of her is different from that of his Father and of his Mother."
We shall find still more startling developments of this doctrine of the Spirit when we come to the Bardesanian Acts of Thomas. Here I would only remind you that there is very early Christian authority for it. In the ancient Gospel according to the Hebrews, as quoted by Origen and S. Jerome, our Lord Himself speaks of His Mother the Holy Spirit[1]. And before we condemn the doctrine altogether, let us remember that the age which followed its final disappearance polluted the Christian vocabulary with the word Θεοτόκος.
I should like also to point out that just as Aphraates' doctrine of the Spirit, strange as it appears to us, is only a survival of one of the most
- ↑ The authorities for this well-known saying are to be found e.g. in Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, App. D. Origen (in Joann. ii 13) explains it away by saying that the Holy Spirit does the will of the Father and therefore may rightly be described as the Mother of Christ, in accordance with Matt xii 50.
In Ephraim Syrus the Holy Spirit is still grammatically feminine, but no specially feminine functions are ascribed to
