Chapter 17

§ 1.

So too the Apostles might have said, that Christ descended on Jesus, or that higher Saviour upon the one who belongs to the Economy; or he who is of the Invisible regions, on him who belongs to the Demiurge. But no such thing did they either know or say: for if they had known it,¹ of course they would have said it. But what was the fact, that also they said, That the Spirit of God descended like a Dove upon Him; that Spirit,² of Whom it was said by Isaiah, And the Spirit of God shall rest upon Him: as we said before. And again,³ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me. The same Spirit of Whom our Lord saith, For it is not ye that speak,⁴ but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you. And again giving His disciples power to regenerate into God,⁵ He said unto them, Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.⁶ For Him He promised by the Prophets to pour out in the last times upon servants and handmaidens, that they may prophesy.⁷ Whence also He came down upon the Son of God, made Son of Man, using Himself to dwell with Him in mankind and to rest among men, and to reside in the work of God’s Hands, working the will of the Father in them, and renewing them out of old age into the newness of Christ.

§ 2.

This Spirit David sought for mankind,⁸ saying, And stablish me with Thy principal Spirit. Of whom Luke also saith, that after the Ascension of the Lord, He came down on the disciples in Pentecost, having power as concerning all nations, that they should enter into life, and to open the new Testament. For which cause also they breathed out in all languages one harmonious hymn unto God, the Spirit bringing back distant tribes into unity, and offering to the Father the first-fruits of all nations. Wherefore also the Lord promised to send the Paraclete, to unite us to God. For as out of dry wheat one mass or one loaf cannot be made without moisture; so neither could we many be made one in Christ Jesus, without the water which is from Heaven.⁹ And as dry earth, except it receive moisture, bears no fruit; so we also, being in the first place a dry tree, could never have become fruitful of life, without the spontaneous rain from above.¹⁰ For our bodies by the Laver received that Unity which leads to incorruption, but our souls by the Spirit. And so both are necessary, since both are profitable for the Life of God¹¹: even as the Lord had pity on that sinful woman of Samaria, who abode not with one husband, but played the whore in many marriages: and pointed out to her and promised Living Water, that she might thirst no longer, nor be busied about the refreshment of that hard-won water,¹² while she had in herself the drink which springs out to eternal life. This, the Lord receiving as a gift from the Father, gave Himself also to those who participate of Him, when He sent the Holy Spirit into the whole earth.

§ 3.

This grace of the Free Gift, Gideon foreseeing,¹³—that Israelite, whom the Lord chose, to save the people of Israel from the power of the aliens—made that variation in his prayers:—when also he prophesied of drought which should come upon the fleece of wool,¹⁴ on which alone the dew had been at first, which fleece was a type of the people. This means, that they should no longer receive the Holy Ghost from God,¹⁵ (as saith Esaias, I will also command the clouds, that they rain not on it:) but that on all the earth there should be dew, i.e., the Spirit of God Who descended upon the Lord,¹⁶—the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, and the Spirit of knowledge and godliness, the Spirit of the fear of God. And This same Spirit He again gave to the Church, sending the Paraclete from Heaven into all the Earth:¹⁷ whither also the Devil, as lightning, was cast out, as the Lord saith. Wherefore the dew of God is needed by us, that we be not scorched, nor made unfruitful, and that where we have an accuser, there also we may have an advocate. Even as the Lord commits to the Holy Ghost that man of His, who had fallen among thieves; whom He did Himself pity, and bound up his wounds,¹⁸ giving two royal pennies, that we receiving by the Spirit the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, might cause the penny entrusted to us to bear fruit, accounting for it¹⁹ to the Lord with manifold increase.

§ 4.

The Spirit then having come down because of the foreordained Economy, and the only begotten Son of God, Who is also the Word of the Father, having, when the fulness of the time came, been incarnate in a human being for man’s sake, and having fulfilled His whole Economy as Man;²⁰—I mean our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is one and the same, as the Lord Himself witnesses, and the Apostles confess and the Prophets proclaim:—all the doctrines are proved false of those who have devised the Ogdoads and Quaternions, and unreal imaginations and subdivisions: who while they²¹ kill the Spirit consider that Christ is one and Jesus another, and teach that Christ is not one but many. And though they affirm them to have been united, yet again they make it out that one²² indeed shared in the Passion, while the other remained impassive; and that the one ascended into the Pleroma, while the other abode in the middle place: and that while the one feasts and delights himself among the things invisible and unnameable, the other sits with the Creator, emptying Him of strength.

Wherefore it will be your duty and that of all who consider this writing,²³ and are careful of their own salvation, not to yield voluntarily, upon hearing their discourses without. For although their talk is like that of the faithful, as we have said before, their sentiments are not only unlike, but even contrary, and throughout full of blasphemies:²⁴ whereby they kill those, who through the resemblance of their words take up into themselves the poison of their feelings, far unlike. As, if one should mix water with gypsum, and give it for milk, he would mislead by the resemblance of colour: as was said by one above us, concerning all who in any way deprave the things of God, and adulterate the truths, It is evil mingling gypsum²⁵ in the milk of God.