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I. In the sense of breath ;'--and to express either the means, or the perfect ease with which the Almighty extirpates

his enemies.

II. In the sense of wind;3-to the invisibility of which our Lord compares the operations of the Spirit on the human mind; while its instability supplied the writers of the Old Testament especially with a beautiful image of unsuccessful efforts;*—as its impetuosity did of the desolation occasioned by an invading army.5

Hence, the air being a necessary, powerful, and invisible agent, we pass, by an easy transition, to

III. The sense of intelligent beings.

It is applied to the intellectual part of man as opposed to his animal and corpo

1 Gen. vi. 17; vii. 22. Job ix. 18. Lam. iv. 20. &c.

2 Isa. xi. 4.

3 Gen. iii. 8; viii. 1.

4 Job xv. 2. Eccles. v. 16. Isa. xxvi. 18. Hosea xii. 1. 5 Jer. iv. 11, 12.

1 Rev. xiii. 15? xi. 11?

2 2 Thess. ii. 8.
3 John iii. 8.

real parts;—to angels, whether fallen," or in a state of integrity ;-to the Deity ;9 and though it may be doubted whether the term is ever applied in the Old Testament to the Messiah, unless it be admitted that the 6th verse of the 33rd Psalm is a parallelism, in which case the writer seems to identify him with the creating Spirit of God, yet St. Paul, in his discourse "touching the resurrection of the dead," comparing the first and second Adam, styles the latter "a quickening spirit;"-and finally, the sacred writers have appropriated the term preeminently to him, who, for want of a more appropriate word, is denominated the third person or hypostasis in the sacred Trinity, and who is represented as being "the Spirit of God"—the Spirit

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of the Lord"" the Holy Spirit"+the "good Spirit" 5" his Spirit" 6" my Spirit" "thy Spirit"-" the Spirit of Christ" and emphatically "the Spirit.""

IV. The next meaning is easily deducible from the last, since it is transferred by an ordinary figure of speech from the cause to the effect, from the person to his influence whether that influence re

late to his ordinary communications,— to his miraculous gifts,3-to the doctrine

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taught by Christ and his apostles,*-or to being full of the Holy Ghost,5 &c.

V. The last application of the terms is to the effects produced by that effect, or by that influence, and bears the different meanings of sentiment,6-of disposition," of feeling,-of scope, end, or design.9

Shades of difference may doubtless be perceived, but these are the principal meanings attached to the words by the respective writers of both the earlier and the later covenant. Whence it appears, that the writers of the former have used the term, ruach, in almost every sense in which the latter have used the term TVεμа, pneuma; that the sense in which it actually occurs must be determined

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chiefly by the context; and, that no antecedent objection can be taken to the personality of the Holy Spirit from the term by which he is designated; since the same term is applied, not to mention angels, to the Deity, to Jesus Christ, and to men, whose personality has never been questioned; while a reference to the Greek of the New Testament shows that the writers" have clearly, and in strict conformity with the analogy of language, distinguished the influence from the person of the Spirit ;"-for " in the passages which, from their ascribing personal acts to the πνεῦμα ἅγιον, are usually adduced to prove the personality of the Blessed Spirit, the words πνεῦμα and πνεῦμα ἅγιον invariably have the article. See particularly

Mark i. 10. Luke iii. 22. John i. 32. Acts i. 16, and xx. 28. Eph. iv. 30. Mark xiii. 11. Acts x. 19, and xxviii. 25. 1 Tim. iv. 1. Heb. iii. 7. &c. In these passages there is no renewed mention, nor any other possible interpretation of the article, but the use of it Kar' oxηv,

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