But before we approach the practical theology of Hilary something must be said of his teaching concerning the Third Person of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is little developed in his writings. The cause was, in part, his sympathy with Eastern thought. The West, in this as in some other respects, was in advance of the contemporary Greeks; but Hilary was too independent to accept conclusions which were as yet unreasoned Cf. Harnack, Dogmengesch. ii. 281. But Harnack is unjust in saying that Hilary had not quite made up his own mind.. But a stronger reason was that the doctrine was not directly involved in the Arian controversy. On the main question, as we have seen, he kept an open mind, and was prepared to modify from time to time the terms in which he stated the Divinity of our Lord; but in other respects he was often strangely archaic. Such is the case here; Hilary’s is a logical position, but the logical process has been arrested. There is nothing in his words concerning the Holy Spirit inconsistent with the later definitions of faith Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 206 n. ‘Hilary’s belief in the deity of the Holy Spirit is hardly more doubtful than St. John’s: yet he nowhere states it in so many words.’, and it would be unfair to blame him because, in the course of a strenuous life devoted to the elucidation and defence of other doctrines, he found no time to develope this; unfair also to blame him for not recognising its full importance. In his earlier days, and while he was in alliance with the Semiarians, there was nothing to bring this doctrine prominently before his mind; in his later life it still lay outside the range of controversy, so far as he was concerned. Hilary, in fact, preferred like Athanasius to rest in the indefinite terms of the original Nicene Creed, the confession of which ended with the simple ‘And in the Holy Ghost.’ But there was a further and practical reason for his reserve. It was a constant taunt of the Arians that the Catholics worshipped a plurality of Gods. The frequency and emphasis with which Hilary denies that Christians have either two Gods or one God in solitude proves that he regarded this plausible assertion as one of the most dangerous weapons wielded by heresy. It was his object, as a skilful disputant, to bring his whole forces to bear upon them, and this in a precisely limited field of battle. To import the question of the Holy Spirit into the controversy might distract his reader’s attention from the main issue, and afford the enemy an opening for that evasion which he constantly accuses them of attempting. Hence, in part, the small space allowed to so important a theme; and hence the avoidance, which we noticed, of the very word ‘Trinity.’ The Arians made the most of their argument about two Gods; Hilary would not allow them the opportunity of imputing to the faithful a belief in three. This might not have been a sufficient inducement, had it stood alone, but the encouragement which he received from Origen’s vagueness, representative as it was of the average theology of the third century, must have predisposed him to give weight to the practical consideration. Yet Hilary has not avoided a formal statement of his belief. In Trin. ii. §§ 29–35, which is, as we saw, part of a summary statement of the Christian Faith, he sets it forth with Scripture proofs. But he shows clearly, by the short space he allows to it, that it is not in his eyes of co-ordinate importance with the other truths of which he treats. And the curious language in which he introduces the subject, in § 29, seems to imply that he throws it in to satisfy others rather than from his own sense of its necessary place in such a statement. The doctrine, as he here defines it, is that the Holy Spirit undoubtedly exists; the Father and the Son are the Authors of His being, and, since He is joined with Them in our confession, He cannot, without mutilation of the Faith, be separated from Them. The fact that He is given to us is a further proof of His existence. Yet the title ‘Spirit’ is often used both for Father and for Son; in proof of this St. John iv. 24 and 2 Cor. iii. 17 are cited. Yet the Holy Spirit has a personal If the word may be admitted for the sake of clearness. Hilary never calls the Spirit a Person. existence and a special office in relation to us. It is through Him that we know God. Our nature is capable of knowing Him, as the eye is capable of sight; and the gift of the Spirit is to the soul what the gift of light is to the eye. Again, in xii. §§ 55, 56, the subject is introduced, as if by an after thought, and even more briefly than in the second book. As he has refused to style the Son a creature, so he refuses to give that name to the Spirit, Who has gone forth from God, and been sent by Christ. The Son is the Only-begotten, and therefore he will not say that the Spirit was begotten; yet he cannot call Him a creature, for the Spirit’s knowledge of the mysteries of God, of which He is the Interpreter to men, is the proof of His oneness in nature with God. The Spirit speaks unutterable things and is ineffable in His operation. Hilary cannot define, yet he believes. It must suffice to say, with the Apostle, simply that He is the Spirit of God. The tone of § 56 seems that of silent rebuke to some excess of definition, as he would deem it, of which he had heard. To these passages must be added another in Trin. viii. 19 f., where the possession by Father and Son of one Spirit is used in proof of their own unity. But in this passage there occur several instances of Hilary’s characteristic vagueness. As in ii. 30, so here we are told that ‘the Spirit’ may mean Father or Son as well as Holy Ghost §§ 23, 25, 30; so also ix. 69 and notably in x. 16. Similarly in Comm. in Matt. iii. 1, the Spirit means Christ., and instances are given where the word has one or other of the two first significations. Thus we must set a certain number of passages where a reference in Scripture to the Holy Spirit is explained away against a number, certainly no greater, in which He is recognised, and in the latter we notice a strong tendency to understate the truth. For though we are expressly told that the Spirit is not a creature, that He is from the Father through the Son, is of one substance with Them and bears the same relation to the One that He bears to the Other Trin. viii. 20, ix. 73 fin., and especially ii. 4. This last is not a reference to the Macedonian heresy, but to the logical result of Arianism., yet Hilary refuses with some emphasis and in a conspicuous place, at the very end of the treatise, to call Him God. But both groups of passages, those in which the Holy Ghost is recognised and those in which reason is given for non-recognition, are more than counterbalanced by a multitude in which, no doubt for the controversial reason already mentioned, the Holy Spirit is left unnamed, though it would have been most natural that allusion should be made to Him Trin. i. 17, v. 1, 35, vii. 8, 31, viii. 31, 36, x. 6 &c.. We find in Hilary ‘the premises from which the Divinity of the Holy Ghost is the necessary conclusion Baltzer, Theologie des hl. Hilarius, p. 51.;’ and there is reason to believe that he would have stated the doctrine of the Procession in the Western, not in the Eastern, form Trin. viii. 21, xii. 55.; but we find a certain willingness to keep the doctrine in the background, which sufficiently indicates a failure to grasp its cardinal importance, and is, however natural in his circumstances and however interesting as evidence of his mode of thought, a blemish to the De Trinitate, if we seek in it a balanced exposition of the Faith The work by Tertullian in which the doctrine of the Spirit is most fully brought out; in which, in fact, He is first expressly named God, is the Adversus Praxean. It was written after his secession from the Church, and Hilary, upon whom it had more influence than any other of Tertullian’s writings, may have suspected that this teaching was the expression of his Montanism rather than a legitimate deduction from Scripture, and so have been misled by over caution. He may also have been influenced by such Biblical passages as Rev. xiv. 1, where the Spirit is unnamed..