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53. Moreover the surpassing excellence of the nature of the Spirit
is to be learned not only from His having the same title as the Father
and the Son, and sharing in their operations, but also from His
being, like the Father and the Son, unapproachable in thought. For
what our Lord says of the Father as being above and beyond human
conception, and what He says of the Son, this same language He uses
also of the Holy Ghost. "O righteous Father," He says, "the
world hath not known Thee," meaning here by the world not the complex
whole compounded of heaven and earth, but this life of ours subject to
death, and exposed to innumerable vicissitudes. And when discoursing
of Himself He says, "Yet a little while and the world seeth me no
more, but ye see me;" again in this passage, applying the word world
to those who being bound down by this material and carnal life, and
beholding the truth by material sight alone, were ordained, through
their unbelief in the resurrection, to see our Lord no more with the
eyes of the heart. And He said the same concerning the Spirit.
"The Spirit of truth," He says, "whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him,
for He dwelleth with you." For the carnal man, who has never
trained his mind to contemplation, but rather keeps it buried deep in
lust of the flesh, as in mud, is powerless to look up to the spiritual
light of the truth. And so the world, that is life enslaved by the
affections of the flesh, can no more receive the grace of the Spirit
than a weak eye the light of a sunbeam. But the Lord, who by His
teaching bore witness to purity of life, gives to His disciples the
power of now beth beholding and contemplating the Spirit. For
"now," He says, "Ye are clean through the word which I have
spoken unto you," wherefore "the world cannot receive Him, because
it seeth Him not, ... but ye know Him; for he dwelleth with
you." And so says Isaiah;--"He that spread forth the earth and
that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon
it, and Spirit to them that trample on it" ; for they that trample
clown earthly things and rise above them are borne witness to as worthy
of the gift of the Holy Ghost. What then ought to be thought of Him
whom the world cannot receive, and Whom saints alone can contemplate
through pureness of heart? What kind of honours can be deemed adequate
to Him?
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