of notice, that, if Jerome had no better foundation for his charge against the Jews. than he had for that which he has brought against Lactantius, the Synagogue of his time was, in this instance, but a very little way removed from the kingdom of God. Lactantius, though that particular work, be lost to which his accuser chiefly refers, has left enough behind him to evince the grossness of the calumny; and, though he ascribe, in common, as may be hereafter shewn, with many others of undoubted orthodoxy*, the name of Spirit both to God in general, and, more particularly, to the Son of God in his preexistent majesty; he distinguishes, nevertheless, in his description of the Saviour's baptism, the Spirit, peculiarly so called, from the Father alike and the Son. Nor have any of the ancient Christians more happily illustrated the difference between the accidents of material existence and the eternal and intelligent emanations of an eternal Intelligence, than this pious and eloquent

*See Lecture IV.

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champion of the Faith, whom, on the accusation of one whose warmth too often rendered him unjust and uncharitable, the orthodox have, without inquiry, been ready to fling into the hands of a party at least sufficiently anxious to obtain any illustrious accession to their number".

If we should concede, however, to the assertion of Jerome and the similar testimony of Epiphanius, that the majority of the Jewish nation did really, in their time, deny the personality of the Holy Ghost,— yet will not the prevalence of such an opinion in the fourth century after Christ, be regarded as a sufficient evidence of the original doctrines of the synagogue. Those doctrines may be naturally supposed, in the course of twelve generations of mutual bitterness, to have receded considerably from the ancient confession in every point which favoured or resembled the tenets of their Christian rivals. And the more recent, and therefore less forcible authority of Maimonides is liable to the further objection, that this ingenious writer has evinced himself in several instances disposed to depart from the

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usual tenor of Rabbinical orthodoxy. Disgusted with the legends of his countrymen, and anxious to obviate the discredit which their dreaming commentators had thrown even on the Law of Moses itself, the system which he has embodied in the More Nevochim, is, throughout, a sort of freethinking Judaism, as much at variance with the general confession of those whose cause he pleads, as the works of Crellius and Socinus with the prevailing tenets of Christendom.

And that, in fact, no small number at least of the more learned Jews, even so late as the fourth century after Christ, acknowledged the Spirit of God as a distinct and intelligent Being, is shewn by the positive assertion of Eusebius, (who quotes the Hebrew doctors as assigning him a local habitation in the region of the air';) by the fact which will be hereafter more minutely proved, that the Christians of the circumcision, however in other respects heretical, in the Personality of the Holy Ghost agreed with the Gentile Churches* ;

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and above all, by very numerous passages in the Rabbinical works themselves, which speak of him in terms altogether inapplicable to a Virtue or Abstraction only. By these writers the soul of man is derived from the side or loins of the Holy Ghost the Holy Ghost is expressly opposed to him, whom we know the Jews regarded as a Person, the Spirit or Power of Evil. He is said to dwell in the hearts of men as another and a better soul; he is called a Holy Guest who honours the Sabbath with his presence; we find him described in their usual jargon, as the Spirit of the Window whereby God's glory is revealed, and the Spirit by whom the dead are raised.

And, as it cannot be said that our souls are enlightened and our bodies raised by the same or a similar operation; as the acts described are distinct, the Spirit by which they are effected must, plainly, be an Agent, not a process; a Dispenser of various graces, not any single grace personified.

It is needless, therefore, to refer to the

ux or ves of Philo, and the Binah of the Cabbalists, to ascertain the ancient creed'. It is true, indeed, that these Hebrew testimonies fall very short of that standard of knowledge which the Christian Church has attained; and that the rank of the Holy Spirit, and his union with the Deity, were imperfectly, if at all, comprehended, by the Jews of any sect or æra. But, neither can this admission be allowed to militate against the truth or importance of this Article of the Catholic faith, without abandoning at the same time the resurrection of the dead, and all those other features of our Religion, which it was a part, at least, of the Messiah's office, to reveal, or assert, or explain.

The illumination, in fact, of the moral creation of God, during the course of his dealings with mankind, has, like the advances of the physical day, been gradually and slowly progressive. The darkness of ignorance has been dispelled by a process almost similar to that which chases every morning the darkness of night from a part of the creation; and the leading truths which

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