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Behold, without qualification he calls the Holy Spirit Lord and God, by whose word and answer he had received that he should see Christ. You see that it is to be understood specially of the Holy Spirit when it is said in the prophets: 'The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken,' and: 'I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me.' Here you may vow that this name — that is, 'the Lord God' — is to be referred to the person of the Holy Spirit, who spoke in David; or at least, in the one God, acknowledge the will of the Three, the power of the Three, the substance of the Three; because, when you have said 'Father,' the person of one is understood; when you have said 'God,' the whole Trinity is designated. We receive also in the Acts of the Apostles that He is undoubtedly God who had foretold through the prophets the sufferings of Christ.
For it says thus: 'But God, who foretold through the mouth of all the prophets that His Christ should suffer, has thus fulfilled it' — namely His Christ, that is, filled with the charism of His own anointing; and again: 'the things which God spoke through the mouth of His holy prophets from of old.' As for what it says — 'the things which God spoke through the mouth of His holy ones' — it says 'His holy ones' for this reason, because sanctification pertains properly to the Holy Spirit. We read in Isaiah: 'Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?' Who is this Lord who says through Isaiah that He fills heaven and earth, but the Holy Spirit, who poured into that same Isaiah the prophetic power and the spirit of truth?
As, therefore, by the prophetic dispensation, so also the will of the Trinity assigns the grace of the second birth especially to the Holy Spirit, as He says in John: 'What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.' And in another place the power of renewing man is described as being with the Holy Spirit: 'But you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence'; and, as was said above: 'Unless one is born again of water and of the Holy Spirit'; and to Titus: 'He saved us,' he says, 'through the washing of regeneration and of the renewing of the Holy Spirit.' Let us see who this is whose children we are made through the grace of adoption:
'He gave them,' it says, 'power to become the children of God,' and again: 'who were born not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.' You see most plainly that this Holy Spirit, in whom we are reborn, is God, by whose paternity we are given the gift. He Himself in another place assigns this more clearly than the light: 'I will be,' He says, 'to them a Father, and they shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty' — rightly Almighty, who blots out the bond of sin, who loosens the chains of consciences, and strips the man who believes in Him of the foulness of corrupted nature, and adorns him with the garment of innocence, the beauty of righteousness, the robe of immortality, and by His holy paternity transcribes His sons into the angelic estate.
Let no one esteem the Holy Spirit to be associated with creatures. He who can bestow eternal liberty is beyond the condition of servitude. 'For you have not received,' says the Apostle, 'the spirit of servitude again in fear, but you have received the Spirit of the adoption of sons; and the Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.' Undoubtedly He is God, who through the remission of sins makes men the sons of God. It is established that the whole creation, even of angels and archangels, was liable to sin; yet the ruin of the transgressors established their obedience toward God, their solicitude, their love. There was made a confirmation of humility, of subjection, of stability, and an acknowledgment of frailty.
The Holy Spirit, unless He were free above all, could not make free men out of servants. For if He were a creature, however much the grace of holiness might have remained in Him by God's conferring, there would nevertheless remain the consciousness of a debtor. And therefore it is said: 'No one can forgive sins except God alone.' Whoever that man is, let him choose which he will: either let him confess the Holy Spirit, who forgives sins, to be through all things God; or, if he does not believe that pardon of sins can be granted through Him, he has emptied out in himself the benefit of regeneration and the sacrament of baptism. It belongs, therefore, to God alone to absolve things bound, to restore things corrupted, to expiate things stained. And therefore, conscious of our own weakness and of His majesty, we cry out to Him with groaning:
'Against You only have I sinned' — that is, You who alone are not held by the law of sin, You who alone are estranged from it not actually but by nature, and therefore You alone can absolve debtors, You who alone are free from debts, You who possess what You have not borrowed from elsewhere but are full from Your own. For no one prior gave to You, nor are You watered by virtues derived from elsewhere, nor has any transfusion into You been made from anything else; but You Yourself are the fount of Your own river and Your own glory. Yours is a nature which, just as it knows no beginning, so has received nothing from any prior source. VIII. WHERE IT IS SHOWN THAT THE TEMPLE OF GOD IS THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. The sacred oracles define that the inhabitant of the human heart is properly the Holy Spirit: 'The Father,' He says, 'will give you another
Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever'; and to the Corinthians: 'He will also give life to your mortal bodies, on account of His Spirit that dwells in you'; and therefore we rightly understand it written concerning the Holy Spirit: 'the kingdom of God is within you.' Of God surely is the kingdom, of those who merit to prepare themselves for Him as a temple of God — surely not of a creature. Hear through the Apostle the voice of our indweller: 'You are,' he says, 'the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you'; and in another place: 'as God says: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God.' Behold, He Himself who dwells in the temple of the human heart declares that He is God.
