For the holy patriarchs also, when they were bidden to offer sacrifice to the Son, knew that they were rendering to the Father and to the Son alike the homage of pleasing service. It was enjoined upon them by God that they should build an altar to the Son, not because sacrifice was not to be offered to the Father, but that what was immolated by the saints might be immolated to the Son and to the Father alike; not that the Son should be set before the Father, but lest the Begotten should be thought in any way to be ranked after the Begetter. Accordingly, though no one may doubt that the rightness of our faith is confirmed by the witness of the patriarchal sacrifice, whoever with hardened heart reckons that it must be resisted goes astray, an alien from the faith and the fellowship of the saints;
and we could weave in testimonies from the prophets too, of no lesser firmness and strength, were it not that, mindful of the whole debt we owe, we prefer to hasten as swiftly as possible to the solution of the remaining questions as well. CHAPTER V. Another testimony from the Prophets, that sacrifice is offered to the Son also. The obduracy of the heretics who do not sacrifice to the Son. Catholics offer to the whole Trinity, even if they name the Father alone. Nevertheless, lest anyone under the guise of abundance should suppose that we have concealed a poverty of defense,
we shall bring forward one testimony from the prophets, by which it may plainly be shown that the holy prophets, divinely inspired, foretold by a sure and most faithful prophecy that in the time of the New Testament also spiritual victims should be offered by the faithful not to the Father only, but also to the Son. For Zephaniah says: Wait for me, says the Lord, unto the day of my resurrection, in the time to come, for a testimony; for my judgment shall be upon the gathering of the nations, that I may receive kings and pour out upon them the wrath of my fury;
for in the fire of my jealousy shall the whole earth be consumed, for then I will restore to the peoples a language among their generations, that all may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him under one yoke; from beyond the river of Ethiopia I shall receive those who observe me, who have been scattered; they shall bring victims to me in that day (Zeph. III, 8). What, I ask, is clearer than this prophecy? Or what hiding-place of dark obstinacy can heretical unbelief discover, whereby it might escape the light of so great a manifestation? Since the Lord has so set his tabernacle in the sun (Ps. XVIII, 6) that there is none who can hide himself from his heat.
For if anyone, benumbed by the icy cold of unbelief, hides himself, he can withdraw from himself the aid of propitiation, but he cannot conceal himself from vengeance. Behold, he who commands himself to be awaited on the day of his resurrection, he himself shows that victims are to be offered to him by all the nations; that it might be recognized that that sacrifice is acceptable to God which the pure and suppliant devotion of the faithful offers in common to the Father and the Son. Warned by these and suchlike testimonies, would that the heretics might hear, not with deaf ears, but recognize the truth of the faith by the illumination divinely granted to them, so that, receiving the saving light, they might henceforth cease to wander in the darkness of deadly unbelief.
They who do not offer sacrifice with the Son, and who by wretched obduracy fall away from the faith of the patriarchs and prophets, impiously offending, show themselves condemned by their very selves. For by an apostolic pronouncement every heretic is known to have been condemned by this sentence: that a heretic, after a first and second admonition, is by all means to be avoided (Tit. III, 10), because such a one is not only perverted, but is even condemned by his own judgment.
But if any catholic believers have hitherto seemed ignorant of this mystery, they ought henceforth to know that every homage of honor and of saving sacrifice is rendered by the catholic Church alike to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, that is, to the abiding Trinity. And it is manifest that in the one name of this Trinity holy baptism too is celebrated. For no prejudice is created against the Son or the Holy Spirit when the prayer is directed by the one offering to the person of the Father. Its consummation, since it embraces the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, shows that there is no distinction within the Trinity. For while the word of honor is directed to the person of the Father alone, by the faith of him who rightly believes the whole Trinity is honored:
and when the intention of him who offers is directed to the Father, the gift of the sacrifice is offered to the whole Trinity by one and the same act of him who offers. Therefore, while we offer one sacrifice to the Trinity, who is the one and true God, let us not be moved by the empty objections of the heretics, since to follow this and hold it most firmly we are both instructed by the oracles divinely proclaimed and strengthened by the examples of the saints who went before. CHAPTER VI. Mommus's third question: why in the sacrifices the sending of the Spirit alone is besought. The Holy Spirit is not therefore less because he is sent by the Father and the Son, for the Son also is sent. The sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is not made locally.
