3. There is One Only Holy Ghost, the
Comforter; and as there is One God the Father, and no second
Father;—and as there is One Only-begotten Son and Word of God,
who hath no brother;—so is there One Only Holy Ghost, and no
second spirit equal in-honour to Him. Now the Holy Ghost is a
Power most mighty, a Being divine and unsearchable; for He is living
and intelligent, a sanctifying principle of all things made by God
through Christ. He it is who illuminates the souls of the just;
He was in the Prophets, He was also in the Apostles in the New
Testament. Abhorred be they who dare to separate the operation of
the Holy Ghost! There is One God, the Father, Lord of the Old and
of the New Testament: and One Lord, Jesus Christ, who was
prophesied of in the Old Testament, and came in the New; and One Holy
Ghost, who through the Prophets preached of Christ, and when Christ was
come, descended, and manifested Him At the end of this section there
follows in the Coislin ms. a long
interpolation consisting of two parts. The former is an extract
taken word for word from Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio
Catechetica, ii. c, which may be read in this series:
᾽Αλλ᾽ ὡς Θεοῦ
Λόγον
ἀκούσαντες
.…σύνδρομον
ἔχουσαν τῇ
βουλήσει τὴν
δύναμιν. Of the second
passage the Benedictine Editor says: “I have not been able
to discover who is the author. No one can assign it to our Cyril,
although the doctrine it contains is in full agreement with his:
but he explains all the same points more at large in his two Lectures
(xvi. xvii.). The passage is very ancient and undoubtedly older
than the eleventh century, which is the date of the Cod. Coislin.
Therefore in the controversy of the Latins against the Greeks
concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost it is important to notice
what is taught in this passage, and also brought forward as a testimony
by S. Thomas (Aquinas), that “The Holy Ghost is of the Godhead of
the Father and the Son (ex Patris et Filii divinitate
existere).” To me indeed these words seem to savour
altogether not of the later but of the more ancient theology of the
Greeks, and to be earlier than the controversies of the Greeks against
the Latins.”
This second passage is as follows:—
“For the Spirit of God is
good. And Thy good Spirit, says David, shall lead me in
the land of righteousness. This then is the Spirit of God in
which we believe: the blessed Spirit, the eternal, immutable,
unchangeable, ineffable: which rules and reigns over all
productive being, both visible and invisible natures: which is
Lord both of Angels and Archangels, Powers, Principalities, Dominions,
Thrones: the Creator of all being, enthroned with the glory of
the Father and the Son, reigning without beginning and without end with
the Father and the Son, before the created substances: Who
sanctifies the ministering spirits sent forth for the sake of those
who are to inherit salvation: Who came down upon the holy and
blessed Virgin Mary, of whom was born Christ according to the flesh;
came down also upon the Lord Himself in bodily form of a dove in the
river Jordan: Who came upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost
in form of fiery tongues; Who gives and supplies all spiritual gifts in
the Church, Who Proceedeth from the
Father: Who is of the Godhead of the Father and the Son;
Who is of one substance with the Father and the Son, inseparable and
indivisible.”.