an ill use of them. Thus spoke he of his own time. Now it is
well known (adds he) that it is not the Spirit of God, but of the
world, which inspires this mercenary and ambitious zeal. Behold
then how the spirit of the world rules in the very sanctuary. You
will tell me, that even professed religious are not exempt from it ;
and that not unfrequently in the profession they make of renouncing
the world, they retain the spirit of it. I know it, and shudder
when I think of it seriously. But if it be a matter of dread for
me, how can it be for you a matter of security. And if this
unfortunate spirit of the world can blind and mislead a man se-
questered from the world, what have not those to fear, who are
exposed, by the necessity of their station, to all the temptations and
dangers of the world?
Be that as it may, beloved Christians, let us resume the subject,
and by the miracle which the Holy Ghost operated in the apostles,
ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 81
let us learn what w r e are in the presence of God. To judge by
the effects, hath this Spirit of Truth, whose w r onders and prodigies
1 have just recounted, been hitherto a Spirit of Truth for us ?
And if he hath not, to what shall we impute it, but to the hard-
ness and depravity of our own hearts ? Whatever profession we
may make of being, as Christians, the disciples of the Spirit of
Truth, are we really persuaded of the truths of Christianity ?
Hath he made us relish them ? Hath he given us a sincere and
efficacious disposition to put them in practice ? We adore these
divine truths in speculation ; but do we conform our conduct to
them ? We speak of them, perhaps, with eloquence and enthu-
siasm, but are our morals correspondent with our words ? We
give lessons to others upon that head ; but are we ourselves fully
convinced of them ? Do we believe with a steadfast and lively
faith, that, to be Christians, it is our duty not only to carry our
cross, but to place our glory in it ? That, to follow Jesus Christ,
we must internally renounce not only all things, but even our-
selves ? That to belong to him, not only we must not indulge
the flesh, but must crucify it ? That, to find grace before God,
we must not only forget injuries received, but to return good for
evil? Do we firmly, and without hesitation, believe all these
points of the evangelic doctrine ? And can we bear witness to
ourselves, that we believe them as fully and constantly in heart,
as we openly confess them in words ? The apostles, the moment
they received the Holy Ghost, w r ere ready to lay down their lives
for the truth ; are we ready, I do not say to lay down our lives,
but to destroy our irregular desires and passions ? According to
this rule, is there room to believe, that the Spirit of Truth hath
undeceived us with respect to a thousand errors which occasion all
the misdeeds in the world ? That he hath disabused us of I know
not how many maxims which pervert us ? That he hath opened
our eyes upon certain articles which are so many sources of dam-
nation ? If he hath done nothing of all this, what proof have we
that we have received him ? And if we have not received him,
whom have we to blame for it but ourselves ?
S Perhaps to excuse the criminal infatuation in which we live,
we have the boldness to say, that we want the illuminations of the
heavenly Spirit, and by that means ascribe to him the iniquity of
our errors. But as Spirit of Truth, he hath taken care to remove
all grounds for this pretext, and convince us by the reproach
82 ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST.
he so often makes us in the inspired writings, that our errors arise
solely from our resistance to his divine lights ; for he lets us know,
that if we are uninformed, it is. because we are untractable, and
unwilling to hearken to him, and because, regardless of his inspira-
tions, we follow the guileful spirit of the world, wliich corrupts us,
and leads us into perdition : " Stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in
heart, ye always resist the Holy Ghost." Acts vii. Ah ! let us
not, beloved hearers, so far outrage the Spirit of grace, as to
endeavour to justify our conduct at the expense of grace itself.
Preserve us from so fatal an irregularity, O divine Spirit ! and, to
that intent, make us know the things you taught the apostles.
Grant that at last we may become truly your disciples ; and be to
us not only a Spirit of Truth, but a Spirit of Holiness : it is the
subject of the second part.
