Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/213

 not generated, but begets the Son, and produces the Holy Ghost. (p. 263.)

“(a) Entirely in a spiritual manner and consequently without any suffering, without any sensuous secretion: because the essence of God is immaterial and simple; (b) he begets and produces since eternity and for eternity: for there has been no time when the Father has not been the Father of the Son and the producer of the Holy Ghost, just as there was no time when he was not God, and what has never begun cannot be said ever to end; (c) he begets and produces in such a way as only he alone knows and he who is born from him and proceeds from him, but of the creatures none can comprehend it; (d) finally, beginninglessness and causelessness are exclusively appropriated by God the Father only in relation to the other persons of the Holy Trinity, but by their divinity the Son and the Spirit are also beginningless and causeless, or, rather, the whole Trinity is co-beginningless and co-causeless.” (pp. 263 and 264.)

“41. The personal attribute of God, the Holy Ghost.” (p. 267.)

A controversy of over fifty pages about the question from whom the Holy Ghost proceeds, whether from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone. The dispute is settled by an analysis of external proofs. The proofs are as follows:

“Who, putting his hand on his heart, will have the courage to affirm that we, who believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, have deviated from the truth? Who will dare, in all conscience, to rebuke us for observing a heresy? If we are rebuked for an error or a heresy, it would be just as right to rebuke for it all the holy fathers and teachers of the church; the same as to rebuke the Ecumenical Councils, not only locally, but altogether the whole ancient church; the same as to rebuke the Word of God itself for error and heresy.