Scripture teaches the immensity not only of the Father, but also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now, then, we must also revisit that question concerning the sending of the Holy Spirit, namely: why, if sacrifice is offered to the whole Trinity, only the sending of the Holy Spirit is besought for the sanctifying of the gift of our oblation, as though (so to speak) the Father himself, God, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, could not sanctify the sacrifice offered to him; or as though the Son himself could not sanctify the sacrifice of his own body, which we offer, seeing that he himself sanctified his own body which he offered, in order to redeem us;
or as though the Holy Spirit had to be sent to consecrate the Church's sacrifice, as if the Father or the Son were absent from those who sacrifice. First, then, it behooves us to remember that in this word 'sending' the Holy Spirit is to be received neither as lower nor as lesser; for if lesser, then surely inferior, and if inferior, then surely lesser. Now we have given this warning beforehand, knowing that it is very often objected by the heretics against our faith, that the Holy Spirit is therefore to be believed lesser than the Father and the Son because he is sent both by the Father and by the Son.
But further, if the one who sends is to be believed greater than the one sent, let them recognize that in this their perfidy is refuted, because just as the Holy Spirit is read to be sent by the Father and the Son, so also the Son is found sent by the Father and the Spirit. This the Son himself both said through the prophet, long before he was sent, and after he was sent confirmed it by his own testimony. For coming into Nazareth and entering the synagogue, when the book of the prophet Isaiah had been handed to him to read, he unrolled that passage where it is written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore he anointed me; to preach the gospel to the poor he sent me (Luke IV, 18); and having given back the volume, he testified that the truth of that prophecy was fulfilled by its present effect, saying:
Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears (Luke IV, 21). But in another passage of the same prophet he shows that he was sent by the Lord and by his Spirit, in these words: And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit (Isa. XLVIII, 16). And that the Holy Spirit is sent by himself to the disciples he declares in this manner, before his passion: But when the Paraclete has come, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he shall bear witness of me (John XV, 26). And earlier he had taught that this same Spirit is sent also by the Father, saying: But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things (John XIV, 26).
The Son, therefore, is sent by the Father and by the Spirit, and the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, no Christian ought to take the sending of the Son or of the Holy Spirit as made locally, but by that name of 'sending' let us understand the work of a manifestation graciously granted. For thus the Son was not sent locally, nor is the Holy Spirit sent locally, just as neither is there a local coming of the Father himself. Yet the Son promises to those who love him not only his own coming, but also the Father's; for he says: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him (John XIV, 23).
As therefore the Father and the Son are indeed nowhere absent, and yet come to whom they will (for they come by grace, who by power are nowhere absent), so also in the sending or coming of the Holy Spirit no local motion of his is to be received, but the effect of our sanctification is to be believed. For if the Son was sent locally according to his Deity, or the Holy Spirit is thought to be sent locally, then God the Father too will be believed—which be far from us—to be enclosed in a place. And where then is that whereby God himself thus intimates to us his own immensity, saying: I fill heaven and earth (Jer. XXIII, 24)? The immensity of the Son too the prophetic word commends to us. Of whom holy Jeremiah speaks thus:
He is great and has no end; lofty and immense (Baruch III, 25). And because he himself is the power and wisdom of God, of him surely it is said: He reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly (Wisd. VIII, 1). By apostolic preaching too we hold it established that in Christ all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through him and in him, and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him (Col. I, 16). What then is there that he cannot fill with his presence, in whom the Apostle declares all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, to hold together!
Of the immensity of the Holy Spirit too Scripture speaks thus: The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world (Wisd. I, 7). Wherefore David also, believing in his heart unto righteousness the one substantial immensity of the holy Trinity, nay rather confessing it with his mouth unto salvation, sang thus: Whither shall I go from your Spirit, and whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there, and if I descend into hell, you are present. And if I take my wings before the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me (Ps. CXXXVIII, 7). CHAPTER VII. The whole Trinity is everywhere. By the name 'Spirit' the spiritual gifts of grace are sometimes signified.
Since therefore, as we have said, the whole Trinity remains by the unity of its Deity naturally immense and infinite, and is thus nowhere locally, yet nowhere absent, and is so wholly everywhere that it can neither be divided in parts among the parts of the whole creation, nor be enclosed by the totality of the whole creation—as often as the Holy Spirit is asked of the Father to consecrate the sacrifice, this is the first principle of faith, the first caution to be held healthfully by all Christians: that a local coming of the Holy Spirit be by no means imagined or supposed. For the Apostle says to the faithful: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (I Cor. III, 16)? And in another place:
Praying at all times in the Spirit, and watching in him (Eph. VI, 18). And the Savior himself says to his disciples: If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you shall know him, because he will abide with you and will be in you (John XIV, 15). Whence Paul also proclaims that we have received this same Spirit of adoption, saying: For you have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you have received the Spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry, Abba, Father (Rom. VIII, 15).
