Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

the devil; for, it is said, “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.” 1059
He was inseparably with Him while working His wonderful works; 1060 for, it is said, “If I
by the Spirit of God cast out devils.” 1061 And He did not leave Him when He had risen
from the dead; for when renewing man, and, by breathing on the face of the disciples, 1062
restoring the grace, that came of the inbreathing of God, which man had lost, what did the
Lord say? “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto
them; and whose soever ye retain, they are retained.” 1063 And is it not plain and incontestable
that the ordering of the Church is effected through the Spirit? For He gave, it is said, “in
the church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then
gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues,” 1064 for this order is ordained
in accordance with the division of the gifts that are of the Spirit. 1065
40. Moreover by any one who carefully uses his reason it will be found that even at the
moment of the expected appearance of the Lord from heaven the Holy Spirit will not, as
some suppose, have no functions to discharge: on the contrary, even in the day of His revelation,
in which the blessed and only potentate 1066 will judge the world in righteousness, 1067
the Holy Spirit will be present with Him. For who is so ignorant of the good things prepared
by God for them that are worthy, as not to know that the crown of the righteous is the grace
of the Spirit, bestowed in more abundant and perfect measure in that day, when spiritual
glory shall be distributed to each in proportion as he shall have nobly played the man? For
among the glories of the saints are “many mansions” in the Father’s house, 1068 that is differ-
1059 Matt. iv. 1.
1060 δυνάμεις, rendered “wonderful works” in Matt. vii. 22; “mighty works” in Matt. xi. 20, Mark vi. 14, and
Luke x. 13; and “miracles” in Acts ii. 22, xix. 11, and Gal. iii. 5.
1061 Matt. xii. 28.
1062 Gen. ii. 7, lxx. is ἐνεφύσησεν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ. “εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον” is thence imported into John
xx. 22. Mr. C.F.H. Johnston notes, “This addition…is found in the Prayer at the Little Entrance in the Liturgy
of St. Mark. Didymus, in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, which we have only in St. Jerome’s Latin Version, twice
used ‘insufflans in faciem corum,” §§6, 33. The text is quoted in this form by Epiphanius Adv. Hær. lxxiv. 13,
and by St. Aug. De Trin. iv. 20.” To these instances may be added Athan. Ep. i. § 8, and the versions of Upper
and Lower Egypt, the Thebaic, known as the Sahidic, and the Memphitic, or Coptic, both ascribed to the 3rd
century.
1063 John xx. 22, 23.
1064 1 Cor. xii. 28.
1065 cf. 1 Cor. xii. 11.
1066 1 Tim. vi. 15.
1067 Acts xvii. 31.
1068 παρὰ τῷ πατρί, (=chez le Père,) with little or no change of meaning, for ἐν τῇ οἰκί& 139· τοῦ πατρός
μου. John xiv. 2.
That the Holy Spirit is in every conception inseparable from the Father…
194