XXV. Having now spoken sufficiently concerning the Only-begotten, Order requires that we discourse next concerning the Comforter; not following the Opinions of the many, which are taken up without examination, but keeping ^[25] close to the Doctrine of Holy Men in all things. From whom, we have learn'd that he is the Third in Dignity and Order; and do therefore believe that he is the Third in Nature also: not changing the Dignity and Nature according to the political Changes among Men, no more than we can change their Order, so that their Substances shall be contrary to their Creation, but agreeably to the Rules of Harmony; that so the First in order may not be Second in nature; nor that which is First in nature, may have only the Second or Third place in order. Wherefore if the Order of Creation be the best Order in intelligent Beings, the Holy Spirit, which is the third as to Order, cannot be the first as to Nature: which is no other than God the Father. For is it not foolish and vain, that the same Being should sometime have the First, and at other times the Third place ? and in both of them to be ador'd according to his nature, as the Lord God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth.¹¹ Nor is he the fame with the Only-begotten; for then he would not have been enumerated after him, as having a Subsistence of his own. Our Saviour's words being here in the first place sufficient, whereby he said expressly that he should be sent afterward,¹² for the instruction and teaching of the Apostles. Nor is he numerically different from God, and yet Unbegotten withal. For there is only One Unbegotten Being, from whom all things were made. Nor is he a Being different from the Son, and yet a Being begotten. For our Lord is but One; and the Only-begotten; by whom are all things,^{13 [26]} as the Apostle says: but he is the third in Nature and Order, made by the Command of the Father, and by the Operation of the Son; and honour'd in the third place, as the first, and greatest, and indeed the only Being of this sort made by the Only-begotten: not endu'd with equal Power, Divinity, and the power of Creating, but endu'd with the compleat Power of Sanctification and Instruction. For as to those that believe the Comforter to be only a certain Energy of God, and yet do still enumerate him after the two real Substances, they seem so very foolish, and so Intirely remote from Truth, that one must have great leisure indeed to think it worth while to confute them.