Him, of whom He is the Word; He is sent He who was sent, are one, since the Father and
34 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN. [Boox IV.
Word should be made flesh, and dwell among us.? But when from time to time He comes forth and is perceived by the mind of each, He is said indeed to be sent, but not into this world; for He does not appear sensibly, that is, He does not present Himself to the corporeal senses. For we ourselves, too, are not in this world, in respect to our grasping with the mind as far as we can that which is eternal; and the spirits of all the righteous are not in this world, even of those who are still living in the flesh, in so far as they have discernment in things divine. But the Father is not said to be sent, when from time to time He is apprehended by any one, for He has no one of whom to be, or from whom to proceed; since Wisdom says, '' I came out of the mouth of the Most High,''" and it is said of the Holy Spirit, '' He proceedeth from the Father," ™ but the Father is from no one.
''entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets; " ™ so she also fills the holy angels, and works all things fitting for such ministries by them,? But when the fullness of time was come, she was sent,? not to fill angels, nor to be an angel, except in so far as she announced the counsel of the Father, which was her own also; nor, again, to be with men or in men, for this too took place before, both in the fathers and in the prophets; but that the Word itself should be made flesh, that is, should be made man. In which future mystery, when revealed, was to be the salvation of those wise and holy men also, who, before He was born of the Virgin, were born of women; and in which, when done and made known, is the salvation of all who believe, and hope, and love. For this is ''the great mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.''s
29. As, therefore, the Father begat, the Son is begotten; so the Father sent,the Son was sent. Butin like manner as He who begat and He who was begotten, so both He who sent and He who was sent, are one, since the Father and the Son are one. 2 one with them, since these three are one. For as to be born, means to be from the Father; so to be sent, in respect to the Son, means to be known to be from the Father. And as to be the gift of God in respect to the Holy Spirit, means to proceed from the Father; so to be sent, is to be known to proceed from the Father, Neither can we say that the Holy Spirit does not also proceed from the Son, for the same Spirit is not without reason said to be the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. Nor do I see what else He intended to signify, when He breathed on the face of the disciples, and said, °*' Receive ye the Holy Ghost.''™ For that bodily breathing, proceeding from the body with the feeling of bodily touching, was not the substance of the Holy Spirit, but a declaration by a fitting sign, that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also fromthe Son. For the veriest of madmen would not say, that it was one Spirit which He gave when He breathed on them, and another which He sent after His ascension. For the Spirit of God is one, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the Holy Spirit, who worketh all in all.7° But that He was given twice was certainly a significant economy, which we will
28. Therefore the Word of God is sent by Him, of whom He is the Word; He is sent by Him, from whom He was begotten (gemtum); He sends who begot, That is sent which is begotten. And He is then sent to each one, when He is apprehended and perceived by each, in so far as He can be apprehended and perceived, in proportion to the comprehension of the rational soul, either advancing towards God, or already perfect in God. The Son, therefore, is not properly said to have been sent in that He ts begotten of the Father; but either in that the Word made flesh appeared to the world, whence He says,
So also the Holy Spirit is |
in respect to the Son, |
came forth from the Father, and am come into the world;''® or in that from time to time, He is perceived by the mind of each, according to the saying, ''Send her, that, being present with me, she may labor with me.''7 What then is born (wafum) from eternity is eternal, ''for it is the brightness of the everlasting light;'' but what is sent from time to time, is that which is apprehended by each. But when the Son of God was made manifest in the flesh, He was sent into this world in the fullness of time, made of awoman. '' For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God "'
(since "'the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not ay it '** pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe ," ® and that the t Wisd. vii. 27. 2 [The allusion is to the Wisdom of Proverbs, and of the Book of Wisdom, which Augustin regards as canonical, as his frequent cisane AMG, ARS SA,
9 Johni. 5, 14. 10 Ecclus. xxiv. 1 John xv. 26. 12 John x. 30. 13 [Augustin here, as in previous instances, affirms the procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son.—W. G. T Se]
4 Quod, scil. sacramentum. 6 John xvi. 28. 8x Cor. i. 21.
14 John xx. 22. 15 Acts ii. 1-4. 16 x Cor. xii. 6.
Sire im ili 16: 7 Wisd. ix. ro.
