen to send his own, and what is sent is said to be from him, just as if a Prefect of a province should be seen to have done this not of himself, but by the command of the Emperor; who, since in generation he received the same, even as the Father, the Holy Spirit consubstantial with the Father, having the same faculty and nature, is believed to send the same Spirit.

It is confirmed, by the fact that St. Augustine asserts that mission does not only include the apparition of some divine Person through a visible creature; for if, he says, lib. 1. De Trinit. cap. 1., He had wished, even God the Father would appear visibly through a subject creature; yet He would most absurdly be said to be sent either by the Son whom He begot, or by the Holy Spirit who proceeds from Him, surely for no other reason than because, as he had said in cap. 20., the Father, when He is known in time by anyone, is not said to be sent; for He has not that from which He is, or from which He proceeds: but moreover, mission requires the procession of the Person sent from the Person sending; for in mission the authority of the Person sending, and the sub-authority of the Person sent, must be preserved, all superiority and inferiority being nevertheless excluded: but this authority and sub-authority is found only between the Person producing and the Person produced: therefore Mission itself argues an ad intra procession. Finally, mission includes the going out of the one sent from the one sending: but among the divine Persons there is no going out except according to procession: therefore passive mission includes procession.

You will say. The divine Son is sent by the Holy Spirit, as is clear from that text of Isaiah 48.: The Lord God has sent me, and His Spirit: whence St. Augustine, 2. De Trinit. 5., attributes the mission of the Son to the Holy Spirit: God, he says, sent His Son, made of a woman; where he sufficiently shows that the Son Himself was sent, who was made of a woman. Therefore He could not be sent by the Father without the Holy Spirit, because the Father is understood to have sent Him, when He made Him of a woman; which He certainly did not do without the Holy Spirit. Likewise St. Ambrose, book 2. De Spiritu sancto: Who is he who says: the Lord has sent me, and His Spirit, except the one who came from the Father, that He might save sinners, that is, Christ? Therefore both the Father sent the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Likewise the same Ambrose in the same place:

Again, He was given by the Father, as Isaiah says: a child is born to us, and a Son is given to us. He was given, I dare to say, also by the Holy Spirit, because He was also sent by the Holy Spirit. For the Son of God says: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore He has anointed me, He has sent me to evangelize the poor.

Also the Council of Toledo 11. in the Confession of faith: The Son must be believed to be sent not only by the Father, but also by the Holy Spirit, in that which is said through the Prophet: and now God has sent me, and His Spirit: but the Son does not proceed from the Holy Spirit: therefore Mission does not presuppose procession.

I answer. This Mission is understood of the Son according to His humanity, namely inasmuch as He was sent in the assumed nature, and that not by nature, but by will and command, to preach and to accomplish the other works of our salvation; for to that extent the humanity is said to be sent by the whole Trinity, and by God, even by the Word Himself, as the following words of the Council of Toledo declare: He is also, he says, understood as sent by Himself, through which not only the will, but also the operation of the whole Trinity is recognized as inseparable.

The Doctor confirms in 1. dist. 15. nu. 4. from St. Ambrose in the 3rd book De Spiritu sancto, cap. 2., where, weighing that text of Isaiah 61.¹ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he says well, says Ambrose, the Holy Spirit of the Lord has sent me to preach: because, as it were, the Son of man was sent and anointed, for according to His Deity the Spirit is not upon Christ, but in Christ: therefore that authority of Isaiah, which says that Christ was sent by the Holy Spirit, is understood of Christ as man, not, however, of the Mission of the eternal Word to be incarnated.

The Doctor admits, nevertheless, that the opinion of the Master is not improbable, affirming that Mission does not necessarily require the procession of one Person from another, but that its manifestation through some visible effect suffices. Nor does it matter that any divine Person can give Himself; for it does not follow from this that He can also send Himself, because more things are required for mission than for donation; since in the one sending there is required, as it were, authority, and in the one sent sub-authority, which in divine things are explained by producing and being produced.

