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1 But it is written, they say: the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Christ. I grant it—since he is also called the Spirit of truth, and the Spirit of life, the Son being truth and life; and I will add, of wisdom and of power, for the Son is these things too. Yet the Spirit is called his not as proceeding out of him, but as his own—kindred to him, not foreign—and as resting in him, and as sent, supplied, and imparted by him to the worthy. But well argued indeed, since the discourse, advancing, has now brought us to the very heart of the matter.
2 You seem to me, you who set your minds on the things above, to go wrong not so much from wickedness of mind as from ignorance of what is right. Thinking that to proceed is the same as to be supplied and imparted—since the Spirit is found sent, supplied, and imparted by the Son—you suppose you commit no offense in also saying that he proceeds from the Son. But that is not in fact how these things stand. On what ground? Come now—we say they differ in every respect. To proceed signifies the manner in which the Holy Spirit has his being. Just as the Son is from the Father, but by begetting and in no other manner, so too the Spirit is from that same principle—I mean, from the Father—not by begetting (for there are not two Sons), but by procession. Procession, then, is the manner in which the Spirit has his being from the Father, and this is recognized as his very own property. But to be sent, supplied, and imparted does not signify how the Spirit exists; rather, these words signify a certain enrichment, and as it were an outpouring of goodness, which has its being from the Father but is poured out by the Son upon the worthy, to whom he is accordingly said to have been made manifest through the Son.
3 It is to those who have received the Word, not to those who pay no heed,[1] that the Spirit is made manifest; and it is through the Son that we have learned his divinity, unknown clearly to anyone before, since the Son ranked him together with the Father and himself in the deifying baptism. So too the Lord is said to have breathed the Spirit on the disciples after the resurrection—not as the one who brings him forth (for that breathing was not, so to speak, the essential production of the Spirit; besides, not even the whole was given then, only one gift, the remission of sins, since the whole was reserved for the time of Pentecost)—but as one who already possessed him essentially, and who gives him when he wills, and to whom he wills, and as he wills: to some according to one kind of gift, to others according to several, and to others the whole of him, the other Comforter. Let us stop, then, treating as one and the same two things that cannot be reconciled—imparting and procession—and weaving together what will not be woven.