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.