The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 33

;

BY PROFESSOR WARFIELD of the person of the

Holy Ghost

xxxiii

— His deity and personality— and of

His one function of inspirer of the prophets and apostles, while the whole doctrine of the work of the Spirit at large is a gift to the

Church from the Reformation * and we shall need to note further its formulation by the Reformers this doctrine has taken deep root and borne its full fruits only in the Reformed churches, and ;

that since

among them to,

ciples of the is

in exact proportion to the loyalty of their

and the richness of their development

as

much

Reformed theology.

of,

Stated in

adherence

the fundamental prinits

sharpest form this

as to say that the developed doctrine of the

work

of the

an exclusively Reformation doctrine, and more particularly a Reformed doctrine, and more particularly still a Puritan doctrine. Wherever the fundamental principles of the Reformation have gone, it has gone but it has come to its full rights only among the Reformed churches, and among them only where what we have been accustomed to call " the Second Reformation " has deepened the spiritual life of the churches and cast back the Christian with special poignancy of feeling upon the grace of God alone as his sole dependence for salvation and all the goods of this life and the life to come. Indeed, it is possible to

Holy

Spirit is

;

be more precise still. The doctrine of the work of the Holy He did spirit is a gift from John Calvin to the Church of Christ.

The whole

of it lay spread out on the and fulness of utterance which one would think would secure that even he who ran should read it and doubtless he who ran did read it, and it has fed the soul of the

not, of course, invent

it.

pages of Scripture with a clearness

true believer in

all

ages.

found widely scattered in

Accordingly hints of all

its

apprehension are

Christian literature, and in particular

the germs of the doctrine are spread broadcast over the pages of Augustine.

Luther

did

not

fail

to

lay hold

upon them;

Zwingli shows time and again that he had them richly in his

mind they ;

constituted, in very fact, one of the foundations of the

For the epoch-making character of the Reformation in the history of Nosgen, op. cit., p. 2. "For its development, a division-line is provided simply and solely by the Reformation, and this merely because at that time only was attention intensely directed to the right mode of the application of salvation. Thus were the problems of the specially saving operation of the Holy Spirit, of the manner of His working in the congpregation of believers cast into the foreground, and the theological treatment of this doctrine made of ever-increasing importance to the Church of Christ, " etc. *

this doctrine cf. also

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