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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 31 Pages
Page 5
Come then, let us examine what is spoken of Him. What says the Evangelist? And John bare record, saying, I have seen the Spirit descending from, Heaven like a dove, . . . . [3] and abiding upon Him, This is He That baptizeth with the Holy Ghost: and I have seen and testified that This is the Son of God. For our Lord Jesus Christ was about to sanctify economically the Jordan, and deigned with us to be baptized, ordering the Mystery of the Economy with flesh through the ways that beseem it: for it was necessary that the Word out of God the Father should be known to have been made Man. Yet was He baptized as Man, He baptized Divinely in the Holy Ghost. And we do not say that He ministered the participation of the Holy Ghost to the baptized either as a servant or by means of any other, but hallowed them, Himself infusing into them out of His own Fulness as God by Nature. How then dost thou, disregarding words alike and thoughts that belong to rightness, say that indwelling in man was wrought by God the Word; albeit whereas very many saints have had the God of all indwelling in them, none of them baptized with his own spirit or has been said to indwell Divinely in any and has so indwelt? and Christ Himself dwells in us through the Holy Ghost, Which is His own too, even as God the Father's. And this Himself ratifies to us saying, But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of the Truth, Which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.
See then how He says that the Spirit Which proceedeth from God the Father is the own Spirit of the Truth also: and He Himself is of a surety the Truth. How then, if He be of a truth not rather God made man, but man having the Divine Indwelling as His Energy, doth He promise to send down, as His own, the Spirit of God the Father upon them who believe on Him? Yea, as I said, he shakes to nothing the glory of the Mystery, distributing the operation of the Holy Trinity in respect of the things done, and allotting to each of the Persons by Himself what the other hath not wrought.
Again he says on this wise, "The Son chose forth, for I, He says, chose you: the Father sanctified, the Spirit made orators." O distraction without measure! if all things have been done by the Father through the Son in the Spirit and nothing be done by God the Father, save in this very way;----how is he not surely distraught, who distributes to the Persons severally the Operations unto ought of the Untaint and One Godhead, and doth not rather maintain that each thing that is done has been wrought by the Father through the Son in the Spirit? For if the Son is both the Counsel and Wisdom and Might of the Father, full surely will the Father work all things through the Son, as through His Counsel and Wisdom and Might. Thus chose He for their excellence His disciples, thus do we say that those who were chosen out were sanctified, thus that they were made orators, from out One Godhead; that is, by the Father through the Son in the Spirit. For He says, Holy Father, sanctify them in Thy Truth. The Truth therefore sanctifies, i. e. the Son; He infuses .....[4] too and renders them wise and through the operation of the Holy Ghost; devoutly eloquent. And verily He said in the book of Matthew to His own Disciples, When they deliver you up take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given yon in that hour what ye shall speak, for not YE are the speakers, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you; and through that of Luke, Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate before what ye shall answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay or resist. Hearest thou how when the Holy Ghost speaketh in them, Himself gives the mouth? For He is as Word Giver of word and Bestower of the Spirit, as having It as His own Naturally; even as the Father Himself too. The Holy Trinity has therefore the same Operation, and whatsoever things the Father doth and willeth to accomplish, these things doth the Son too in equal manner, likewise the Spirit also. But the giving of the Operations severally to Each of the Persons individually is nought else than to set forth three gods severally and wholly distinct from one another. For the count of Natural Unity in regard to the Holy Trinity, shews I suppose one motion[ ]unto every thing that is done. But if now we say that while One Person is moved, e. g., to work, the Two remain ineffective, how is not a gross severance privily introduced, allotting as a certain position to each Person, the being conceived of external to and isolated from the rest, not in respect of His Individual Being (for that were true), but in respect of utter diversity which does not endure language that gathers them into Natural Union? For One Nature of Godhead is conceived of in the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity [5].
3. [e] Thus the MS., omitting the intermediate part, ver. 32 and most of 33. Omissions of this sort are not uncommon, even in good MSS., while the frequent citation of these verses by S. Cyril, together with the sense, shew that the omission is a slip of some transcriber. The omission seems to indicate that as in other places so here too S. Cyril read from Heaven in verse 33 also and so that the omission took place through the eye of the scribe wandering from the words from heaven in verse 32 to those same words in verse 33.
4. [f] There appears to be an omission here; the Roman editors conjecture that τὸ ἅγιονπνεῦμα may be to be supplied.
5. [g] "Following the faith of the holy Fathers we say that the SON was in God-befitting and Ineffable way truly begotten out of the Essence of God the Father, and that He is conceived of in His Proper Hypostasis, yet is united in Identity of Essence with Him Who begat Him, and is in Him and hath again the Father in Himself. And we confess that He is Light out of Light, God out of God by Nature, Equal in glory and in work, Impress and Radiance and in all Equal, in nought minished. For thus, the Holy Ghost being counted besides, the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity is united in One Nature of Godhead." Ep. 1 to Monks p. 6 b.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius-2.asp?pg=5
