CHAPTER L] COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS. words, "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Bar nabas and Saul." (Acts xiii : 2.) From this passage it is manifest 1 that the power of the Son and Spirit is one, for being commissioned by the Spirit, he says that he was commissioned by Christ. This appears in another place, from his ascription of the things of God to the Spirit, in tfie words which he addresses to the elders at Miletus: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in thewhich the HolyGhosthathmade you bishops. (Acts xx: 28.) Yet in another Epistle he says, "AndGod hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers." (i Cor. xii: 28.) Thus he ascribes indifferently the things of the Spirit to God, and the things of God to the Spirit. Here too he stops the mouths of heretics, by the words "through Jesus Christ and God the Father ; for, inasmuch as they said this term "through" was applied to the Son as importing inferiority, see what he does. He ascribes it to the Father, thus teaching us not to prescribe laws to the ineffable Nature, nor define the degrees of Godhead which belong to the Father and Son. For to the words "through Jesus Christ "he has added, "and God the Father; " for if at the mention of the Father alone he had introduced the phrase "through whom," they might have argued sophistically that it was peculiarly applicable to the Father, in that the acts of the Son were to be referred to Him. But he leaves no opening for this cavil, by mentioning at once both the Son and the Father, and making his language apply to both. This he does, not as referring the acts of the Son to the Father, but to show that the expression implies no distinction of Essence. 2 Further, what can now be said by those, who have gathered a notion of inferiority from the Baptismal formula, from our being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ? 3 For if theSon be inferior because He is named after the Father, what will they say seeing that, in the passage before us, the Apostle beginning from Christ proceeds to men tion the Father ? but let us not even utter such a blasphemy, let us not swerve from the truth in j our contention with them ; rather let us preserve, even if they rave ten thousand times, the due measures of reverence. Since then it would be the height of madness and impiety to argue that 1 This digression, and others which follow, were occasioned by the controversies of the day ; the Arians and Macedonians deny ing the co-equality and consubstantiality of FATHER, SON, and HOLY GHOST. a [" To urge this use of StS in connection withSon and the Father as direct evidence for the o/aoouo-io. of the Father and the Son (as Chrysostom and Theod.)may perhaps be rightlydeemed precarious. Vet there is something very noticeable in this use of a common preposition with both the first and second persons of the Trinity by a writer so cumulative and yet for the most part so exact in his use of prepositions as St. Paul." Ellicott. G. A.] 1 [That is, from theorder of the three names. G. A.] the Son was greater than the Father because Christ was first named, so we dare not hold that the Son is inferior to the Father, because He is placed after Him in the Baptismal formula. " Who raised Him from the dead." Wherefore is it, O Paul, that, wishing to bring these Judaizers to the faith, you introduce none of those great and illustrious topics whichoccur in your Epistle to the Philippians, as, " Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God," (Phil, ii: 6.) or which you afterwards declared in that to the Hebrews, " the efful gence of his glory, and the very image of His substance ; " (Heb. i: 3.) or again, what in the opening of his Gospel the son of thundersounded forth, " In the beginningwas the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word wasGod ; " (John i: i.) or what Jesus Himself oftentimes declared to the Jews, " that His power and authority was equal to the Father s? " (John v: 19, 27, &c.) Do you omit all these, and make mention of the economy of His Incarnation only, bringing forward His cross and dying ? " Yes," would Paul answer. For had this discourse been addressed to those who had unworthy conceptions of Christ, it would have been well to mention those things ; but, inas much as the disturbance comes from persons who fear to incur punishment should they abandon the Law,* he therefore mentions that whereby all need of the Law is excluded, I mean the benefit conferred on all through the Cross and the Resurrection. To have said that " in the beginning was the Word," and that He was in the form of God, and made Him self equal with God," and the like, would have declared the divinity of the Word, but would have contributed nothing to the matter in hand. Whereas it was highly pertinent thereto to add, " Who raised Him from the dead," for our chiefest benefit was thus brought to remem brance, and men in general are less interested by discourses concerning the majesty of God, than by those which set forth the benefits which come to mankind. Wherefore, omitting the former topic, he discourses of the benefits which had been conferred on us. But here the heretics insultingly exclaim, " Lo, the Father raises the Son ! " For when once infected, they are wilfully deaf to all sublimer doctrines ; and taking by itself and insisting on what is of a less exalted nature, and expressed in less exalted terms, either on account of the Son s humanity, or in honor of the Father, or for some other temporary purpose, they outrage, I will not say the Scripture, but themselves. I would fain ask such persons, why they say this ? do they hope to prove the Son weak and powerless to raise one body?