And concerning the psalm of David we thus read to the Hebrews: 'Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today if you will hear his voice' (Ps. XCIV). And here he most plainly testifies that through David the Holy Spirit spoke. Let us see, moreover, whether he is God, through whom every prophecy is recorded as inspired. Luke asserts him to be the Lord God who spoke through the prophets, saying thus: 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and wrought the redemption of his people.' And he added: 'As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who have been from the beginning.' Absolutely it is celebrated by the evangelical oracle that the Holy Spirit, who had inspired the prophets, is the Lord and God of Israel. And in what follows, Simeon, full of the Holy Spirit:
'He received an answer,' it says, 'from the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord' (Luke II). When he had seen him, and taken him into his embrace with his hands, he blessed God—that is, the one from whom he was seen to have received the answer. He blessed God, and said: 'Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace.' And absolutely he calls the Holy Spirit, by whose word and answer he had received that he should see Christ, the Lord God. 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: I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me' (Ps. XLIX).
Here this name, that is, 'the Lord,' by whose word and answer he had received that he should see Christ—you see that it must be understood specially of the Holy Spirit, when we are told in the prophets: 'The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken.' And: 'I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me.' Here you must know that this name, that is 'the Lord God,' is to be referred to the person of the Holy Spirit who spoke in David; or else, in the one God acknowledge the will of the three, the power of the three, the substance of the three—for when you say 'Father,' one person is understood; when you say 'God,' the whole Trinity is designated. We accept also in the Acts of the Apostles that he is undoubtedly God who foretold the sufferings of Christ through the prophets, when it says:
'But God, who foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ should suffer, thus fulfilled it in his Christ' (Acts III); that is, infused with the charism of his anointing. And again: 'God who spoke by the mouth of his holy ones' (Luke I). Therefore 'of his holy ones,' because sanctification properly pertains to the Holy Spirit. We read in Jeremiah: 'Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?' (Jer. XXIII). Who is this Lord who says through Jeremiah that he fills heaven and earth, if not the Holy Spirit, who also infused Jeremiah himself with prophetic power and the spirit of truth?
If therefore through the prophetic dispensation, so also the will of the Trinity assigns the grace of the second birth especially to the Holy Spirit, as it says in John: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' And in another place the power of renewing man is ascribed as residing in the Holy Spirit: 'But you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence' (Acts I). And as was said above: 'Unless one is born again of water and of the Holy Spirit.' And to Titus he says: 'He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.' Let us see who this is whose sons we are made through the grace of adoption.
'He gave them,' it says, 'power to become the sons 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 fatherhood we are endowed. He himself in another place assigns this clearer than light: 'I will be,' he says, 'to them a Father, and they shall be to me for sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty' (II Cor. VI). Rightly Almighty, who blots out the handwriting of sin, who looses the bonds 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 loving fatherhood enrolls his sons into the angelic estate.
Let no one think that the Holy Spirit is to be associated with creatures. He is beyond the condition of servitude who can bestow eternal liberty. 'For you have not received,' says the Apostle, 'the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, and the Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God' (Rom. VIII). Undoubtedly he is God who makes sons of God through the remission of sins. The whole creation, even of angels and archangels, is acknowledged to have been subject to sin; yet the ruin of the transgressors established their obedience, their care, their charity toward God;
the humility of subjection became the confirmation of stability, the acknowledgment of frailty—[this is the work of] the Holy Spirit. Unless he were free above all, he could not make free men out of slaves. For if he were a creature, however the grace of holiness might be worn down in him, yet the consciousness of being a debtor would remain. And therefore it says: 'No one can forgive sins but God alone' (Mark II; Luke V). Whoever he is, let him choose what he will: either to confess the Holy Spirit, who forgives sins, to be in all respects God, or, if he does not believe that pardon of sins can be granted through him, he has emptied in himself the benefit of regeneration and the sacrament of baptism. It belongs therefore to God alone to absolve what is bound, to restore what is corrupted, to cleanse what is stained.