To the faithful, therefore, who are the temple of God, and in whom the Spirit of God dwells, nay rather who are the temple of the Holy Spirit—as the Apostle says: Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God (I Cor. III, 16)?—to whom also the same apostle commands that they should pray in him and watch in him: how is the Holy Spirit believed to be sent, as though previously absent? Since no one can even worthily pray and watch unless the Holy Spirit has poured himself into him. Wherefore, as the Apostle says, comparing spiritual things with spiritual (I Cor.
II, 13), and in the Spirit, who is by nature God, thinking nothing corporeal, nothing temporal, nothing local, nothing mutable, we ought to consider that by the name of the Holy Spirit the gifts of spiritual grace are sometimes designated. For we read in the book of Kings: When Elijah was to be translated by divine gift, and had given his disciple, before he was taken up, confidence to ask whatever he wished, that one asked that the spirit which Elijah had received might be granted to him twofold. Where surely we understand that by the name 'spirit' the gift of spiritual grace is designated.
For the substance of the Holy Spirit can neither be increased nor diminished, who, just as he is everlasting without beginning and without end, so is he perfect without increase or decrease. CHAPTER VIII. The gifts of the Holy Spirit in us can be increased or diminished, but not the Spirit himself. Just as the same sun illumines different things more or less, so also the same Spirit is received in diverse ways by diverse persons. Yet his gifts, according to his own inscrutable and irreproachable will, just as we believe they can be increased in men, so we do not deny they can be diminished in them. For since the gifts of the Holy Spirit are charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, faith, modesty, continence (Gal. V, 22);
and since to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit (I Cor. XII, 8)—yet all these things can both be increased and diminished in men. Whence comes that in which the apostles themselves ask that an increase of faith be granted to them from the Lord, saying: Lord, increase our faith (Luke XVII, 5). That we grow in charity too the blessed Apostle himself demonstrates, who says: But doing the truth, let us grow in charity in him through all things (Eph. IV, 15). But how do we grow in charity, unless by the gift of spiritual grace we receive an increase of charity? For the charity of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given
to us (Rom. V). This is understood of the other spiritual gifts too, which, according to each one's capacity, are said to be either increased or diminished in us. For the increases and decreases of such charisms are spoken of according to this, that in some they are present more or less, not that they can in themselves be either increased or diminished. For the sun is as great when it is seen by healthy eyes as when it is seen by injured ones; nor is it itself diminished when it is perceived less by troubled eyes, nor increased when it is poured more abundantly into healthy eyes. For that diversity of vision comes not from a diversity in the sun, but consists in the diversity of health and infirmity.
And although it illumines one thing less and another more, it nevertheless has in itself one and the same light, which one sees less and another more. So also, while the Holy Spirit remains unchangeably in himself without increase or decrease, Elisha asked for himself a twofold spirit—in that he asked for an increase of spiritual grace. CHAPTER IX. Who are said to have spoken in the tongues of angels. Those who teach the law and do not do it. Where charity is, there is the Holy Spirit. When therefore the coming of the Holy Spirit is besought to sanctify the sacrifice of the whole Church, nothing else, it seems to me, is besought than that, through spiritual grace, in the Body of Christ (which is the Church) the unity of charity may be perpetually preserved unbroken.
For this is the principal gift of the Holy Spirit, without which whoever speaks with the tongues of men and of angels can, like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, give a sound, but cannot have life. Though he have all prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, though he have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not charity, he is nothing. Though he distribute all his goods to feed the poor, and deliver his body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits him nothing (I Cor. XIII, 1, 2, 3). For because the Apostle says the law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator (Gal. III, 19), they spoke in the tongues of angels who taught in their mouths the things of the law,
yet by their depraved works waged war against the law. Of whom the Savior himself says: What they say, do; but what they do, do not do; for they say and do not (Matt. XXIII, 3). Saul too had prophecy, and Simon Magus believed and received the sacrament of baptism; for the demons also, while they believe and tremble, seem to have faith, but it profits them nothing, because they have not charity. Many too, distributing their goods to the poor, because they took no care to expend zeal on acquiring charity, indeed gave away their possessions, which profited them nothing for this reason, that they lost themselves by not acquiring the charity which they ought to have acquired.
By these tokens, therefore, it is shown that the Holy Spirit is there where the end of the commandment is, that is, charity out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned (I Tim. I, 5). But where charity together with faith is not, whatever gifts there may be of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit himself cannot be there; and through this the abundance of those gifts profits nothing where some gift of the Spirit is so had that the Spirit himself is not had. Accordingly, such persons, though they seem partakers of certain paternal gifts, are yet not sharers of the paternal inheritance, since the Holy Spirit is the pledge of our inheritance (Eph. I, 14).