CHAP. XXI.] ON THE TRINITY. 85 discuss in its place, as far as the Lord may grant. That then which the Lord says,— ""Whom I will send unto you from the Father,'' '—shows the Spirit to be both of the Father and of the Son; because, also, when He had said, '' Whom the Father will send,"' Piceaddedwalso; sin my name.'/?' Yet' He did not say, Whom the Father will send from me, as He said, ''Whom / will send unto you from the Father,''—showing, namely, that the Father is the beginning (principium) of the whole divinity, or if it is better so expressed, deity. He, therefore, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, is referred back to Him from whom the Son was born (zatus). And that which the evangelist says, '' For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified; '' 4 how is this to be understood, unless because the special giving or sending of the Holy Spirit after the glorification of Christ was to be such as it had never been before? For it was not previously none at all, but it had not been such as this. For if the Holy Spirit was not given before, wherewith were the prophets who spoke filled? Whereas the Scripture plainly says, and shows in many places, that they spake by the Holy Spirit.
through the Holy Spirit coming upon them; as happened then, when it was needful that His coming should be made plain by visible signs, in order to show that the whole world, and all nations constituted with different tongues, should believe in Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill that which is sung in the Psalm, '' There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard; their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." 7
30. Therefore man was united, and in some sense commingled, with the Word of God, so as to ke One Person, when the fullness of time was come, and the Son of God, made of a woman, was sent into this world, that He might be also the Son of man for the | sake of the sons of men, And this person | angelic nature could prefigure beforehand, so _ as to pre-announce, but could not appropri_ ate, so as to be that person itself, 3%
CHAP, 21.—OF THE SENSIBLE SHOWING OF THE
HOLY SPIRIT, AND OF THE CO-ETERNITY OF THE TRINITY. WHAT HAS BEEN SAID, AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SAID.
But with respect to the sensible showing of the Holy Spirit, whether by the shape of a dove, ® or by fiery tongues, 9 when'the subjected and subservient creature by temporal motions and forms manifested His substance co-eternal with the Father and the Son, and alike with them unchangeable, while it was not united so as to be one person with Him, as the flesh was which the Word was made;* I do not dare to say that nothing of the kind was done aforetime. But I would boldly say, , that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of one / and the same substance, God the Creator, | the Omnipotent Trinity, work indivisibly;) but that this cannot be indivisibly manifested by the creature, which is far inferior, and least of all by the bodily creature: just a§ the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be named by our words, which certainly are bodily sounds, except in their own proper intervals of time, divided by a distinct separation, which intervals the proper syllables of each word occupy. Since in their proper substance wherein they are, the three are one, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the very same, by no temporal motion, above the whole creature, without any interval of time and place, and at once one and the same from eternity to eternity, as it were eternity itself, which is not without truth
Whereas, also, it is said of John the Baptist,
And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.'' And his father Zacharias is found to have been filled with the Holy Ghost, so as to say such things of him, And Mary, too, was filled with the Holy Ghost, so as to foretell such things of the Lord, whom she was bearing in her womb.' And Simeon and Anna were filled with the Holy Spirit, so as to acknowledge the greatness of the little child Christ. How, then, was ''the Spirit not yet given, since Jesus was not yet glorined,'' unless because that giving, or granting, or mission of the Holy Spirit was to have a certain speciality of its own in its very advent, such as never was before? For we read nowhere that men spoke in tongues which they did not know, t John xv. 26, 2 John xiv. 26. 3[The term '' beginning'"' is employed ''relatively, and not according to substance,"' as Augustin says. The Father is '' the beginning of the whole deity,"' with reference to the personal distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit —the Son being from the Father, and the Spirit from Father and Son. Thetrinitarian relations or modes of the essence, '' begin'' with the first person, not the second or the third. The phrase '' whole deity,' in the above statement, is put for '"'trinity,''? not for ''essence.'"'? Augustin would not say that the Father is the '' beginning (przucr?pium) of the divine essence considered abstractly, but only of the essence as trimal, Inthis sense, Trinitarian writers denominate the Father ** fons trinitatis,"' and sometimes '"' fons deitatis."' Turrettin employs this latter phraseology (iii. xxx. i. 8); so does Owen (Communion with Trinity, Ch. iii.); and Hooker (Polzty, v. liv.) But in this case, the Beital Ave clause of Turretin is to be subjoined:
'"' fons dettatis, si modus subsistendi spectatur.' The phrase '" fons trinitatis,' or '' principium trinitatis," is less liable to be misconceived, and more accurate than ''/ons deitatis, or ''principum dettatis.'--W. G. T.S.]
8 Matt. fii. 16. TeeSaxIXes As
x0 John i. 14. 9 Acts ii. 3.
4 John vii. 39. 5 Luke i. 15, 41-79.
6 Luke ii. 25-38.