Part II. As God is absolutely and supremely holy, because he
is essentially and in himself holy ; so the Spirit of God, by a
personal property, is called in the scripture not only the holy,
but the sanctifying Spirit, that is, the source and origin of sanctity
in all persons to whom he imparts himself. It was not, therefore,
without reason, that the Saviour of the world, on the point of
ascending into heaven, and speaking of the Holy Ghost, whom he
was to send upon the earth, made use of a very mysterious expres-
sion, to all appearance, when he told his disciples, that in his
divine Spirit, they would receive a second baptism, and that at the
moment his promises should be fulfilled in them, (and they were
to be fulfilled in a few days,) they should be baptized in the Holy
Ghost: " Ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost not many days
hence." Acts i. For, the proper effect of baptism is, to purify
and sanctify ; and the Holy Ghost being come down particularly
to purify the hearts of men, how mysterious soever the expression
may appear, it was very natural, as our Saviour meant it. But
the point is at present to search thoroughly into the meaning of
it ; and whereas this baptism of the Holy Ghost was promised to
the faithful in general, it is your business and mine to scrutinize
and find out — its excellence on one hand, and the obligations
annexed to it on the other. Tw t o heads of instruction these, the
consequence of which I shall lay before you, and which I beseech
you to keep in remembrance.
1st. It is, therefore, true, that the coming down of the Holy
Ghost upon the apostles, was a kind of baptism, of which they all
ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 83
felt the salutary impression ; and this is what made Tertullian say,
that those blessed disciples were overflowed with the Spirit of
God. Emphatic words, but in the main literally coincident with
our Saviour's promise : " Ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost,"
whereas in the primitive ages of Christianity, they baptized by
immersion, which was a kind of overflowing. Now, what is it to
be baptized with the Holy Ghost, but to acquire, by receiving
him, a celestial and wholly divine purity ? I know, Christians,
that from their first call to the apostleship, the apostles had been
baptized by our blessed Saviour ; and I know that in virtue of this
first baptism, conferred on them, they were already spotless in the
presence of God, according to the testimony of Jesus Christ him-
self: " Ye are clean." John xix. But you know, moreover, that
this first baptism conferred on the apostles, had been the baptism
of water ; whereas the second, of which the Holy Ghost, by his
ineffable mission and immediate presence, was, in a manner quite
particular, the baptism of fire. A difference which the holy pre-
cursor had declared, when speaking to the Jews of the Messiah,
he told them : "Ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire."
Matt. iii. A difference which was fully and clearly verified, when
the " Holy Ghost appeared to them in the form of cloven tongues,
as of fire, and sat upon each of them." Acts ii. To what end was
this symbolical fire ? To show, (according to St. Chysostom,)
that as fire hath a virtue infinitely more active, more penetrating,
and more purifying than water, so the hearts of men, by the coming
of the Holy Ghost, were to be purified in a manner much more
perfect than they had been by the first baptism of Jesus Christ.
The apostles in reality, after the baptism of Jesus Christ, though
sanctified and regenerated by this sacrament, were still subject to
great imperfections. According to the account we meet with in
the gospel, they were still ambitious, selfish, jealous ; there were
dissensions among them ; and they fell into weaknesses, from which
the grace, though sanctifying, of the baptism conferred on them
by the Son of God, had not quite preserved them. But no sooner
do they receive the divine Spirit, than they become entirely spiri-
tual men, disengaged from the world, and above every worldly
consideration ; men, not only holy, but of a consummate holiness ;
men totally absorbed in God and regardless of themselves ; in a
word, perfect and irreprehensible men. They are no longer (says
St. Chrysostom) that rude and unshapen gold, such as we see
84 ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST.
digged from the bowels of the earth, but pure, unaloyed gold,
tried in the crucible and by fire. Now the fire by which they
have been tried is (says St. Paul) our God himself : not an irritated
God, that pours down, as heretofore, the fire of his wrath upon
the heads of sinners, but the divine Spirit, that bestows with
profusion his gifts and graces, and reduces to nothing, by the fire
of his love, whatever he finds earthly and impure in his chosen
servants : " For, our Lord is a consuming fire." Heb. xii.
