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

kingdom of the heavens.” If any one thinks Eusebius of Palestine 1320 worthy of credit on
account of his wide experience, I point further to the very words he uses in discussing
questions concerning the polygamy of the ancients. Stirring up himself to his work, he
writes “invoking the holy God of the Prophets, the Author of light, through our Saviour Jesus
Christ, with the Holy Spirit.”
73. Origen, too, in many of his expositions of the Psalms, we find using the form of
doxology “with the Holy Ghost.” The opinions which he held concerning the Spirit were
not always and everywhere sound; nevertheless in many passages even he himself reverently
recognises the force of established usage, and expresses himself concerning the Spirit in
terms consistent with true religion. It is, if I am not mistaken, in the Sixth 1321 Book of his
Commentary on the Gospel of St. John that he distinctly makes the Spirit an object of worship.
His words are:—“The washing or water is a symbol of the cleaning of the soul which is
washed clean of all filth that comes of wickedness; 1322 but none the less is it also by itself,
to him who yields himself to the God-head of the adorable Trinity, through the power of
the invocations, the origin and source of blessings.” And again, in his Exposition of the
Epistle to the Romans “the holy powers,” he says “are able to receive the Only-begotten, and
the Godhead of the Holy Spirit.” Thus I apprehend, the powerful influence of tradition
frequently impels men to express themselves in terms contradictory to their own opinions.
1323 Moreover this form of the doxology was not unknown even to Africanus the his-
1320 i.e.Eusebius of Cæsarea, the historian, so called to distinguish him from his namesake of Nicomedia.
cf. Theodoret, Ecc. Hist. i. 1. The work is not extant. It may be that mentioned by Eusebius in his Præp. Evang.
vii. 8, 20 under the title of περὶ τῆς τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν πολυπαιδίας.
1321 The quotation is from the Eighth Book.
1322 cf. 1 Pet. iii. 21.
Enumeration of the illustrious men in the Church who in their writings have…
1323 As to Origen’s unorthodoxy concerning the Holy Spirit St. Basil may have had in his mind such a passage
as the following from the First Book of the De Principiis, extant in the original in Justinian, Ep. ad Mennam.
Migne, Pat. Gr. xi. p. 150. ὅτι ὁ μὲν θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ συνέχων τὰ πάντα φθάνει εἰς εκαστον τῶν ὄντων μεταδιδοὺς
ἑκάστῳ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἰδίου τὸ εἶναι· ὢν γὰρ ἔστιν· ἐλάττων δὲ παρὰ τὸν πατέρα ὁ Υἱ& 232·ς φθάνει ἐπὶ μόνα τὰ
λογικά· δεύτερος γάρ ἐστι τοῦ πατρός· ἔτι δὲ ἧττον τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἐπὶ μόνους τοὺς ἁγίους διικνούμενον·
ὥστε κατὰ τοῦτο μείζων ἡ δύναμις τοῦ Πατρὸς παρὰ τὸν Υἱ& 232·ν καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον πλείων δὲ ἡ τοῦ
Υἱοῦ παρὰ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον The work does not even exist as a whole in the translation of Rufinus, who
omitted portions, and St. Jerome thought that Rufinus had misrepresented it. Photius (Biblioth. cod. viii.) says
that Origen, in asserting in this work that the Son was made by the Father and the Spirit by the Son, is most
blasphemous. Bp. Harold Browne, however (Exposition of the xxxix. Art. p. 113, n. 1), is of opinion that if
Rufinus fairly translated the following passage, Origen cannot have been fairly charged with heresy concerning
the Holy Ghost: “Ne quis sane existimet nos ex eo quod diximus Spiritum sanctum solis sanctis præstari. Patris
vero et Filii beneficia vel inoperationes pervenire ad bonos et malos, justos et injustos, prœtulisse per hoc Patri et
Filio Spiritum Sanctum, vel majorem ejus per hoc asserere dignitatem; quod utique valde inconsequens est. Pro-
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