Ananias, among those who, honoring God, sold their substance from their just labors and laid it before the feet of the apostles, is known to have promised a vow to God, and is convicted of having lied to the Holy Spirit, as the apostle Peter says: 'Ananias, why has Satan tempted your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?' And following on, he added: 'You have not lied to men, but to God.' What is this? He sins against the Creator, and yet Scripture so lessens his sin as to establish him guilty toward a creature according to the sense of impiety, and to condemn him as a debtor to a lesser one on account of an insult to a greater? It is not so. Manifestly He is endowed with divine power, against whom the offense of sacrilege is referred, of whom in another place He says:
'But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit shall not have remission, neither in this age nor in that to come.' Since therefore he tempted God by transgression, he is said to have deceived the Holy Spirit. Wherefore know that the cause of the Holy Spirit and of God is one, the glory one, the reverence one. And therefore most evidently in the following discourse he concluded concerning the Holy Spirit: 'You have not,' he says, 'lied to men, but to God.' While Peter was speaking to Cornelius, the faithful of the circumcision who had come with Peter were astonished that the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured out even upon the nations. You see that the Holy Spirit conferred grace not from another's store but from His own. If you should ask who this is who gave the grace, He accordingly taught, saying:
If, then, God gave them the same grace: this Giver of grace, whom he above declared to be the Holy Spirit, he here specifically declares to be God. There by a proper name, here by a common name, the repeated confession is proven. But when he says, 'And upon the nations the grace of the Holy Spirit has been poured out,' he who is the author of grace is himself God by nature. It belongs to God alone to bestow the gifts of charisms from his own store, so that the Apostle too is seen to have said of him: 'I have laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God with me.' Rightly is he pronounced God who is the dispenser of grace and of human salvation. And Peter adds: 'Who was I, that I could hinder God?' — that God, assuredly, who poured himself out upon the nations and upon Cornelius in the flood of overflowing grace. 9.
Where, against the Novatians, God gave repentance unto life to the Gentiles — he who, assuredly, is shown to be God the Holy Spirit by the very order of the reading. Observe how, in the person of the Holy Spirit, who suddenly filled Cornelius and his companions, the name of God is celebrated with manifold attestation: 'When they heard these things,' it says, 'they held their peace and glorified God, saying: Then to the Gentiles also has God granted repentance unto life.' In which passage, against the Novatians, it must be noted that he is said to grant repentance — which, assuredly, he bestows in no other way than through the administration of his servants. When, therefore, he says, 'Who was I, that I could hinder God?' and again:
'Then to the Gentiles also has God given repentance unto life' — in matters so manifest, what interpretation is to be awaited that would not satisfy even the ignorant, or the unbelieving, in the coming of the Holy Spirit, when the confession of the divine name is so often repeated? 10. Where, in the First to the Corinthians, the Holy Spirit is declared to be God by the distributions of powers. Take, from the letter to the Corinthians, what alone can suffice to assert the divinity of the Holy Spirit. He says, in the Epistle to the Hebrews: 'God bearing them witness with signs and wonders and diverse powers and distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.' Let us ask the Apostle himself whether this distributor of charisms is one of the creatures. We have in the First to the Corinthians:
'I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says Anathema to Jesus, and no one can say the Lord Jesus but in the Holy Spirit.' Observe how here he most absolutely designated the Spirit of God to be the Holy Spirit. Concerning the Holy Spirit, whom in the preceding sentence he set forth as the Spirit of God speaking, consider what follows — how manifestly it testifies that he is God and Lord: 'There are diversities of graces,' it says, 'but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God.' As though the blessed Apostle had been consulted about the divinity of the Holy Spirit, plainly, concerning him of whom he had said 'the same Spirit,' he adds:
'the same God, who works all things in all.' He could not work all things if he were one of all things. Here acknowledge the Holy Spirit — whether clearly expressed in his own name as well as in that of Lord and God, or at any rate joined to the Trinity. But here, in the divisions of gifts, the divine discourse is rather understood to have designated the Holy Spirit, because above we learn that the grace of distributions belongs to the Holy Spirit by a special dispensation. But as for what he said — 'the same Lord, the same God' — in the following chapter he shows that it is to be referred to the Holy Spirit, saying:
'To one indeed by the Spirit is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the grace of healings in one Spirit, to another the working of powers, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of words. But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills.' Subject to none, but he is the heavenly Lord, who bestows the heavenly gifts by his own will and by the right of his power. 11. It must be noted that, just as he speaks of one God, so he speaks of one Holy Spirit, which could in no way be said of a common creature — nor could it be said of such a one that 'he divides to each as he wills.'
