'%>i?fi- iHMHNSiiiii ,Y/f^y/f7m- BR 1705 .F4 A57 1879 Thornton, R. St. Ambrose; his life, times, and teaching ST. AMBROSE. CfK jTatbrrs for (Dnglisib lUaiirio. y St. AMBROSE; HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND TEACHING, BY R. THORNTON, D.D. VICAR OF ST. John's, notting hill, ASU LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, OXFOKn. •lbl:sheu I n-der the direction of the tract committee. LONDON. ■SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTI.W KNOWLEDGE. NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS; 4, ROVAL exchange, AND 48, riCCAUII.I.Y. nf:w yokk: fott, young, & co. 1879. V. VMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, i;iTs '' ; for the pre- vailing custom then was to build churches, if possible, over the tombs of those who had died for the faith, or else, when they were built, to hallow them by placing some martyr's earthly frame to rest within them. Search had to be made, nor did it seem likely to be rewarded, for Mediolanum had not been fruitful in mart)Ts. The bishop was led to desire an excavation to be made in front of the chancel of the church of SS. Felix and Nabor, otherwise called St. Philip's. It is still in existence, though not used as a place of worship. There were found the remains of two tall men, the skeletons quite complete, surrounded by a quantity of blood. A corrupt practice had arisen, 62 ST. AMBROSE. which later ages have only too faithfully copied, of break- ing up such relics into fragments, carrying them about, and disposing of them for money; and a law against so doing was enacted by Theodosius in this very year. These bodies were not so treated : they were carefully embalmed and preserved entire, and were conveyed for the night to the church of Fausta (now the chapel of St. Satyrus). There they were watched, and the next day transferred to the new church, close at hand, which was called by the name of Ambrose himself. As they passed, a blind man received his sight. Such is the account given by Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina. The main points are repeated by St. Augustine, who adds what Ambrose himself stated in two sermons, of which he gives his sister a sketch, that many cures were effected and many evil spirits cast out by the instrumentality of the holy martyrs. The bodies were identified as those of Gervasius and Protasius, two Milanese, who had suffered three centuries before, in the time of Nero or Domitian. Their place of burial had been forgotten, till the dis- covery of their remains brought it to the recollection of some old people, who remembered having heard their names and read the inscription on their tomb. The Arian party denied the bodies to be those of martyrs at all, and derided the idea of miraculous cures, accusing the bishop of having hired men to personate demoniacs and to feign themselves to have been healed of diseases. Ambrose, however, writes apparently with the most perfect sincerity and good faith; Augustine and Paulinus evidently believed most RELICS. 63 implicitly in the truth of the whole story. The latter is no doubt a credulous writer : the life, or rather the memoir, of Ambrose, which we have under his name, contains a number of mar\'els, which are due to a loving but decidedly uncritical imagination. In this case, however, he expresses himself as if from personal knowledge. The man who received his sight was named, he tells us, Severus, and was often seen by him in later times as a constant worshipper in the Ambrosian church. He says he was cured on touch- ing the dress of the martyrs. Augustine, who writes as an eyewitness, tells us that the man was well known to all the citizens, and that he recovered his sight on applying to his eyes a handkerchief with which he had been permitted to touch the bier on which the holy relics lay. The affectionate interest with which the early Church regarded the earthly remains of holy men, and especially of martyrs, is scarcely intelligible to us : we identify it with the thick crust of error which has grown up in the Roman Church around the doctrine of the communion of saints and the state of the departed. We shrink from a history which, thanks to papal perversion of the truth, seems to introduce us to a superstitious, if not idolatrous, veneration of a decaying creature. But what seems idolatry and superstition in the nineteenth century, after the false teachings of the thirteenth and the reaction of the sixteenth, was not necessarily such in the fourth, any more than the free expressions of an Ante-Nicene writer about the Son of God prove bim to have held the doctrine of Arius. 64 ST. AMBROSE. We are, moreover, naturally reluctant to give cre- dence to accounts of post-apostolic miracles. They are not needed by us, says St. Chrysostom, nor ought we to be grieved that we do not see them : they were given for those that did not believe. So we habitually reject each story as a whole, instead of criticising the alleged miracle as such. In this case so distinct are the expressions of Ambrose and his disciples, that we cannot imagine them to have been simply mistaken, still less to have been deceived by a series of cleverly- arranged tricks; and we are forced either to admit that things did happen much as they describe, or else to believe, with the Arians and Gibbon, that the great bishop of Milan was guilty of an impious fraud ; that he not only wrote to his sister, but also in solemn words, and in the name of his Master, asseverated, in a consecrated place, and before a company of Chris- tians, what he and many of them knew to be an abso- lute falsehood ; and that he either deceived those whom he taught, or persuaded them to conspire with him in bearing testimony to the lie which he had devised. Whether we consider the occurrence to have been really miraculous or not, is quite another question. Without pronouncing decisively for or against the credibility of miracles later than a.d. igo, we may at least suggest that we have here the account of some exceptional phenomena, unscientifically given. Those who think it more likely that a Christian bishop should, with the connivance and approbation of other Christians, invent, solemnly assert, and propagate, a wicked untruth, than that cures apparently miraculous should have been wrought as described, will of course KAPTISM OF AUGUSTINK. 