140 THE KEY OF MYSTERIES

We shall soon see that the Deity of the Holy Spirit is taught in many parts of the holy Scriptures. Meanwhile let it be noted that the fact that He is here conjoined by Christ with the other two Hypostases of the Most Holy Trinity cannot be explained by any other hypothesis than that He is equal with them in nature and dignity.

In other passages also the Lord Jesus Christ mentions the Holy Spirit in such close connexion with Himself and the Father that there too He inculcates the same doctrine. For example, He says in the Gospel: 'When 1 the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me.' Here Christ mentions the Paraclete or Comforter as united with Himself and the Father in will and purpose, as proceeding from the Father and therefore of the same nature as the Father and the Son, and yet as in some measure distinct from each.

The three Hypostases are mentioned together in other passages also, but we content ourselves for the present with quoting only one more of them. The one we quote is a clear proof that the Apostles obeyed the Lord Jesus Christ and baptized men into the name of the three Hypostases of the one divine nature, for at the end of one of the epistles of St. Paul is the prayer: 'The 2 grace of

1 John xv. 26. 2 2 Cor. xiii. 14.
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the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.' Such a prayer would be unintelligible to those Christians to whom the epistle was in the first instance written, had they not been taught the doctrine of the Trinity before they were baptized, and had they not believed that doctrine as an essential part of the Christian faith.

As has been said above, since the Deity of the Son of God has already been proved, it remains for us now to show clearly that the holy Scriptures teach the Deity of the Holy Spirit of God also; quite apart from this doctrine being necessarily deduced from the verses already quoted.

The holy Scriptures teach the Deity of the Holy Spirit in two ways: (1) by ascribing to Him divine attributes and operations, and (2) by speaking of Him as God. This we proceed to show.

In the Taurat, when the prophet Moses by divine inspiration (الهام) relates how God created the world, he says: 'In 1 the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' Here it is clearly taught not only that God's Holy Spirit existed when the earth was being created, but also that the same Holy Spirit brooded over the face of the waters and thereby

1 Gen. i. 1-2.