The
Benedictine note is Videtur in Harlæano codice scriptum
prima manu εις
τὸν θεόν. Their
reading is εις
το θεῖον
πνεῦμα τὸ
ἅγιον.
cf. Ep. viii., § 2, where no
variation of mss. is noted and
Ep. cxli, both written before he was bishop.
cf. Proleg. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. xliii.,
explains the rationale of St. Basil’s use of the word
“God,” of the Holy Ghost; alike in his public and
private teaching he never shrank from using it, whenever he could
with impunity, and his opinions were perfectly well known, but he
sought to avoid the sentence of exile at the hands of the Arians by
its unnecessary obtrusion. He never uses it in his homily
De Fide, and the whole treatise De Spiritu Sancto,
while it exhaustively vindicates the doctrine, ingeniously steers
clear of the phrase.