36. Having thus concluded that we must reject the word ‘creation’ from our confession of faith in God the Only-begotten, we proceed to lay down the teachings of reason and of piety concerning the Holy Spirit, that the reader, whose convictions have been established by patient and earnest study of the preceding books, may be provided with a complete presentation of the faith. This end will be attained when the blasphemies of heretical teaching on this theme also have been swept away, and the mystery, pure and undefiled, of the Trinity which regenerates us has been fixed in terms of saving precision on the authority of Apostles and Evangelists. Men will no longer dare, on the strength of mere human reasoning, to rank among creatures that Divine Spirit, Whom we receive as the pledge of immortality and source of fellowship with the sinless nature of God.

36. Liber XII quae de Spiritu sancto confitenda sunt aperit.---Dehinc consequens visum est, creationis nomine a fide, quae nobis de unigenito Deo est, repudiato, ea quoque quae confessioni sancti Spiritus congrua ac religiosa essent, docere: ut jam confirmatis longo anteriorum libellorum diligentique tractatu, nihil de totius fidei absolutione deesset, cum amotis vitiosarum praedicationum etiam de opinione Sancti Spiritus irreligiositatibus, illaesum atque incontaminatum 0048C regenerantis Trinitatis sacramentum intra definitionem salutarem apostolica atque evangelica auctoritas contineret: neque jam per sensus humani sententiam Spiritum Dei inter creaturas quisquam auderet referre, quem ad immortalitatis pignus, et ad divinae incorruptaeque naturae consortium sumeremus.