And in this our God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, according as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unblemished in his sight in charity. CHAPTER X. Rightly, therefore, does the Church in the sacrifice beseech the coming of the Holy Spirit. By the incarnation of Christ there is peace and unity for us with God. Through the Holy Spirit Christ was born and the Church reborn. Christ and the Church. Through the Holy Spirit there is unity of Christ and the Church. Through the Holy Spirit we are built up in Christ into a holy temple in the Lord.
While, therefore, the Church beseeches that the Holy Spirit be sent to her from heaven, she beseeches that the gift of charity and unanimity be conferred upon her by God. And when could the holy Church (which is the body of Christ) more fittingly beseech the coming of the Holy Spirit than for the consecrating of the sacrifice of the body of Christ?—she who knows that her very Head, according to the flesh, was born of the Holy Spirit. For thus is Mary instructed by the angelic word: The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you; therefore also that which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God (Luke I, 35).
The evangelist Matthew too, filled with the same Holy Spirit, affirms that when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit (Matt. I, 18). And to Joseph he relates that the angel said in a dream: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take Mary your wife, for that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit. But what was accomplished by the mystery of that dominical incarnation, save that things divided might be united, and things at variance be made at peace? For Paul is witness concerning Christ: For he is our peace, who made both one and, breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh;
abolishing the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might make in himself the two into one new man, making peace, that he might reconcile both in one body to God, slaying the enmities in himself through the cross; and coming, he preached peace to those who were far off, and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. II, 14). This, then, was done by divine charity, that from the very Spirit the body of that Head might be reborn, of whom that Head himself was born. And for this reason it is necessary for us that, just as Christ was born of the Holy Spirit—when God the Only-begotten, the union of man, came forth as a bridegroom from his chamber in the womb of the Virgin—
so the Church, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, should cleave to Christ, as a wife to her husband, and as a body to its head. For the Apostle says: For Christ is the head of the Church, he the savior of the body. And again: For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones; for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh (Eph. V, 29). Expounding which he added: This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church. This testimony of the Old Testament the Lord, when he brought it forth against the temptings of the Pharisees, followed up and joined: Therefore now they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt. XIX, 6). That therefore in that holy wedlock, which was accomplished in the chamber of the virginal womb, they should now be not two, but one flesh, was done by spiritual grace. That this too may be held perpetually unbroken, spiritual grace works; because that this unity of the body may cleave to its head, and that, knowing that all who withdraw themselves far from him shall perish, and that he will destroy all who commit fornication away from him, it may itself chastely and sweetly say: But for me it is good to cleave to God (Ps. LXXII, 27). And again: My soul has cleaved close after you (Ps. LXII, 9). That charity of God works it, which is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom. V, 5).
Through this Holy Spirit so great is the unity of Christ and the Church, that the Vessel of election, though he says: For Christ is the head of the body, the Church (Col. I, 18), yet does not hesitate to call that very body of Christ truly Christ. Thus indeed he says, writing to the Corinthians: For as the body is one, and has many members, but all the members of the body, though they be many, are one body, so also is Christ (I Cor. XII, 12). And to show that this body, which is so Christ's that it is Christ, though it has many members, remains and consists one only by the grace of the Holy Spirit, he immediately adds, saying: For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles;
whether bond or free; and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (I Cor. XII, 13). That spiritual grace, therefore, through the unity of peace and charity, does not cease day by day to build up the body of Christ, which in the womb of the Virgin Mary fashioned the gift of wisdom, which is the head of this body. Whence the blessed Apostle shows that we too are built up in him, in these words: Therefore you are now no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; in whom all the building, being framed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together into a habitation of God, in the Spirit (Eph. II, 19).
This building, by which we are built up in the Spirit, the Apostle testifies in another place is made for no other purpose than for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ. Where, intimating the unity of that same spiritual building, which consists in charity, he says: Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may no longer be little ones tossed about, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in craftiness unto the circumvention of error.
But doing the truth in charity, let us grow up in him in all things, who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, fitted and joined together through every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single member, makes the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity (Eph. IV, 13). CHAPTER XI. This spiritual building is most rightly sought when the bread and cup are consecrated. Yet our sanctification is effected by the whole Trinity. Those who withdraw from the unity of the Church lose the Holy Spirit. This spiritual building of the body of Christ, therefore, which is done in charity (namely when, according to the word of blessed Peter,
living stones are built up into a spiritual house, into a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ [I Pet. II, 5])—this spiritual building, I say, is never sought more opportunely than when by the very body of Christ (which is the Church), in the sacrament of the bread and cup, the body and blood of Christ themselves are offered: For the cup which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? and the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord? for we, being many, are one bread, one body, and all partake of the one bread (I Cor. X, 16). And therefore we ask that, by that same grace by which it came about that the Church was made the body of Christ, by that same grace