NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

That they who deny the Spirit are transgressors.Chapter XI.That they who deny the Spirit are transgressors.27. “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow?” 939 For whom is distress and darkness? Forwhom eternal doom? Is it not for the transgressors? For them that deny the faith? Andwhat is the proof of their denial? Is it not that they have set at naught their own confessions?And when and what did they confess? Belief in the Father and in the Son and in the HolyGhost, when they renounced the devil and his angels, and uttered those saving words. Whatfit title then for them has been discovered, for the children of light to use? Are they notaddressed as transgressors, as having violated the covenant of their salvation? What am Ito call the denial of God? What the denial of Christ? What but transgressions? And to himwho denies the Spirit, what title do you wish me to apply? Must it not be the same, inasmuchas he has broken his covenant with God? And when the confession of faith in Him securesthe blessing of true religion. and its denial subjects men to the doom of godlessness, is it nota fearful thing for them to set the confession at naught, not through fear of fire, or sword,or cross, or scourge, or wheel, or rack, but merely led astray by the sophistry and seductionsof the pneumatomachi? I testify to every man who is confessing Christ and denying God,that Christ will profit him nothing; 940 to every man that calls upon God but rejects the Son,that his faith is vain; 941 to every man that sets aside the Spirit, that his faith in the Fatherand the Son will be useless, for he cannot even hold it without the presence of the Spirit.For he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe in the Son, and he who has not believedin the Son does not believe in the Father. For none “can say that Jesus is the Lordbut by the Holy Ghost,” 942 and “No man hath seen God at any time, but the only begottenGod which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” 943Such an one hath neither part nor lot in the true worship; for it is impossible to worshipthe Son, save by the Holy Ghost; impossible to call upon the Father, save by the Spirit ofadoption.18939 Prov. xxiii. 29.940 cf. Gal. v. 2.941 cf. 1 Cor. xv. 17.942 1 Cor. xii. 3.943 John i. 18. On the reading “only begotten God” cf. note on p. 9. In this passage in St. Basil “God” is thereading of three mss. at Paris, that at Moscow, that at the Bodleian, and that at Vienna. “Son” is read by RegiusIII., Regius I., Regius IV., and Regius V. in Paris, the three last being all of the 14th century, the one in the BritishMuseum, and another in the Imperial Library at Vienna, which generally agrees with our own in the Museum.177