XXXIV. which expressions do in no sort well agree to the SERM. from God) should speak to God, should interpose 2 Cor. xii. 3. Furthermore, the holy scripture doth to the Holy Spirit attribute faculties and operations annexed to him plainly personal: such are understanding; (the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things 1 Cor. ii. of God: The things of God none knoweth, but the 10, 11. Spirit of God:) will; (He divideth to every one as; he willeth :) affections; of grief, (Grieve not Holy Spirit ;) and anger, (They provoked Holy Spirit:) sense; (what he shall hear, he speak:) speech, there and in many other places; John iii. 8. the Eph. iv. 30. X his Isa.lxiii. 10. will John xvi. 13. (It Matt.x. 20. SERM. is not you, saith our Saviour, that speak, but the XXXIV. Spirit of your Father that is in you; and, The Acts xiii. 2. Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work, whereunto I have called them; and again, Acts x. 19. very emphatically, While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee.) Now these and the like faculties and acts are clearly personal; not representing any quality, or energy, but a live and intellectual substance. To interpret all these things as spoken by fiction or dramatically, what is it but to transform God's oracles into Pythian riddles, and of theology to frame a mythology? That sometimes for emphasis sake, in matters less dark or high, the holy scripture may sometime use such schemes, nothing, I confess, doth hinder; but that perpetually it should involve such a most grave and sublime matter with such tortuous forms of speech, doth in truth not seem consentaneous to its most holy and simple majesty: as more simply, more clearly, and more intelligibly, so more compendiously, it might have been said, God knoweth, God willeth, God is thus or thus affected, God speaketh; than, God's virtue knoweth, God's power willeth, God's efficacy speaketh: if these manners of speech did not otherwise differ, at least the former would be more clear, simple, and expedite, nor would it so yield occasion to errors and doubts; and therefore more worthy it would be of the holy writ. However such prosopopoeias should not be inept, but such as most appositely should agree to the matter proposed, which would not happen in this case: for of those personal attributes some at least do scarce admit those figurate senses, or do plainly refuse them : it is hard to say that a divine power doth know or hear; and who will say that a divine efficacy is af- SERM. fected with anger or sorrow? I add, that when the sin of blasphemy is said to be committed against the Holy Spirit, just in the same form of speech as against the Son, it is signified that the Holy Spirit is in the same manner a person as the Son is a person; otherwise the comparison would not seem to be well framed. 4. The Holy Spirit, in the same manner and by like right as the Father and Son, is the object of our faith, worship, obedience; the which, as by divers other ways, (as afterwards we may shew,) so especially doth appear from the form of baptism instituted and prescribed by our Lord; where we as well are baptized into the name of the Holy Spirit, as of the Father and Son: wherein is signified, and by a solemn contestation ratified, on the part of God, that those three, joined and confederated as it were, are conspiringly propitious and favourable to us; that they do receive us into their discipline, grace, and patronage; that they are ready, and by virtue of promise in a manner bound, to bestow on us excellent benefits and privileges; (on us, I say, performing the laws and conditions of the covenant then entered into ;) on our part, that we do with sound and firm faith equally (that is, thoroughly and entirely) acknowledge and confess those three; that we repose an equal (that is, a most firm) hope and confidence in them; that we do most highly reverence all and each of them; that we do sincerely and seriously undertake and promise a perpetual (and, nearest to what we are able, a perfect) obedience to them doing which things, we do (as Athanasius, or an ancient writer under his name, observeth) yield XXXIV. τέλειοι Χρισ τηχούμενοι βαπτιστ 8×૪:૬ છે. τελειοῦνται· ἐστι τῆς προσκυνήσ σεως. Athan. Dial. 1. contra Maced. p. 265. SERM. more than a simple adoration to the Holy Spirit; XXXIV. (Since, saith he, they that are catechized in order to Ei dì un sia baptism, are not, before they are baptized, perfect Tavia-Christians, but being baptized are consummated ; iv Bar. baptism therefore imports more than adoration :) τισθῶσι, hence who sees not in this first and principal mystery of our religion the Holy Spirit is exhibited to Bμ us as a person; that about him, as such, this excelἄρα μεῖζόν lent part of our duty, this eximious worship, is conversant? Attending to this point we may also see the adverse opinion to be urged with many inconveniences for if the Holy Spirit be not a person, not aptly (or rather very incongruously) he is put into the same rank with the other two Persons; not rightly are things so wholly differing in kind (things subsistent and not subsistent) conjoined, and just in the same form proposed as like objects of worship; yea superfluously and to no purpose doth the Holy Spirit seem to be adjoined, if by it nothing beside the divine efficacy is designed for acknowledging the Father, we do withal acknowledge his power and efficacy, congruous to the divine nature; worshipping the Father, we do together adore his power; devoting ourselves in obedience to the Father, we do likewise subject ourselves to his power; as if one hath promised faith and loyalty to the king, he therein hath abundantly satisfied his duty; so that there is no further need to profess himself devoted to the king's power or efficacy: who sees not that in such a case it is superfluous and idle to sever the king from his royal power? One may also ask, why with as good reason we should not be consecrated into the name of the divine goodness, of the divine justice, of the divine wisdom, or of any other divine XXXIV. attribute, as into the name of the divine power? The SERM. Socinian exposition therefore doth cast strange clouds and incongruities upon this august mystery; which yet in decency should be most clearly and simply propounded, lest in the very entrance of our Christian profession an occasion should be given of stumbling into great error. ματικῷ, in shape, as it is said in 5. The personality of the Holy Ghost is also perspicuously evinced, from its being represented under the visible shape of a subsistent thing. A substantial Ething is no proper symbol or representative of a thing a bodily accidental, nor commodiously may assume its name: to a thing having no subsistence it doth not well suit the gospel. to descend like a dove, and to rest upon Christ: supposing the Spirit were only the efficacy of God the Father, seeing the effects of faculties and operations are most aptly attributed to the persons having or exerting them, it could have been said (and that more rightly and properly) that the Father himself did appear in a corporeal figure, that the Father descended, that the Father sate upon Christ, that the Father was seen by the holy Baptist; the which it were rash to affirm. I forbear to allege, that the Holy Spirit is reckoned among the three that bear witness in heaven; that the sin against the Holy Ghost is distinguished from the sin against God the Father. I also pass over, that a trinity of persons (as many of the Fathers conceive) was represented in the apparition to Abraham; where it is said, The Lord appeared, and Gen. xviii. three men appeared to him; as also that the hymn * Cur non hîc accipiamus visibiliter insinuatam per creaturam visibilem Trinitatis æqualitatem, atque in tribus personis unum, eandemque substantiam. Aug. de Trin. ii. 11, 1 12. I. |