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 [339] . 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 [340] , 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 [341] 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 [342] , 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 [343] , 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 [344] . We find in Hilary the premises from which the Divinity of the Holy Ghost is the necessary conclusion [345] ;' and there is reason to believe that he would have stated the doctrine of the Procession in the Western, not in the Eastern, form [346] ; 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 [347] .
We may now turn to the practical teaching of Hilary. Henceforth he will be no longer the compiler of the best Latin handbook of the Arian controversy, or the somewhat unsystematic investigator of unexplored regions of theology. We shall find him often accepting the common stock of Christian ideas of his age, without criticism or attempt at improvement upon them; often paraphrasing in even more emphatic language emphatic and apparently contradictory passages of Scripture, without any effort after harmony or balance. Yet sometimes we shall find him anticipating on one page the thoughts of later theologians, while on another he is content to repeat the views upon the same subject which had satisfied an earlier generation. His doctrine, where it is not traditional, is never more than tentative, and we must not be surprised, we must even expect, to find him inconsistent with himself.
No subject illustrates this inconsistency better than that of sin, of which Hilary gives two accounts, the one Eastern and traditional, the other an anticipation of Augustinianism. These are never compared and weighed the one against the other. In the passages where each appears, it is adduced confidently, without any reservation or hint that he is aware of another explanation of the facts of experience. The more usual account is that which is required by Hilary's doctrine of the separate creation of every human soul, which is good, because it is God's immediate work, and has a natural tendency to, and fitness for, perfection. Because God, after Whose image man is made, is free, therefore man also is free; he has absolute liberty, and is under no compulsion to good or to evil [348] . The sin which God foresees, as in the case of Esau, He does not foreordain [349] . Punishment never follows except upon sin actually committed; the elect are they who show themselves worthy of election [350] . But the human body has defiled the soul; in fact, Hilary sometimes speaks as though sin were not an act of will but an irresistible pressure exerted by the body on the soul. If we had no body, he says once, we should have no sin; it is a body of death' and cannot be pure. This is the spiritual meaning of the ancient law against touching a corpse [351] . When the Psalmist laments that his soul cleaveth to the ground, his sorrow is that it is inseparably attached to a body of earth [352] ; when Job and Jeremiah cursed the day of their birth, their anger was directed against the necessity of living surrounded by the weaknesses and vices of the flesh, not against the creation of their souls after the image of God [353] . Such language, if it stood alone, would convict its author of Manicheanism, but Hilary elsewhere asserts that the desire of the soul goes half-way to meet the invitation of sin [354] , and this latter in his normal teaching. Man has a natural proclivity to evil, an inherited weakness [355] which has, as a matter of experience, betrayed all men into actual sin, with the exception of Christ [356] . Elsewhere, however, Hilary recognises the possibility, under existing conditions, of a sinless life. For David could make the prayer, Take from me the way of iniquity;' of iniquity itself he was guiltless, and only needed to pray against the tendency inherent in his bodily nature [357] . But such a case is altogether exceptional; ordinary men must confide in the thought that God is indulgent, for He knows our infirmity. He is propitiated by the wish to be righteous, and in His judgment the merits of good men outweigh their sins [358] . Hence a prevalent tone of hopefulness about the future state of the baptized; even Sodom and Gomorrah, their punishment in history having satisfied the righteousness of God, shall ultimately be saved [359] . Yet God has a perfect, immutable goodness of which human goodness, though real, falls infinitely short, because He is steadfast and we are driven by varying impulses [360] . This Divine goodness is the standard and the hope set before us. It can only be attained by grace [361] , and grace is freely offered. But just as the soul, being free, advances to meet sin, so it must advance to meet grace. Man must take the first step; he must wish and pray for grace, and then perseverance in faith will be granted him [362] , together with such a measure of the Spirit as he shall desire and deserve [363] . He will, indeed, be able to do more than he need, as David did when he spared and afterwards lamented Saul, his worst enemy, and St. Paul, who voluntarily abstained from the lawful privilege of marriage [364] . Such is Hilary's first account, a naive, undeveloped mode of thought concerning the origin of sin and the state of man [365] .' Its inconsistencies are as obvious as their cause, the unguarded homiletical expansion of isolated passages. There is no attempt to reconcile man's freedom to be good with the fact of universal sin. The theory, so far as it is consistent, is derived from Alexandria, from Clement and Origen. It may seem not merely inadequate as theology, but philosophical rather than Christian; and its aim is, indeed, that of strengthening man's sense of moral responsibility and of heightening his courage to withstand temptation. But we must remember that Hilary everywhere assumes the union between the Christian and Christ. While this union exists there is always the power of bringing conduct into conformity with His will. Conduct, then, is, comparatively speaking, a matter of detail. Sins of action and emotion do not necessarily sever the union; a whole system of casuistry might be built upon Hilary's foundation. But false thoughts of God violate the very principle of union between Him and man. However abstract they may seem and remote from practical life, they are an insuperable barrier. For intellectual harmony, as well as moral, is necessary; and error of belief, like a key moving in a lock with whose wards it does not correspond, forbids all access to the nature and the grace of God. A good example of his relative estimate of intellectual and moral offences occurs in the Homily on Psalm i. §§ 6-8, where it is noteworthy that he does not trace back the former to moral causes [366] .