I say thirdly. Mission necessarily imports the manifestation of the Person sent through the production of some created gift, invisible or visible.

Proof 1. from the words of Christ, Ioann. 4.: My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, that I may perfect His work: and cap. 6.: I came down not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me, the Father. And this is the will of Him who sent me, the Father, that of all that He has given me I should lose nothing of it, etc. Whence the Sage justly prayed, cap. 9., for the Mission of divine Wisdom in these words: Send her from Your holy heavens, and from the seat of Your greatness, that she may be with me, and labor with me, that I may know what is acceptable before You at all times.

It is confirmed. from the fact that the holy Fathers explain the Mission of the divine Persons in no other way than by the production of some effect in a creature; whence the Doctor rightly gathers, in the cited question, that divine Mission always connotes a real change in the creature; which change, although it is made by the whole Trinity, since the works of the Trinity ad extra are undivided, is nevertheless attributed in particular to the Person sent, on account of the new personal, or moral or mystical, mode by which that Person begins to be anew in the creature, as the holy Fathers expressly explain, especially Athanasius in Oration 5. against the Arians, where, weighing those words of Christ: He who sent me, the Father, etc., he says: he named the Mission the union with the man, by which the invisible nature of God could become known to men through the visible: for God does not change place after our manner. But because He presented Himself present in the flesh, therefore the holy men wished to use the word Mission: and August. 2. De Trinitate c. 5. The invisible Father, he says, together with the Son invisible with Him, by making the same Son visible, is said to have sent him: and at the end of the chapter he infers:

It is now easy to understand also concerning the Holy Spirit, why He too is said to be sent; for a certain visible form of a creature was made in time, in which the Holy Spirit might be shown visibly... This operation, visibly expressed and offered to the eyes of mortals, is called the Mission of the Holy Spirit.

With these words the holy Fathers do not exclude the notion of the eternal procession of the Person sent from the One sending; but they connect it with the external operation.

Hence divine Mission can rightly be described as: The procession of a divine Person from the Person sending to a creature, in which He begins to be in a new mode. From which it is clear that the Father alone cannot be sent, although He gives Himself, and comes with the other divine Persons to dwell in the soul through sanctifying grace, according to that of Ioannis 14. If anyone loves me, my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him. For, says St. Augustine lib. contra Arianos cap. 4.: Only the Father is read as not sent, because He alone has no author, from whom He is begotten or from whom He proceeds. It is likewise clear that the Son is properly sent by the Father alone into the world for the Incarnation, according to that of Ioan. 8. I have come forth from God, and have come into the world: for as He proceeds from the Father alone, so He is sent by Him alone: but the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son together, as proceeding from both.

I say fourthly. That Mission on the part of the effect is twofold, namely visible, and invisible.

It is invisible, by which the Son and the Holy Spirit are sent to inhabit in a peculiar way the rational creature through sanctifying grace, as the Doctors commonly affirm with the Seraphic Bonaventure dist. 15. part. 2. articulo 1. quaest. 1. For indeed, for a Mission it is required that the Person sent exist in the one to whom He is sent, and be possessed by him: but those divine Persons are not perfectly possessed by a rational creature except through sanctifying grace, through which indeed He is within the reach of the one having and rightly using it, so that through it that divine Person sent may be enjoyed as an object. Whether, moreover, that invisible Mission is made not only to those who are first renewed through grace, or first justified, but also to those who grow in grace through the increase of justification, the Authors do not agree among themselves; for some affirm this, others deny it. Yet more rightly, with the Seraphic Doctor ibid. quaest. 3., and more suitably to the concept of Mission, seem to think those who deny that a new Mission is made through the increase of grace; for precisely to that extent the Person sent does not begin to be in the just soul in a new mode, unless insofar as, on the occasion of such increase or progress, He operates in the just soul certain particular gifts, or effects, v. g. the gift of Prophecy or the like: by which reason, while the double spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha, the Holy Spirit is rightly said to have been sent to him.

