Sanctification is thus not the extraction of creaturely reality from its creatureliness, but the annexation and ordering of its course so that it may fittingly assist in that work which is proper to God.

Ingredient within the idea of sanctification is thus an understanding of God which is neither deist nor dualist. As the Holy Spirit’s work, sanctification is a process in which, in the limitless freedom of God, the creaturely element is given its own genuine reality as it is commanded and moulded to enter into the divine service. God the sanctifying Spirit is both Lord and Life-giver. The sanctifying Spirit is Lord, that is, sanctification is not in any straightforward sense a process of cooperation or coordination between God and the creature, a drawing out or building upon some inherent holiness of the creature’s own. Sanctification is making holy. Holiness is properly an incommunicable divine attribute; if creaturely realities become holy, it is by virtue of election, that is, by a sovereign act of segregation or separation by the Spirit as Lord. In this sense, therefore, the sanctitas of sancta scriptura is aliena. But the Spirit is Life-giver, the bestower of genuine and inalienable creaturely substance. From the vertical of ‘lordship’ there flows the horizontal of life which is truly given. Segregation [n.b. Webster was English and absolutely not thinking of the American connotations of this word!], election to holiness, is not the abolition of creatureliness but its creation and preservation. In this sense, the sanctitas of sancta scriptura is infusa.