ther and the Son, because he is not a Person ; but this is refuted both by the passage just quoted, and hj Psa. xxxiii, 6 : 'By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and aU the host of them by the breath (Hebrew, Spirit) of his mouth.' This is farther confirmed by Job xxxiii, 4 : ' The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life ;' where the second clause is obviously exegetic of the former : and the whole text proves that, in the patriarclial age, the followers of the true religion ascribed creation to the Spirit as well as to the Fatlier, and that one of his ap- pellations was ' the Breath of the Almighty.' Did such passages stand alone, there niiglit, indeed, be some plau- sibility in the criticism which resolves them into a per- sonification ; but, connected as they are with the whole body of evidence, as to the concurring doctrine of both Testaments, they are inexpugnable. Again : If the per- sonality of the Son and tlie Spirit be allowed, and yet it is contended that tliey were but instruments in creation, through whom the creative power of another operated, but which creative po^ver was not possessed by them ; on this hypothesis, too, neither the Spirit nor tlie Son can bo sai(l to create, any more than Moses created the serpent into which his rod was turned, and the Scrip- tures are again contradicted. To this association of the three Persons in creative acts may be added a like asso- ciation in acts of preservation, which has been well call- ed a continued creation, and by that term is expressed in the following passage : ' These wait all upon thee, that tliou raaj'est give them their meat in due season. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, tliey die, and return to dust : thou sendest forth thy Spirit, tlioy are created ; and thou renewest the face of the earth' (Psa. civ, 27-30). It is not surely here meant that tlie Spirit bj' which the generations of animals are perpetuated is wind; and if he be called an attribute, v:isdom, poicer, or both miited, where do we read of sucli attributes being 'sent,' 'sent forth from God,' 'sent forth from' God to 'create and renew the face of the earth ?'
(2.) "The next association of the three Persons we find in the inspiration of the prophets : ' (lod spake unto our fathers by the prophets,' says Paul (Heb. i, 1). Pe- ter declares that these ' holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy (ihost' (2 Pet. i, 21) ; and also that it was 'the Spirit of Christ which was in them' (1 Pet. i, 11). We may defy any Socinian to interpret these three passages by making the Spirit an influence or attribute, and thereby reducing the term Holy Ghost into a figure of speech. ' God,' in the first passage, is unquestionably God the Father; and the 'holy men of God,' the prophets, woiUd then, according to this view, be moved by the influence of the Father; but the influ- ence, according to the third passage, which was the source of their inspiration, was the Spirit or the influ- ence of ' Christ.' Thus the passages contradict each oth- er. Allow the Trinity in unity, and you have no difii- culty in calling the Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son, or the Spirit of either; but if the Spirit be an influence, that influence cannot be the in- fluence of two persons, one of them God and the other a creature. Even if they allowed the pre-existence of Christ, with Arians, these passages are inexplicable by the Socinians ; but, denying his pre-existence, they have no subterfuge but to interpret ' the Spirit of Christ,' the spirit w7iich prophesied of Christ, which is a purely gra- tuitous paraphrase ; or ' the spirit of an anointed one, or prophet:' that is, the prophet's own spirit, which is just as gratuitous and as unsupported by anj' parallel as the former. If, however, the Holy Ghost be the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, united in one essence, the passages are easily harmonized. In conjunction ■\\itli the Father and the Son, he is the source of that pro- phetic inspiration inider which the prophets spoke and acted. So the same Spirit which raised Christ from the dead is said by Peter to have preached by Noah while the ark was preparing, in allusion to the passage
HOLY GHOST
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HOLY GHOST
' j\ry Spirit shall not always strive (contend, debate) with man.' This, we maj"^ t)bserve, affords an eminent proof that the writers of the New Testament understood the phrase ' the Spirit of God,' as it occurs in the Old Testament, pasonal/i/. For, whatever may be the full meaning of that difficult passage in I'cter, Christ is clearly declared to have preached by the Spirit in the (lays of Noah ; that is, he, by the Spirit, inspired Noah to preach. If, then, the apostles understood that the Holy Ghost was a Person, a point which will presently be established, we have, in the text just quoted from the book of Genesis, a key to the meaning of those texts in the Old Testament where the phrases 'My Spirit,' 'th6 Spirit of God," and 'the Spirit of the Lord' occur, and inspired authority is tints afforded us to interpret them as of a Person ; and if of a Person, the very effort made by Socinians to deny his personality itself indi- cates that that Person must, from the lofty titles and works ascribed to him, be inevitably divine. Such phrases occur in many passages of the Hebrew Scrip- tures ; but in the following the Spirit is also eminently distinguished from two other Persons: 'And now the Lord God, and his Spirit, hath sent me' (Isa. xlviii, 16) ; or, rendered better, ' hath sent me and his Spirit,' both terms being in the accusative case. ' Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read; for mj' mouth it hath com- manded, and his Spirit it hath gathered them' (Isa. xxxiv, 16). 'I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth among YOU : fear ye not. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come' (Hag. ii, 4-7). Here, also, the Spirit of the Lord is seen collocated with the Lord of hosts and the Desire of all nations, who is the Messiah [according to the usu- al interpretation].