Is it clear that the distinct
hypostasis
of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense as the only-begotten Son is hypostatically distinguished from the Father, was a truth that formed an immediate object or intention of St. John? That it is a truth implied in, and fairly deducible from, many texts, both in his Gospel and Epistles, I do not, indeed I cannot, doubt;—but only whether this article of our faith he was commissioned to declare explicitly?
It grieves me to think that such giant
archaspistæ
of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1
John
v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless in itself, and interruptive of the profound sense of the Apostle.
Ib. p. 272.