And therefore to him, conscious of our own infirmity and of his majesty, we cry out with groaning: 'Against you only have I sinned' (Ps. L)—Lord, you who alone are not held by the law of sin, who alone are estranged from it not by act but by nature, and therefore you alone can absolve debtors, you who alone are free from debts, you who have not borrowed from elsewhere what you have, but are full of your own. For no one prior gave to you, nor are you watered by powers derived from elsewhere, nor has any transfusion into you been made from any other; but you yourself are the source of your own stream, and your glory is your own nature; just as he knows no envoy [coming to him], so he has received nothing from anyone prior (John XIV; Rom. VIII; Luke XVII). CHAPTER VIII.
Wherein it is shown that the temple of God is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The sacred words properly define the Holy Spirit to be the inhabitant of the human heart: 'The Father,' it says, 'will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever' (John XIV). And to the Romans: 'He will give life also to your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit dwelling in you.' And therefore we rightly understand what is written concerning the Holy Spirit: 'The kingdom of God is within you.' For surely it is the kingdom of God for those who are counted worthy to obey him—indeed the temple of God, not of a creature. Hear through the Apostle the voice of our indweller: 'You are,' he says, 'the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.' And in another place, as God says:
'I will dwell in them and walk about in them, and I will be their God.' Behold, he himself who dwells in the temple of the human heart declares himself to be God. Ananias, among those who, honoring God, were selling their possessions from their righteous labors and laying them before the apostles' doors, is acknowledged 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, that you should lie to the Holy Spirit?' (Acts V). And following he added: 'You have not lied to men, but to God.' What is this? Does he sin against the Creator, and yet does Scripture so diminish his sin as to constitute him, according to a sense of impiety, a thing belonging to the creature, and to consign the debtor of a lesser one to the contumely of a greater? It is not so.
To one plainly endowed with divine power is the offense of sacrilege referred—of whom in another place he says: 'But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit shall not have forgiveness, neither in this world nor in the world to come' (Matt. XII). When therefore by transgression he has tempted God, he is said to have deceived the Holy Spirit. Wherefore acknowledge of the Holy Spirit and of God one cause, one glory, one reverence. And therefore most evidently in the following discourse he concludes concerning the Holy Spirit: 'You have not,' he says, 'lied to men, but to God.' When Peter spoke to Cornelius, the faithful of the circumcision who had come with Peter were astonished, because the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured out also upon the nations (Acts X).
You see that the Holy Spirit conferred not from another's, but from his own. If you ask who this is that gave grace to them—it is God. This bestower of grace, whom above [Scripture] called the Holy Spirit, here it declared specially to be God: there by his proper name, here by his common name, the repeated confession is proved. But when it says 'the grace of the Holy Spirit was poured out also upon the nations,' he himself is God by nature who is the author of grace. To God alone it belongs to bestow from his own the gifts of charisms, so that the Apostle may be seen to have said of him: 'I labored more abundantly than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me' (I Cor. XV). Rightly is he proclaimed God, who is the dispenser of grace and of human salvation. And Peter added: 'Who was I, that I could withstand God?' (Acts
XI). That God, surely, who is among the nations, poured out upon Cornelius the inrush of overflowing grace. CHAPTER IX. Wherein, against the Novatians, God gave repentance unto life to the gentiles, who is assuredly the God the Holy Spirit, as is shown in order by the very reading. Mark 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 God has given to the gentiles also repentance unto life?' (Acts XI). In which place it must be noted, against the Novatians, that he is said to give repentance, which surely he bestows not otherwise than through the ministry of his servants. While therefore it says:
'Who was I, that I could withstand God?' and again: 'Therefore God has given repentance unto life to the gentiles'—the interpretation, which in manifest matters is to be made manifest, is such that the so-often-repeated confession of the divine name in the coming of the Holy Spirit may satisfy even the ignorant or the unbelieving. CHAPTER X. Wherein, in First Corinthians, the Holy Spirit is declared to be God by the distributions of virtues. Receive [this passage] to the Corinthians: which alone can suffice for asserting the divinity of the Holy Spirit. He says through the Epistle to the Hebrews: 'God bearing witness with signs and wonders and various mighty works, and distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will' (Heb. II).
