7. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
alike hallow, quicken, enlighten, and comfort. No one will
attribute a special and peculiar operation of hallowing to the
operation of the Spirit, after hearing the Saviour in the Gospel saying
to the Father about His disciples, sanctify them in Thy
name. cf. St.
John xvii. 11 and 17. In like
manner all other operations are equally performed, in all who are
worthy of them, by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Ghost;
every grace and virtue, guidance, life, consolation, change into the
immortal, the passage into freedom and all other good things which
come down to man. Nay even the dispensation which is above us
in relation to the creature considered both in regard to
intelligence and sense, if indeed it is possible for any conjecture
concerning what lies above us to be formed from what we know, is not
constituted apart from the operation and power of the Holy Ghost,
every individual sharing His help in proportion to the dignity and
need of each. Truly the ordering and administration of beings
above our nature is obscure to our perception; nevertheless any one,
arguing from what is known to us, would find it more reasonable to
conclude that the power of the Spirit operates even in those beings,
than that He is excluded from the government of supramundane
things. So to assert is to advance a blasphemy bare and
unsupported; it is to support absurdity on fallacy. On the
other hand to agree that even the world beyond us is governed by the
power of the Spirit, as well as by that of the Father and of the
Son, is to advance a contention, supported on the plain testimony of
what is seen in human life. Identity of operation in the case
of Father and of Son and of Holy Ghost clearly proves invariability
of nature. It follows that, even if the name of Godhead does
signify nature, the community of essence proves that this title is
very properly applied to the Holy Spirit.