St Basil the Great ON THE HOLY SPIRIT, Complete

Translated by Bl. Jackson.

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88 Pages

Page 16

Now are we to call these passages, and others like them, throughout the whole of Holy Scripture, proofs of humiliation, or rather public proclamations of the majesty of the Only Begotten, and of the equality of His glory with the Father? We ask them to listen to the Lord Himself, distinctly setting forth the equal dignity of His glory with the Father, in His words, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" [803] and again, "When the Son cometh in the glory of his Father;" [804] that they "should honour the Son even as they honour the Father;" [805] and, "We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;" [806] and "the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father." [807] Of all these passages they take no account, and then assign to the Son the place set apart for His foes. A father's bosom is a fit and becoming seat for a son, but the place of the footstool is for them that have to be forced to fall. [808]

[803] John xiv. 9.

[804] Mark viii. 38.

[805] John v. 23.

[806] John i. 14.

[807] John i. 18. "Only begotten God" is here the reading of five mss. of Basil. The words are wanting in one codex. In Chapter viii. of this work St. Basil distinctly quotes Scripture as calling the Son "only begotten God." (Chapter viii. Section 17.) But in Chapter xi. Section 27, where he has been alleged to quote John i. 18, with the reading "Only begotten Son" (e.g., Alford), the ms. authority for his text is in favour of "Only begotten God." OC is the reading of #.B.C. TC of A. On the comparative weight of the textual and patristic evidence vide Bp. Westcott in loc.

[808] cf. Ps. cx. 1.

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