SERM. (Trisagias) in Isaiah and the Apocalypse do insinuate XXXIV. it; likewise that the phrases, Creavit Elohim, (Gods Isa. vi. 3. in the plural, did create in the singular ;) Faciamus Deut. vi. 4. hominem, Let us make man; Jehovah Elohim, the

Rev. iv. 8.

له

Lord our Gods; and the like, may well hither be referred. For from what hath been said the Socinian error may seem abundantly confuted.

III. We thirdly now do assert (supposing his personality) that the Holy Spirit is God, coessential to God the Father and God the Son; or that the one divine nature (with all its attributes and perfections) is common to him with the Father; or that (which is the same) the Holy Spirit is God, that most high God, most absolutely and properly so called; (for, seeing the holy scriptures do frequently inculcate that there is but one God, if the Holy Spirit be God, he must necessarily be coessential to the Father and the Son.) Now that he is God, we, against the Macedonians, or Semi-Arians, do assert, and by these arguments prove.

I. The most proper names of God and the most divine titles are everywhere (according to just interpretation and by perspicuous consequence) attributed unto the Holy Spirit: inasmuch as often, (almost ever,) upon various occasions, the same words, works, and acts are referred to God and to the Holy Spirit; so that whatever God is said to have spoken, to have performed, to have made, that also is reported said, transacted, produced by the Holy Ghost; and reciprocally, whatever doth any way regard the Holy Spirit, that is referred to God: the which doth argue that between the beings denoted by the names God and Holy Spirit an essential identity or unity doth intercede. Of the Israelites

56.

IO.

25.

being wickedly incredulous and refractory it is said, SERM. They tempted and provoked the most high God, XXXIV. and kept not his testimonies: the same Isaiah thus Ps. lxxviii. expresseth; They rebelled, and vexed his Holy Isa. Ixiii. Spirit. In Isaiah (vi. 9.) God is said to send the prophets; St. Paul reporting it saith the Holy Ghost Acts xxviii. sent them. St. Peter chargeth Ananias, that he had lied to the Holy Spirit; and thence that he had lied to God: Ananias, saith he, Why hath Satan filled Acts v. 3,4. thine heart to lie unto the Holy Ghost? presently he subjoins, Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God: he plainly by those names designeth the same things, and more than intimates it to be the same thing to lie to God, and to lie to the Spirit. Our Lord, as man, was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and for that reason was the Son of God; The Holy Luke i. 35. Ghost, said the angel, shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God: what consequence were there of this, if the Holy Ghost is not God? Our Lord also is said to have performed his miracles by the power of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit indifferently; If I, saith he in St. Mat- Matt. xii. thew, by the Spirit of God cast out devils: in St. Luke he saith, If I by the finger (that is, by the Luke xi. 20. power) of God cast out devils: and both phrases St. Paul doth equipollently express by the power of the Rom. xv. Holy Ghost: and St. Peter says, that God did the Acts ii. 22. miracles by him. The holy scripture, because dictated by the Holy Spirit, is said to be feóvevotos, or 2 Tim. iii. inspired by God. The Spirit spake in the prophets, Pet. i. 11. saith St. Peter, and the other holy writers commonly; 2 Pet. i. 21. God spake in them, saith the apostle to the Hebrews; Luke i. 70,

28.

19.

16.

I

Heb. i. I.

&c.

SERM. and others likewise so often as the holy scripture is XXXIV. called the word of God. The Holy Spirit doth shed Rom. v. 5. abroad and work charity in our hearts; we are 1 Thes. iv. thence said to be feodidakt, taught by God to love one another; yea every virtue, all holiness, is promis

8,9.

14.

cuously ascribed to God and the Holy Ghost as its Rom. viii. immediate authors; To be led by the Spirit of God, Phil. ii. 13. and, God worketh in us to will and to do, do signify the same thing. Every faithful Christian is therefore called a temple, (that is, a place consecrated to God,) because the Holy Spirit in a special 1 Cor. iii. manner is present in him; Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? saith St. Paul in our text; know ye not Rom. viii.9.that ye are God's temple? whence should we know it? from hence, that God's Spirit inhabiteth you;

16, 17. vi.