Visible Mission, as our Herinx observes Disp. 3. quaestione 1. num. 16., is on the one hand substantial in being, or is for subsisting; as is the Incarnation of the Word alone: on the other hand it is only for representing, or for appearing in a visible form; as the Holy Spirit was sent in the form of a Dove, in fiery tongues, in a sound, in a bright cloud, which were not substantially assumed by the Holy Spirit, but only used as signs signifying by institution, not indeed all the Persons, but specially the Holy Spirit, and representing the interior sanctification. These symbols, moreover, were formed either immediately by God, or (as Augustine judges 3. De Trinit. cap. 1. and 10. and seq.) by the ministry of Angels: whence the Dove was indeed a true body, but not a true nor a living Dove, according to the truer opinion, which St. Bonaventure hands down 1. dist. 16. Art. 1. Quaest. 3. ad 4., and therefore it immediately ceased; hence also among the Evangelists Matth. 3. and Luc. 3: the Spirit is read to have descended like a Dove. Similarly, according to St. Bonaventure above, the fire was indeed a true body, not however true fire, because it did not burn; and therefore the Dispersed tongues are said to have appeared as of fire, Act. 2.²

For many mystical reasons that divine Spirit appeared on the day of Pentecost under the form of Fire, of a Dove, and of Wind, or of a mighty Spirit. For He assumed the figure of fire first, to testify His Divinity: for fire is the symbol of Divinity, according to that of Deuteronomy: Our God is a consuming fire: whence excellently St. Gregory Homil. 30. in Evangelia: the Son coeternal with the Father and the Son is shown in fire, because God is an incorporeal, invisible, and ineffable fire.

Moreover, by this very adumbration of fire He testified Himself to be the notional Love of the Father and of the Son: for Love is a kind of fire, and is wont to be depicted under the form of fire, and is always described by the Poets with fires and flames.

Second, to express His divine fruitfulness toward creatures: for as fire in its own sphere seems unfruitful, and produces nothing, while in sublunary regions it is the parent and cause of absolutely all productions: so also that divine Spirit in the very bosom of the Deity indeed produces nothing; but, says Cornelius Mussius lib. 3. De sacra Historia: He produces the Heavens, the Earth, the Elements, and all living things; and what He has produced He nourishes, conserves, vivifies, and renews: the Founder of Nature, the Author of grace, the Consummator of glory, the universal Principle of all things: for from Him flow all the Charisms of graces, for He it is who adopts those reborn in Christ as sons of God in Baptism, the same Spirit filling the font, who filled also the Virgin, says St. Leo; which wondrous fruitfulness indeed the Spouse, beholding, besought, in Canticles first, let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, which St. Bernard thus weighs Serm. 9. The kiss of such efficacy and fruitfulness is holy (namely the Holy Spirit, who is the most sweet kiss of the Father and the Son) that from it, as soon as the Spouse has received it > she conceives, with her breasts surely swelling, and as it were growing plump with milk: for through charity the holy soul not only conceives the Son of God, but is itself made the Daughter of God.

— Thirdly: fire has three principal effects, namely to burn, to purge, to illuminate, all of which the Holy Spirit operates in us, since He kindles our hearts with the fire of His love; whence St. Augustine in the Soliloquy: O holy fire, how sweetly You burn! how longingly You burn up! You burn, I say, not indeed to destroy and consume, like corporeal fire, but rather to increase and perfect. Whence Christ rightly said: I came to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I, but that it be kindled? Which St. Ambrose excellently weighs Serm. 18. in Psalmum 118:

The Lord sent fire upon the earth, not to set it aflame again with a Sodomite conflagration, nor to exclude it from the gift of bestowed fruitfulness, or from the use, or the flower, of greenness: for He is wont to approve and increase His work rather than to diminish or damn it. The Lord therefore scattered divine fire in the new Testament, which would inflame the secret affections of minds with the ardor of divine knowledge, which would burn up the vapor of faith and devotion, which would kindle the desire of virtue.

