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24. But we must proceed to attack our opponents, in the endeavour
to confute those "oppositions" advanced against us which are derived
from "knowledge falsely so-called."
It is not permissible, they assert, for the Holy Spirit to be
ranked with the Father and Son, on account of the difference of His
nature and the inferiority of His dignity. Against them it is right
to reply in the words of the apostles, "We ought to obey God rather
than men,"
For if our Lord, when enjoining the baptism of salvation, charged
His disciples to baptize all nations in the name "of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," not disdaining fellowship with
Him, and these men allege that we must not rank Him with the Father
and the Son, is it not clear that they openly withstand the
commandment of God? If they deny that coordination of this kind is
declaratory of any fellowship and conjunction, let them tell us why it
behoves us to hold this opinion, and what more intimate mode of
conjunction they have.
If the Lord did not indeed conjoin the Spirit with the Father anti
Himself in baptism, do not let them lay the blame of conjunction upon
us, for we neither hold nor say anything different. If on the
contrary the Spirit is there conjoined with the Father and the Son,
and no one is so shameless as to say anything else, then let them not
lay blame on us for following the words of Scripture.
25. But all the apparatus of war has been got ready against us;
every intellectual missile is aimed at us; and now blasphemers'
tongues shoot and hit and hit again, yet harder than Stephen of old
was smitten by the killers of the Christ. And do not let them succeed
in concealing the fact that, while an attack on us serves for a pretext
for the war, the real aim of these proceedings is higher. It is
against us, they say, that they are preparing their engines and their
snares; against us that they are shouting to one another, according to
each one's strength or cunning, to come on. But the object of attack
is faith. The one aim of the whole band of opponents and enemies of
"sound doctrine" is to shake down the foundation of the faith of
Christ by levelling apostolic tradition with the ground, and utterly
destroying it. So like the debtors,--of course bona fide
debtors.--they clamour for written proof, and reject as worthless
the unwritten tradition of the Fathers. But we will not slacken in
our defence of the truth. We will not cowardly abandon the cause.
The Lord has delivered to us as a necessary and saving doctrine that
the Holy Spirit is to be ranked with the Father. Our opponents
think differently, and see fit to divide and rend asunder, and
relegate Him to the nature of a ministering spirit. Is it not then
indisputable that they make their own blasphemy more authoritative than
the law prescribed by the Lord? Come, then, set aside mere
contention. Let us consider the points before us, as follows:
26. Whence is it that we are Christians? Through our faith,
would be the universal answer. And in what way are we saved? Plainly
because we were regenerate through the grace given in our baptism. How
else could we be? And after recognising that this salvation is
established through the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost,
shall we fling away "that form of doctrine" which we received? Would
it not rather be ground for great groaning if we are found now further
off from our salvation "than when we first believed," and deny now
what we then received? Whether a man have departed this life without
baptism, or have received a baptism lacking in some of the requirements
of the tradition, his loss is equal. And whoever does not always and
everywhere keep to and hold fast as a sure protection the confession
which we recorded at our first admission, when, being delivered "from
the idols," we came "to the living Gods" constitutes himself a
"stranger" from the "promises" of God, fighting against his own
handwriting, which he put on record when he professed the faith. For
if to me my baptism was the beginning of life, and that day of
regeneration the first of days, it is plain that the utterance uttered
in the grace of adoption was the most honourable of all. Can I then,
perverted by these men's seductive words, abandon the tradition which
guided me to the light, which bestowed on me the boon of the knowledge
of God, whereby I, so long a foe by reason of sin, was made a child
of God? But, for myself, I pray that with this confession I may
depart hence to the Lord, and them I charge to preserve the faith
secure until the day of Christ, and to keep the Spirit undivided from
the Father and the Son, preserving, both in the confession of faith
and in the doxology, the doctrine taught them at their baptism.
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