Would you know, Christians, to how great a degree of perfec-
tion and purity this baptism of fire went ? Be not scandalized at
what I am going to say, as it is one of the most constant verities
of faith. Perhaps you imagine that this baptism ended in the apostles,
by taking away from them certain attachments, either to the world
or to themselves. It is a great mistake : I have something still more
important to declare to you. This is it : the perfection of this
baptism arose to the purifying of their hearts from a certain kind
of attachment wliich they had had, and still preserved for our
blessed Saviour. Yes, this attachment, too human to the Saviour
of the world, was an obstacle in the apostles to the coming down
of the Holy Ghost ; and, if Jesus Christ had not, in order to break
this attachment, separated from them, the Holy Ghost would not
have been communicated to them : " If I go not away, the Com-
forter will not come unto you." John xvi. Where was the incon-
sistency of the one with the other ? And why could not the apostles
receive the Holy Ghost, while they were attached to their divine
Master ? Hearken to St. Augustin's answer, and draw yourselves
the consequences. Because the apostles, (says this holy doctor,)
in attaching themselves to Christ our Lord, did not, as they should
have done, look upon him with eyes sufficiently pure, and because
they considered him, in the love which they bore him, too much,
according to his humanity and the flesh. True it is, that his hu-
manity was holy, and his flesh consecrated by its hypostatical union
with the Word. But because the heaviness of their understandings
hindered them from sufficiently discerning this mystery, and
because, in attaching themselves to Christ our Lord, their ideas
of him rose no higher than as of a man, though a God-man, the
Spirit of God, whose holiness infinitely surpasses all our ideas of
it, could not, in this state of imperfection, honour them with his
presence. It was, therefore, necessary (continues St. Augustin)
that the apostles should lose sight of our blessed Saviour, in order
ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 85
to be replenished with the Holy Ghost ; and it was necessary that
the Holy Ghost should divest and banish from the hearts of the
apostles, the too natural, or human affection, they entertained for
their Lord and Master, for it should be a supernatural affection.
Such, I say, beloved hearers, was the excellence of the baptism of
fire in the apostles ; and from thence we should infer, what are its
obligations with regard to us : I mean, how for the Spirit of God
should be to us a spirit of purity and holiness.
And now it is surprising, that from the beginning of the world,
Almighty God protested by an oath, so solemn and so express, that,
"his Spirit should not abide in man, for that he was flesh." Gen.vi.
Is it surprising, that in the extreme horror he conceived of the
corruption of man, he should repent his having created him, should
deprive him of his Spirit, and should make him feel the effects of
his justice, by the universal deluge, which, as I may say, authen-
tically expiated the abominations of the flesh ? No, no, Christians,
there is nothing that surprises me in all this ; and, admitting the
principle I have just laid down, God, according to the ordinary
laws of his wisdom, could not do otherwise. What surprises me is,
that people flatter themselves they may, without losing the favour
of God, keep up in the world certain attachments, fatal attach-
ments, the inexhaustible source of all the misfortunes, all the mis-
deeds, all the extravagancies, all the excesses and passions of men.
People- entertain them, pretending that they are innocent ; and
being authorised, as they suppose, by the custom of the world,
they see nothing in them incompatible with the spirit of holiness.
For this, ye worldlings, is the judgment you give of them ; and
this, perhaps, is the most dangerous illusion you have to guard
against. But use what endeavours you will to deceive yourselves,
and to find excuses, this Spirit of God, whose penetration is infi-
nitely above all your artifices, either will never take up his abode
in you, or will destroy in you all those hellish attachments which
tie you to creatures, and which your self-love would fain justify.
If you were in good earnest, and fully determined (instead of
believing the spirit of the world, that spirit of seduction) to be
influenced and guided by the Spirit of holiness, a spirit of which
you ought, as Christians, to be the living temples, by the sight he
would afford you of yourselves, and the remorses he would stir up
in your hearts, he would make you comprehend the absolute impos-
sibility there is of reconciling him, who is purity and sanctity itself
86 ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST.
with these attachments ; especially those which diversity of sexes,
joined to the vivacity of age and constitution, have rendered at all
times so dangerous and so pernicious. As a Spirit of Holiness, he
would convince you, that these attachments neither are, nor can
be, innocent for you, since you find, in spite of you, that they soften
your hearts ; since you cannot deny that they make them susceptible
of stronger sensations ; since you have learned, by experience, that
they excite in them amorous passions; since you know they. with-
hold you from, and even disgust you with, your lawful occupations ;
since from the moment they become attachments, and attachments
of the heart, known for such, the world itself, however indulgent,
will not pardon them ; since they expose you to its censures, give
room for detraction, and serve for a subject of satirical merriment ;
since they are, at least, the most immediate cause of sin ; I say
more, since they are, for the most part, nothing but a disguise and
a refinement of sensuality.