Similarly He purges and illuminates, according to that of Lamentations: From on high He sent fire into my bones, and instructed me: whence St. Gregory proclaims the most happy School of the Holy Spirit:

In which there is no delay for learning; for as soon as it has touched the mind, it teaches, and merely to have touched is to have taught: for, as he adds Homil. 30. in Evangelio: behold, He fills the boy harpist, and makes him a psalmist; He fills the herdsman shepherd, and makes him a Prophet; He fills the Fisherman, and makes him a Preacher; He fills the persecutor, and institutes him Doctor of the Gentiles; He fills the Publican, and makes him an Evangelist. O what an artisan is this Spirit!

He likewise put on the form of a Dove: first, to testify the purity and cleanliness, which the Holy Spirit specially effects and requires, and of which the Dove is an excellent symbol: whence beautifully Basil:

The most chaste Dove applies itself wholly to heavenly things, nor does it ever lift even the least grain from the earth without immediately raising its eyes to heaven; it does not fly around corpses and flesh, but it settles beside the streams of waters, where the image of Heaven is reflected; heavenly things are always set before its gaze, and it always contemplates the things above.

Second, He assumed the figure of a Dove, to show Himself the Author and Lover of meekness: whence Paschasius lib. 2. in Matthaeum:

The Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a Dove, that through it He might set forth of what sort they would be who were to attain to the grace of the same Spirit: for the Dove has no gall, and from this He intimates that whoever longs to come to the grace of the Holy Spirit ought not to be in the gall of bitterness.

Third, finally, by this form of the Dove He declared Himself the Artificer of Peace; for, as Tertullian says lib. De Baptismo cap. 8:

Just as after the waters of the deluge, by which iniquity was purged, the Dove, the herald, sent down from the Ark and returned with the OLIVE branch, announced peace to the lands after the celestial wrath, which sign is also held out for peace among the nations: so after the old offenses the Dove of the holy Spirit flies to us, bringing the peace of God, sent forth from the Heavens.

Finally, He testified His descent into souls by the form of Wind, and of a mighty Spirit: first indeed, to signify His origin, and demonstrate His Personal property, for He proceeds as love; but love signifies a certain impulse, by which the will of the lover is impelled toward the beloved: second, just as the origin of the winds lies hidden from us, and is known to Him alone, who brings forth the winds from His treasuries, so Christ said, Ioannis 3.³ The Spirit breathes where He will, and you hear His voice, and you know not whence He comes, or whither He goes. Third and finally, wind, or air, is necessary for life; for without breath and respiration one does not live: so also the Holy Spirit is altogether necessary for spiritual life: whence St. Ambrose, weighing those words of Genesis 2. God formed man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life: and also those which Christ, breathing upon the Disciples, said: Receive the Holy Spirit: thus he speaks: God had breathed upon you, that by the gift of His inspiration you might have the grace, which guilt had taken away; you had been made a living soul, but because the sinner could not keep the seal, therefore Jesus came, and when He had said this, He breathed, saying: receive the Holy Spirit.

I would set about saying more, did not the oracle of Ecclesiasticus, chapter 43., deter me: Many things, he says, shall we say of God, and we shall not reach the end, and He Himself is the consummation of all discourses. Wherefore I will make an end of speaking by proclaiming the descent of the divine Spirit in these words of St. Augustine Tract. 74. in Ioannem:

Come, kindly Spirit, come, love of the divine Numen, holy communication of the omnipotent Father and of the most blessed Offspring, omnipotent Paraclete, consoler of the mourning, glide into the inmost parts of my heart with mighty power, and, O pious inhabitant, gladden all the dark places of my mind with the splendor of the shining Numen. Come, strength of the fragile, Teacher of the humble, destroyer of the proud. Come, Father of the Poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of hearts. Give the merit of virtue, give the issue of salvation, give everlasting joy. Amen.

⁴