The fifth chapter of our catechist is concerning the Holy Ghost, for reducing of whom into the order and rank of creatures Mr Biddle hath formerly taken great pains;1 following therein the Macedonians of old, and leaving his new masters the Socinians, who deny him his personality, and leave him to be only the efficacy or energy of the power of God. The design is the same in both; the means used to bring it about differ. The Socinians, not able to answer the testimonies proving him to be God, to be no creature, do therefore deny his personality.2 Mr B., being not able to stand before the clear evidence of his personality, denies his deity. What he hath done in this chapter I shall consider; what he hath elsewhere done hath already met with a detection from another hand.
“Q. How many Holy Spirits of Christians are there? — A. ‘One Spirit,’ Eph. iv. 4.”
I must take leave to put one question to Mr B, that we may the better know the mind and meaning of his; and that is, what he means by the “Holy Spirits of Christians”? If he intend that Spirit which they worship, invocate, believe, and are baptized into his name, who quickens and sanctifies them, and from whom they have their supplies of grace, it is true there is but one only Spirit of Christians, as is evident, Eph. iv. 4; and this Spirit is “God, blessed for ever;” nor can any be called that one Spirit of Christians but he that is so. But if by the “Holy Spirits of Christians” he intend created spiritual beings, sent out from God for the good of Christians, of those that believe, there are then an innumerable company of holy spirits of believers; for all the angels are “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation,” Heb. i. 14. So that by this one testimony, that there is but one Holy Spirit of Christians, that Holy Spirit is exempted from the number of all created spirits, and reckoned as the object of their worship with the “one God” and one Lord, Eph. iv. 4–6; when yet they worship the Lord their God alone, and him only do they serve, Matt. iv. 10.
His second question is, “Wherein consists the prerogative of that Holy Spirit above other spirits? — A. 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11.”
The prerogative of that Holy Spirit of whom we speak is that of God above his creatures, — prerogative of an infinite, eternal, self-subsisting being. Yea, and that this is indeed his prerogative we need not seek for proof beyond that testimony here produced by Mr B. (though to another purpose) in answer to his question. He that “searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,” is God. To “search all things” is the same with knowing all things; so the apostle interprets it in the next verse, “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” To know all things is to be omniscient; but he that is omniscient is God. His angels he charged with folly. Omniscience is an essential attribute of God; and therefore Socinus, in his disputation with Franken, durst not allow Christ to be omniscient, lest he should also grant him to be infinite in essence.3 Again, he that searches or knows τὰ βάθη τοῦ Θεοῦ, the “deep things of God,” is God. None can know the deep things of an infinite wisdom and understanding but he that is infinite. All creatures are excluded from an acquaintance with the deep things of God, but only as he voluntarily revealeth them: Rom. xi. 34, “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellors” that is, no creature hath so been. Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε πώποτε, John i. 18 Now the Spirit doth not know the deep things of God by his voluntary revelation of them; for as the spirit of a man knows the things of a man, so doth the Spirit of God know the things of God. This is not because they are revealed to the spirit of a man, but because that is the principle of operation in a man, and is conscious to all its own actions and affairs. And so it is with the Spirit of God: being God, and having the same understanding, and will, and power, with God the Father and Son, as the spirit of a man knows the things of a man, so doth he the things of God. Thus in the beginning of this, as in the close of the last chapter, Mr B. hath provided sufficiently for his own conviction and scattering of all his paralogisms and sophistical insinuations, running through them both.
The design of this present chapter being to pursue what Mr B. hath some years since publicly undertaken, namely, to disprove the deity of the Holy Ghost, — his aim here being to divert the thoughts of his catechumens from an apprehension thereof, by his proposal and answer of such questions as serve to his design, pretending to deliver the doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost from the Scripture, and not once producing any of those texts which are most usually insisted on for the confirmation of his deity (with what Christian candour and ingenuity is easily discovered), — I shall briefly, from the Scripture, in the first place establish the truth concerning the eternal deity of the person of the Holy Ghost, and then consider his questions in their order, so far as shall be judged meet or necessary.