This is what the Spirit of God would let you see and understand,
if you hearkened to him, and were more tractable in following his
secret impulse and operations. But whether you hearken to him or
not, independently of you, it is decreed in heaven, that God will
withdraw his Spirit from the man who lives after the flesh. Now
is it not true, that these attachments take their rise in the lusts of
the flesh ? I know you call them by honourable names, and, to
stifle the remorses they might occasion, would, without scruple,
make them pass in the world under the denomination of becoming
friendships. But the Spirit of Holiness, in the bottom of your
hearts, protests against this supposed decency, and lets you under-
stand that these friendships are condemned by God, which by an
imperceptible, but infallible progression/ lead from that which
is seemingly decent, to that which is actually impure and criminal.
How then, Christians ? The apostles could not receive the Holy
Ghost, while they retained for Christ Jesus an attachment too
human; and you suppose yourselves disposed to receive him,
though you suffer the most lively and ardent passions for mortal
creatures to take root in your hearts ; though you indulge such
tender sentiments for them, that by an immutable consequence
your hearts ever after are affected with aridities in respect to God ;
though you form, and keep up connexions with them, the privacy
of which woidd pervert an angel, had he senses capable of
being affected : though you tamper with them in business and
ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST. 87
intrigues, which, to your shame, make the chief occupation of
your lives. No, no, (ought to conclude the worthy Christian,)
no, divine Spirit, I confess that nothing of all this can subsist
with you ; and there would be even a monstrous contradiction
in the concurrence which I would form, or which I might
think myself capable of forming of these things, with purity of
manners, and still more so with purity of heart. Though all
this should not go so far as to destroy the influence of your
Spirit in me by a grevious offence, and though such an attachment
should not absolutely break the link of habitual grace, which unites
me w r ith you, yet the respect alone for your adorable person, oh,
Spirit of my God ! the idea alone which faith gives me of your
delicacy, concerning the infinite preference which is due to you,
and concerning the supreme and undivided love, which, as God,
you require ; the fear alone of exciting your anger, and provoking
your jealousy, (for you are a jealous God,) should induce me to bid
farewell to every created object. Though it were my eye, I ought
to pull it out, since it would be a cause of scandal for me, and an
obstacle to your graces, and to the participation of your favours.
2ndly. Now this, beloved hearers, is what I called, so far as it
relates to us, the obligations of the internal baptism of the Holy
Ghost. What then ought we to do, in order to fulfil these im-
portant obligations ? And to what should this mysterious baptism
be reduced in practice ? This is it : in order to correspond with
the designs of God, our whole and constant care should be, to cor-
rect and retrench whatever is human in our thoughts, in our desire*,
in our words, in our actions. For, (as St. Paul told the Philip-
pians, after they had received the Spirit of God,) neither our
actions, nor our words, nor our desires, nor our thoughts, should
have henceforward for end, or rule, or object, anything but what
is good, what is laudable, what is instructive, exemplary, and edi-
fying : " Whatever is chaste, whatever is holy, whatever is of
good report." Philip, iv. Our only and continual care must be,
" to mortify by the Spirit, the deeds of the flesh." Rom. viii. Now,
by the deeds of the flesh, the apostle understood not only those
execrable, beastly vices, those monsters of sin, which he forbid so
much as to be mentioned among us, but a hundred other things
which lead to them, and which, through the frailty of human
nature, are dispositions to them ; opportunities sought after, licen-
tious discourses, imprudent liberties, immodest looks, curiosity.
