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

clean through the word which I have spoken unto you,” 1176 wherefore “the world cannot
receive Him, because it seeth Him not,…but ye know Him; for he dwelleth with you.” 1177
And so says Isaiah;—“He that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it; he
that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and Spirit to them that trample on it” 1178 ; for
they that trample down earthly things and rise above them are borne witness to as worthy
of the gift of the Holy Ghost. What then ought to be thought of Him whom the world
cannot receive, and Whom saints alone can contemplate through pureness of heart? What
kind of honours can be deemed adequate to Him?
1176 John xv. 3.
1177 John xiv. 17.
Establishment of the natural communion of the Spirit from His being, equally…
1178 Is. xlii. 5, LXX. πατοῦσιν αὐτήν. So St. Basil’s argument requires us to translate the lxx. The “walk
therein” of A.V. would not bear out his meaning. For this use of πατειν, cf. Soph., Ant. 745. οὐ γὰρ σέβεις τιμάς
γε τὰς θεῶν πατῶν. So in the vulgate we read “et spiritum calcantibus eam,”—calcare bearing the sense of
“trample on,” as in Juvenal, Sat. x. 86, “calcemus Cæsaris hostem.” The Hebrew bears no such meaning.
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