You see that, just as there is one Father and one Son, so also there is one Holy Spirit, as he consequently assigns: 'For in one Spirit we have all been made to drink.' Here, if he were of a common throng or a multitude of creatures, he could in no way be called one. And when you have here, 'to another,' it says, 'is given faith in the same Spirit,' who bestows this faith the same Apostle to the Corinthians declared, saying: 'and to each one as God has apportioned the measure of faith.' You see that without doubt he pronounces this apportioner of faith to be God. Although in so manifold a bounty of such great gifts the very magnificence of the work by itself proclaims the power of its author, yet concerning it he thus concluded:
'But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills' — as also in another place: 'The Spirit breathes where he wills'; and again: 'and in the distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.' Here, then, is not the ministry of a subject servitude, but the free choice of authority; and in the distributions of heavenly goods there is the inexhaustible loving-kindness of the highest bounty. As for what it says — 'and in the distributions of the Holy Spirit' — whether this distributor, that is, this divider, is God, he taught to the Corinthians, saying: 'and there are diversities of operations, but the same God.' We read in the Acts of the Apostles: 'Take heed,' it says, 'to yourselves and to the whole flock, over which the Holy Spirit has set you bishops, to rule the Church of God.'
This one, who set bishops in the Church, the chosen vessel declares to the Corinthians to be God, thus saying: 'Some indeed God has set in the Church.' Who is this God but the Holy Spirit, whose office in his person is shown by the distribution of graces, as the connected discourse follows: 'God,' it says, 'has set in the Church first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then powers, then the graces of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues. Some,' it says, 'God has set in the Church.' That here he spoke of the Holy Spirit as God, the very dispensation of sanctifications and of powers, which pertains to the Holy Spirit, makes plain.
For he it is who enriches the mouths of the prophets, dispenses the remedies of healings, multiplies the ornaments of charisms — and when he flowed into the apostles, they sang forth that he was the God of the universe by the miracles of signs and the diverse kinds of tongues. 12. Where he says that those who have been made a temple of the Holy Spirit ought so to advance that they may be worthy to bear God in the body. And so the Apostle says to the Corinthians: 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?' That the temple of the Holy Spirit is the temple of God, the preceding words of the same epistle plainly suggest, when they say: 'Or do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?' 'And the Holy Spirit,' it says, 'dwells in you.'
Who could doubt that they are the temple of that God whose dwelling-place they are proven to be? And when he had said, 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit,' he concluded the chapter thus, with luminous truth: 'Glorify,' it says, 'and bear God in your body.' Therefore he who diligently prepares in his heart a temple of purity for the Holy Spirit, by chastity and the mortification of the flesh bears God in his body; it is necessary that he bear bodily him by whom we are spiritually possessed. Wherefore, him whom you perceive worthy of a temple, you should know is to be adored with divine honours, celebrated with vows, worshipped with sacrifices. To the universal Church, then, the teacher of the Gentiles speaks:
'Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you?' To no creature is this possible, but it is the mark of the divine majesty to fill the peoples one by one, each individually, and yet to remain in the immensity of his own fullness. It is, I say, the singular and proper attribute of the divine nature to be present in all places, to enter into all things, to contain all things. It is, I say, the peculiar power of God to strip the sons of perdition of the debts of their nature, to renew them with purged consciences, to make them sons of God, and to raise them up into the glory of the heavenly kingdom.