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1 But if you tell me that you know this too—that the Father is the cause of the Spirit’s being by way of procession, just as he is of the Son’s by way of begetting—yet say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, not in that sense, but in the sense of being poured out and distributed, and that, sound of mind, you are forced to speak this way by poverty of vocabulary and the narrowness of the Latin tongue—then I will show you here the blessed poverty in spirit,[1] and a brotherly acceptance; and you yourself will abhor the impurity of a proud heart. So, being of one mind in one Spirit, we will glorify with one accord the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the first as begetting and putting forth; and of the other two, the one as begotten, the other as proceeding.
2 If you are truly poor in the wealth of language, and you lack the garments of the mind and the words for it, and for that reason cannot distinguish the outpouring of the Spirit that comes by the Son, or his impartation (or whatever else one might call it), from the procession by which he has his being from the Father alone—then in other contexts I will let you use these words as your tongue permits, in common speech, I mean, and in conversation, and, if you please, in church discourse too, provided you add the appropriate clarification, so that your hearers do not miss the double meaning carried in a single word. But in the Symbol you must proclaim the procession as being from the Father alone. There we have the confession of our faith, which must be pure, luminous, and simple—for such too are the things believed—carrying in itself nothing confused, obscure, or manifold, just as our own Exposition of the faith has it, being the pronouncement of the Spirit who prevailed at the second council.[2] His is the inbreathing, and the Fathers’ shared breath was on his behalf; it is kept by all the Churches, whose own dignity grants them to think no lower thoughts than you—for it is equal—and whose number grants them to think the more prevailing ones as well, for it is the greater.