John 15:26 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But when the Comforter is come,— "For your encouragement, however, Iassure you, that all of them will not continue thus obstinately bent against me and my religion. When he who is to comfort you under all your troubles by his divine inspiration and the aid he will afford you, and who, on that account, is justly styledthe Comforter; when this divine Person is come, whom I will find unto you from the Father, to remain always with you, he shall bear witness to me and to my religion so effectually, that many of the Jews shall be converted." Our Lord says of this Spirit of truth, that he proceedeth,— εκπορευεται,— from the Father: which denotes the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit; whereby the manner of his subsistence is defined, as that of the Son is by the word generation, as far perhaps as it can be to us in this mortal state. The Spirit's coming, and being sent by our Lord, from the Father, to testify of him, are personal characters, and plainly distinguish him from the Father and Son: and his title, as the Spirit of truth, together with his proceeding from the Father, can apply to none but a divine person: for this title is too high for a creature; and I cannot see any sufficient reason why his proceeding from the Father is mentioned in the present tense, in the midst of a sentence, where Christ's sending him, and his testifying of Christ, are spoken of as future; unless it be to intimate his necessary, unbeginning, and never ending procession from the Father, in such a sublime manner as lies beyond the reach of all our ideas, but is some way answerable to what is called eternal generation with regard to Christ, in correspondence to his character as the Son: and yet that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, may be fairly, clearly, and fully argued from his being called the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the Son, as well as of the Father, (1 Peter 1:11.Galatians 4:6.) and from his being here said to be sent by Christ from the Father, as well as sent by the Father in his name, ch. John 14:26. And this, at the same time, shews the equal divinity of the Father and Son, inasmuch as they have equal power of sending the Holy Spirit to bear the peculiar part, and to have the glory that belongs to him, in the work of salvation: so that the Sacred Three are here represented both in their personal characters, and in their divine and oeconomical glories.