Let us ask the apostle himself whether this distributor of charisms is one of the creatures. We have in First Corinthians: 'I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says Anathema to Jesus. And no one can say Lord Jesus, but in the Holy Spirit' (I Cor. XII). Mark how here he most absolutely designated the Spirit of God to be the Holy Spirit, [calling] the Holy Spirit, whom from the foregoing sentence he set forth as the Spirit of God speaking. Clearly there follow [words] that testify how manifestly 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 if the blessed apostle had been consulted concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit, he evidently adds concerning the one of whom he had said 'the same Spirit': 'the same God, who works all in all.' He could not work all things if he were one of all things. Here acknowledge the Holy Spirit, both in his own name and in [the name of] Lord and God, either clearly expressed, or certainly associated with the Trinity. But here, in the divisions of gifts, the divine word is rather understood to have designated the Holy Spirit, because above we accept that the grace of the distributions pertains to the Holy Spirit by a special dispensation. But as for what he said, 'the same Lord, and the same God,' in the following chapter he shows it to be referred to the Holy Spirit, saying:
'To one indeed through 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 gift of healings in the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of speeches; but all these one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each one as he wills.' He is subject to none, but is the heavenly Lord, who bestows heavenly gifts by his own will and by the right of his own power. CHAPTER XI. It is to be noted that, just as he says one God, so he says one Holy Spirit—which can in no way be said of a common creature, or that it divides to each as it wills. You see that, just as there is one Father,
and one Son, so also one Holy Spirit, as he consequently assigns: 'For indeed in one Spirit we were all made to drink.' If here he were of the common throng or of the multitude of creatures, he could in no way be called one. And since here you have 'to another,' it says, 'is given faith in the same Spirit' (I Cor. XII), who bestows this faith? The same Apostle declared to the Corinthians, saying: 'And to each one as God divided the measure of faith' (Rom. XII). You see that without doubt he proclaims this divider of faith to be God. Although in so manifold a bounty of such great gifts, the very magnificence of the work proclaims the power of the author, yet of him he thus concluded: 'But all these one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each one as he wills.'
As also in another place: 'The Spirit breathes where he wills.' And again: 'And distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will' (I Cor. XII). Here therefore there is not the servitude of a subject ministry, but the free will of power; and in the distributions of heavenly goods the loving-kindness of supreme bounty is poured forth. How this distributor—that is, divider—of the distributions of the Holy Spirit is also 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,' he says, 'to yourselves and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit has set you as bishops, to rule the Church of God' (Acts XX). He who set bishops in the Church,
the Vessel of election declares to the Corinthians to be God, saying thus: 'Some indeed God has set in the Church.' What are these if not [the work of] the Holy Spirit, whose person's office the distribution of graces shows, as the connected discourse follows? 'God has set,' he says, 'in the Church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues.' 'Some,' he says, 'God has set in the Church.' That here he spoke of God concerning the Holy Spirit, the very dispensation of sanctifications and of virtues which pertains to the Holy Spirit makes manifest.
For he himself enriches the mouths of the prophets, dispenses the remedies of healings, multiplies the ornaments of charisms; by whose inflowing into the apostles they proclaimed him to be the God of the universe, [working] the wonders of signs and the diverse kinds of tongues. CHAPTER XII. Wherein he says that those who have been made the temple of the Holy Spirit ought so to advance that they may be worthy to bear God in their body. And so the Apostle says to the Corinthians: 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Spirit?' That the temple of the Holy Spirit is the temple of God, the preceding words of the same Epistle plainly suggest, when it is said: 'Do you not know that you are the temple of God? and the Holy Spirit dwells in you,' and 'the Spirit,' he says, 'of God dwells in you.'
Who can doubt that those are the temple of that God, of whom they are proved to be the dwelling-place? And when he had said: 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?' he thus concluded the chapter with luminous truth: 'Glorify,' he says, 'and bear God in your body.' Therefore he who diligently prepares for the Holy Spirit a temple of purity in his heart, through chastity and mortification of the flesh bears God in his body. We must bear bodily him by whom we are spiritually possessed. Wherefore him whom you perceive worthy of a temple, you must know to be adored with divine honors, to be celebrated with vows, to be worshiped 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?' This is possible to no creature, but is the mark of divine majesty: that he should fill peoples one by one, through each individual, and yet remain in the immensity of his fullness. It is the singular and proper [attribute] of the divine nature, he says, to be present in all places, to enter into all things and to contain all things. It is God's peculiar property, he says, to strip the sons of perdition of the debts of nature, to renew them with purified consciences, to make them sons of God, and to exalt them in the glory of the heavenly kingdom.