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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 123
one of the Persons denies God altogether.
" And so," follows on
St. Athanasius,
"
Baptism would be invalid, when administered in
the belief that the Son or the Holy Ghost were mere creatures."
He who divides the Son from the Father, or lowers the Spirit to
the condition of a mere creature, has neither the Son nor the
Father, and justly, for as it is one Baptism which is conferred in
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and it is one
Faith in Him, as the Apostle says, so the Holy Trinity, existing in
itself, and united in itself, has, in itself, nothing of created things.
Thus, as the Trinity is one and undivided, so is the Faith of
three Persons united in it, one and undivided. We, therefore,
are bound to believe that the name of the Holy Ghost, that is,
the name of the Third Person expressed by these two words, so
frequently used in the Scriptures, is not an imaginary name, or
casually invented, but the name of the Third Person, God, like
the Father and the Son. We should remember, likewise, that
the expression, Holy Ghost, is, properly speaking, but one word,
for either of its component parts might be applied to the Father
or the Son, for both are Holy, both are Spirit, but this word is
Why
the proper name of the Third Person of the Trinity.
"
the name of the
would Jesus Christ," adds St. Athanasius,
"
join
Holy Ghost with those of the Father and the Son,
if he were a
mere creature ? is it to render the three Divine Persons unlike
each other ? was there any thing wanting to God that he should
assume a different substance, to render it glorious like unto
himself?"
4. Besides this text of St. Matthew, already quoted, in which
our Lord not only orders his
disciples to baptize
in the name of
the three Persons, but to teach the Faith :
" Teach
all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father," &c., we have that
"
text of St. John :
There are three who give testimony in heaven,
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three
are one" (John, I. Epis. v, 7). These words (as we have already
explained in the Refutation of Sabellianism, n.
9), evidently
prove the unity of Nature, and the distinction of the three Divine
Persons (16).
"
The text says, These three are one;" if the three
testimonies are one and the same, then each one of them has the
(16) St. Athan. Epis. ad Serassion, n. 6.