88 ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST*
reading, conversations, diversities unbecoming the Christian pro-
fession, too free a use of the bottle and dainties, a soft, sensual,
effeminate life. He understood, ye daughters of the age, those
worldly and affected airs, so contrary to modesty, and the decorum
peculiar to your sex ; those artful nudities, sometimes so shameful
and so scandalous ; that luxury, the parent of pride and haughti-
ness ; that display of vanity ; that idolizing of your persons ; that
immoderate desire of pleasing, and passing for agreeable, which
the corrupt spirit of the world makes light of, but which, doubtless,
the Holy Ghost, if you have received him on this festival, makes
you see the danger, and even the crime. To say nothing of
unchastity, by the works of the flesh, St. Paul understood, in
general, whatever is incompatible with the holiness of the Spirit
of God, especially charity : " The works of the flesh are manifest,
which are, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife." Gal. v.
For if you have not, my brethren, (says he, and may I be allowed
to say the same thing after him ?) if you have not corrected all
these vices ; if you still entertain a rankling and bitterness against
your neighbour; if you are not sincerely reconciled with your
enemy ; if you do not stifle every vindictive inclination in your
hearts ; if friendship is not restored by a sincere and cordial charity,
(whatever opinion you may have of the matter, or of yourselves,)
" are ye not carnal ?" 1 Cor. hi. Now so long as you are carnal,
you cannot entertain a thought of receiving the Spirit of God.
I am mistaken, Christians ; you may entertain the thought, nay,
you ought to entertain it. For how great sinners soever you may
be, God Almighty hath made you a promise of him ; and his oath,
that his Spirit shall not be in man, so long as man shall be a slave
of the flesh, is no let or obstruction to the truth of that other ora-
cle, whereby he declares, that "he will pour out of his Spirit upon
all flesh." Acts ii. And this is a great consolation to weak and
imperfect souls. The Spirit of God will not abide in us, so long
as we are carnal ; but he will come upon us, that we may cease to
be carnal, and this is the miracle w r e must beg of him. A greater
miracle than the creation of the world ; or rather, a miracle which,
in the order of grace, is a kind of creation more miraculous than
that of the world. But for this, O Lord, the omnipotence of your
holy grace is requisite. When you created the world, you exerted
your operation upon a nonentity, and this nonentity made no
resistance. Here you operate upon the nonentity of sin, which,
ON THE COMING DOWN OF THE HOLY GHOST, 89
nonentity as it is, rises in opposition to you, and makes head against
you. Send us, therefore, your Spirit in all force and plenitude,
and thereby, O Lord, create in us pure hearts, chaste hearts,
hearts submissive to your holy law : " Send forth thy Spirit,
and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of the
earth." Ps. 1. What strength, my God, what zeal for your glory
will he not inspire ! It is what I shall enlarge upon in the third
and last part.
Part. III. To possess in himself the divine essence, without
being able to communicate it to any other divine person ; to be
produced by the Father and by the Son, without being the prin-
ciple of any other similar production ; in a word, to be steril, God
as he is, in the adorable Trinity, because he is the term of the
Trinity itself, is a characteristic that suits the Holy Ghost only,
and that distinguishes him essentially as Holy Ghost. A sterility,
(say the schoolmen,) which, far from being defective, denotes, and
supposes in him a plenitude of all divine perfections. But, as
faith shows us, that the Holy Ghost is steril in himself, and with
respect to the two other divine persons from which he proceeds ;
so it gives us to understand, that he is active, fruitful, and full of
efficacy and virtue, externally, and in the persons to whom he
imparts his heavenly gifts. For, according to the scripture, the
Holy Ghost is the immediate and substantial principle of the ope-
rations of grace. It is by the Holy Ghost, that we are cleansed
and regenerated in the sacrament of baptism : " Unless a man be
born again of water and the Holy Ghost." John iii. It is by the
Holy Ghost, that we are reconciled to God in the sacrament of
penance: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins ye shall for-
give they are forgiven." John xx. It is by the Holy Ghost that
we pray, or rather, it is the Holy Ghost that prays in us : " For,
the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with unutterable
groanings." Rom. viii. It is by the Holy Ghost that the gift of
charity is diffused in our hearts ; and as in quality of Holy Ghost, he
is himself the subsisting charity by which the Father and the Son
love one another by a mutual and eternal love ; so (say the
fathers) he is the radical charity in the bottom of our hearts, by
which we love God, and from which proceed all the holy desires
we form of God : " The charity of God is spread abroad in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given us." Rom v. Now if
ever this property of the Spirit of God was plainly revealed to