5. What, then, is my argument? In
delivering the Faith of Salvation to those who are being made disciples
in His doctrine, the Lord conjoins with Father and with Son the Holy
Spirit also. That which is conjoined once I maintain to be
conjoined everywhere and always. There is no question here of a
ranking together in one respect and isolation in others. In the
quickening power whereby our nature is transformed from the life of
corruption to immortality, the power of the Spirit is comprehended with
Father and with Son, and in many other instances, as in the conception
of the good, the holy, the eternal, the wise, the right, the supreme,
the efficient, and generally in all terms which have the higher
meaning, He is inseparably united. Wherefrom I judge it right to
hold that the Spirit, thus conjoined with Father and Son in so many
sublime and divine senses, is never separated. Indeed I am
unaware of any degrees of better or worse in the terms concerning the
divine nature, nor can I imagine its being reverent and right to allow
the Spirit a participation in those of lesser dignity, while He is
judged unworthy of the higher. For all conceptions and terms
which regard the divine are of equal dignity one with another, in that
they do not vary in regard to the meaning of the subject matter to
which they are applied. Our thought is not led to one subject by
the attribution of good, and to another by that of wise, powerful, and
just; mention any attributes you will, the thing signified is one and
the same. And if you name God, you mean the same Being whom you
understood by the rest of the terms. Granting, then, that all the
terms applied to the divine nature are of equal force one with another
in relation to that which they describe, one emphasizing one point and
another another, but all bringing our intelligence to the contemplation
of the same object; what ground is there for conceding to the Spirit
fellowship with Father and Son in all other terms, and isolating Him
from the Godhead alone? There is no escape from the position that
we must either allow the fellowship here, or refuse it
everywhere. If He is worthy in every other respect, He is
certainly not unworthy in this. If, as our opponents argue, He is
too insignificant to be allowed fellowship with Father and with Son in
Godhead, He is not worthy to share any single one of the divine
attributes: for when the terms are carefully considered, and
compared with one another, by the help of the special meaning
contemplated in each, they will be found to involve nothing less than
the title of God. A proof of what I say lies in the fact that
even many inferior objects are designated by this name. Nay, Holy
Scripture does not even shrink from using this term in the case of
things of a totally opposite character, as when it applies the title
god to idols. “Let the gods,” it is written,
“who have not made heaven and earth, be taken away, and cast
beneath the earth;”
Jer. x. 11, LXX. and again,
“the gods of the nations are idols.”
Ps. xcvi. 5. And the witch, when she called up
the required spirits for Saul, is said to have seen gods.
1 Sam. xxviii.
13. Balaam too, an augur and seer, with
the oracles in his hand, as Scripture says, when he had got him the
teaching of the demons by his divine ingenuity, is described by
Scripture as taking counsel with God.
Num. xxii.
20.
Contrast Bp. Butler, Serm. vii. From many similar instances in Holy
Scripture it may be proved that the name of God has no pre-eminence
over other words which are applied to the divine, since, as has been
said, we find it employed without distinction even in the case of
things of quite opposite character. On the other hand we are
taught by Scripture that the names holy, incorruptible, righteous,
and good, are nowhere indiscriminately used of unworthy
objects. It follows, then, that if they do not deny that the
Holy Spirit is associated with the Son and with the Father, in the
names which are specially applied, by the usage of true religion, to
the divine nature alone, there is no reasonable ground for refusing
to allow the same association in the case of that word alone which,
as I have shown, is used as a recognised homonym even of demons and
idols.