19.

2 Cor. vi. 16.

because the inhabitation of the Spirit is the same with the inhabitation of God. The same apostle Eph. ii. 22. again; In whom ye are also builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit; for an habitation of God in the Spirit; that is therefore an habitation of God, because the Spirit dwelleth in you how could the divinity of the Holy Spirit be more expressly declared? We may add, that St. Paul calleth the Holy Spirit, Lord, dè KúpLOS TO 2 Cor. iii. Пvežμá ÉσTI, But the Lord is that Spirit; which Spirit, in the words immediately following, is called the Spirit of the Lord; the which also before, as St. Chrysostom noteth, is called the Spirit of the living God: the Spirit therefore of the Lord is the Lord himself, unto whom the Jews, when the veil covering their minds is taken off, shall return. (Lastly, 1 John v. 7. St. John affirms the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one; and therefore the Holy Ghost is God.)

17, &c.

XXXIV.

vers. Ma

Athan.

Hence (for corollary to this argument) we see SERM. how we may retund the importunity of the Macedonians, who did nothing but ask where in scripture Dial. adthe Holy Ghost is called God: where, say you, is he ced. apud called God? where not? say I almost everywhere he in effect is so called: seeing when all about in the same deed, or in the same history, the same words and acts are reported of Cæsar and of the emperor, it may rightly be pronounced, that Cæsar is there called emperor; which no man, I suppose, will contradict. The case is here plainly the same between the Holy Spirit and God.

2. To the Holy Spirit are most expressly attributed all the incommunicable perfections of God; the essential characters and properties of the divine nature. The very epithet of holy (absolutely, in way of excellence characteristically put) is one of them: for, as it is in Hannah's song, There is none 1 Sam. ii.2. holy as the Lord; neither is there any beside thee: there is none beside God absolutely and perfectly holy, (that is, by a most remote distance severed from all things, far exalted above all things, peculiarly venerable and august in majesty,) whence

ayos, the Holy One, is a distinctive title of God. Yea the name of spirit itself (absolutely and eminently put, and so importing highest purity and perfectest actuality) doth seem to imply the same. Also eternity, immensity, omniscience, omnipotency, (than which no more high perfections, or more proper to

a

God, can be conceived,) are attributed to the Holy

Spirit. Eternity; for the apostle to the Hebrews

し

calls him aivov Пve~μa, the eternal Spirit ; (How Heb. ix. 14. much more, saith he, shall the blood of Christ, who by the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to

XXXIV.

7.

I Cor. ii. 10, 11.

SERM. God, purge your conscience?) Immensity; Whither, saith the Psalmist, shall I go from thy Spirit? Ps. cxxxix. and whither shall I fly from thy face? the question involveth a negation; and signifieth a manifest reason thereof: I cannot fly any whither from thy Spirit, because it is everywhere present. Omniscience; The Spirit, saith St. Paul, doth search all things, (that is, it perfectly comprehendeth all things,) even the deep things of God; rà Báon, the depths, or deepest things of God, and consequently all things which God knows, or can be known,) even those things, which to comprehend doth as far exceed the condition of a creature, as it goeth beyond the capacity of one man to discern the cogitations and affections of another man; for such a comparison St. Paul doth make: our Saviour in the gosLuke x. 32-pel saith, (None knoweth who is the Son, but the

Father; nor who is the Father, but the Son: but the Holy Spirit did questionless know who was the Father, and who the Son: he had a knowledge therefore most divine and incommunicable.) Particularly to the Holy Spirit is assigned the knowledge of future contingencies; which knowledge is peculiarly high and most proper to God, and is therefore called divination; the which peculiarly is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, as its immediate Eph. iii. 5. principle; whence he is called the Spirit of proRev. xix. phecy, the Spirit of revelation, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of truth; and from him all the prophets are said to derive their foreknowing power. To these may be adjoined other no less divine attributes of the Holy Spirit; as independency in will

i. 17.

10.

John xv.26.

1 Cor. xii. and operation; for, All these things (saith St. Paul, that is, the production of those excellent graces, the