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| Chapter III. The same Unity may also be recognized from the fact that the Spirit is called Finger, and the Son Right Hand; for the understanding of divine things is assisted by the usage of human language. The tables of the law were written by this Finger, and they were afterwards broken, and the reason. Lastly, Christ wrote with the same Finger; yet we must not admit any inferiority in the Spirit from this bodily comparison.
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Chapter III.
The same Unity may also be recognized from the fact that
the Spirit is called Finger, and the Son Right Hand; for the
understanding of divine things is assisted by the usage of human
language. The tables of the law were written by this Finger, and
they were afterwards broken, and the reason. Lastly, Christ wrote
with the same Finger; yet we must not admit any inferiority in the
Spirit from this bodily comparison.
11. So, too, the
Spirit is also called the Finger of God, because there is an
indivisible and inseparable communion between the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit. For as the Scripture called the Son of God the
Right Hand of God, as it is said: “Thy Right Hand, O Lord,
is made glorious in power. Thy Right Hand, O Lord, hath dashed in
pieces the enemy;”1248
so the Holy
Spirit is called the Finger of God, as the Lord Himself says:
“But if I by the Finger of God cast out devils.”1249
For in the same place in another
book of the Gospel He named the Spirit of God, as you find:
“But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils.”1250
12. What, then, could have been said to signify
more expressly the unity of the Godhead, or of Its working, which Unity
is according to the Godhead of the Father, or of the Son, or of the
Holy Spirit, than that we should understand that the fulness of the
eternal Godhead would seem to be divided far more than this body of
ours, if any one were to sever the unity of Substance, and multiply Its
powers, whereas the eternity of the same Godhead is one?
13. For oftentimes it is convenient to
estimate from our own words those things which are above us, and
because we cannot see those things we draw inferences from those which
we can see. “For the invisible things of Him,” says
the Apostle, “from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by those things which are made.”1251
And he adds: “His eternal
power also and Godhead.”1252
Of which
one thing seems to be said of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit;
that in the same manner as the Son is called the eternal Power of the
Father, so, also, the Spirit, because He is divine, should be believed
to be His eternal Godhead. For the Son, too, because He ever
lives, is eternal life. This Finger, then, of God is both eternal
and divine. For what is there belonging to God which is not
eternal and divine?
14. With this Finger, as we read, God wrote
on those tables of stone which Moses received. For God did not
with a finger of flesh write the forms and portions of those letters
which we read, but gave the law by His Spirit. And so the Apostle
says: “For the Law is spiritual, which, indeed, is written
not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of
stone, but on fleshy tables of the heart.”1253
For if the letter of the Apostle is
written in the Spirit, what hinders us from believing that the Law of
God was written not with ink, but with the Spirit of God, which
certainly does not stain but enlightens the secret places of our heart
and mind?
14. Now it was written on tables of stone, because
it was written in a type, but the tables were first broken and cast out
of the hands of Moses, because the Jews fell away from the works of the
prophet. And fitly were the tables broken, not the writing
erased. And do you see that your table be not broken, that your
mind and soul be not
divided. Is Christ divided?
He is not divided, but is one with the Father; and let no one separate
you from Him. If your faith fails, the table of your heart is
broken. The coherence of your soul is lessened if you do not
believe the unity of Godhead in the Trinity. Your faith is
written, and your sin is written, as Jeremiah said: “Thy
sin, O Judah, is written with a pen of iron and the point of a
diamond. And it is written,” he says, “on thy breast
and on thy heart.”1254
The sin,
therefore, is there where grace is, but the sin is written with a pen,
grace is denoted by the Spirit.
15. With this Finger, also, the Lord Jesus, with
bowed head, mystically wrote on the ground, when the adulteress was
brought before Him by the Jews, signifying in a figure that, when we
judge of the sins of another, we ought to remember our own.
16. And lest, again, because God wrote the
Law by His Spirit, we should believe any inferiority, as it were,
concerning the ministry of the Spirit, or from the consideration of our
own body should think the Spirit to be a small part of God, the Apostle
says, elsewhere, that he does not speak with words of human wisdom, but
in words taught by the Spirit, and that he compares spiritual things
with spiritual; but that the natural man receiveth not the things which
pertain to the Spirit of God.1255
For he knew
that he who compared divine with carnal things was amongst natural
things, and not to be reckoned amongst spiritual men; “for they
are foolishness,” he says, “unto him.”1256
And so, because he knew that these
questions would arise amongst natural men, foreseeing the future he
says: “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may
instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”1257
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