65 reject the whole tale ; while those who admire the straightforward honesty of Augustine's treatise Dc Mendacio will be disposed to think that he at least believed, and felt assured that the teacher whom he so revered believed also, what they have both recorded : and that they, and Christian peoi)le generally, did actually look upon what happened as a testimony from above in favour of the martyrs, and, infcrcntially, in favour of the Catholic doctrine. The Paschal tide both of 385 and 386 had been a time of alarm and disquiet for Ambrose. That of the next year^ (3S7) was marked by a very different event — the baptism of his spiritual scholar Augustine, with his son Adeodatus, and his friend Alypius. Tradition, which has been over-busy with the lives of the saints, converting legend into history till history is mistaken for legend, has introduced here a story we could well wish it were possible to believe — that the glorious " Te Deum" was composed by bishop and neophyte in a burst of ecstasy immediately after the performance of the sacred rite, and chanted alternately by them as they returned from the bap- tistery to their i)laces in the church. But it cannot have been. It is interesting that Augustine mentions the effect produced on him by the church music which Ambrose had introduced the year before ; and there is very little doubt, also, that it is to the period of preparation of the catechumens of this year that we must refer, besides other treatises, the short but ' There is some doubt whether this date be the correct one ; but the chronology which fixes the event to lliis year in pre- ference to 386 or 388 (I'.aronius) seems the most consistent. 66 ST. AMBROSE. weighty exposition of the doctrine of the two sacra- ments which we know by the title ''On the Mysteries." It was not long after this that Ambrose was once more called upon to appear in the character of a statesman. Maximus, who had for the past three years been observing with tolerable fidelity the com- pact made with the Emperors Theodosius and Valen- tinian after Gratian's death, repeated the intimation, which he had not long before given under the pretext of espousing the cause of Ambrose and orthodoxy, of an intention to enter Italy and take the government of the West into his own hands. Ambrose was des- patched, as he had been in 383, to endeavour to prevent the invasion. He expected a private au- dience, as a mark of respect at once to his imperial master's rank and his own episcopal dignity. This being refused him, he declined to accept the saluta- tion offered him by the would-be emperor, complain- ing of the discourtesy which had compelled him to transact his business in the public consistory. Maxi- mus, in his turn, complained bitterly of him as having, in conjunction with Bauto (a Frank general in the Roman service, who had been consul in 385, and whose daughter was the well-known Eudoxia, wifeof Arcadius, and persecutor of St. Chrysostom), deceived him, and prevented his pushing his first success. Ambrose calmly pointed out that this charge was futile ; that he had been guilty of no deception, and that all he, and Bauto too, had done, was loyally to defend the interests of the youthful emperor who had been entrusted to their guardianship. He also renewed his petition for the delivery of the body of Gratian ; MAXIMUS ADVAXCKS ON MILAN. 67 and finally made an emphatic protest against the cruel treatment of the Priscillianists, refusing to hold communion with Ithacius, Idacius, and the other bishops who had procured the capital punishment of Priscillian. Though he had grievously erred from the faith, his error did not justify the torture and death of himself and his misguided followers. The diplomacy of Ambrose was this time un- successful. Abruptly dismissed, he forthwith quitted Treves, where the interview had taken place, and returned to Milan, where he warned the young emperor not to trust the usurper, but to exercise the utmost circumspection in dealing with him. Valen- tinian, however, thought that another might succeed where the bishop had failed, and sent a second embassy in the person of Domninus, a man of Syrian extraction and one of his officers. This man was, with flattery and presents, easily cajoled by Maximus, who persuaded him that he (Maximus) was likely to prove a good friend to the emperor, and actually in- duced him to take some troops back with him, under pretence of giving aid against a barbarian raid on Pan nonia. The envoy, instead of checking, really facilitated the passage of the Alps ; and so completely had the plans of the invader been organized, that an army followed hard upon his footsteps, and appeared un- expectedly before the w\alls of Milan. Justina had obstinacy enough to defend a heresy and to persecute an orthodox prelate, but not suffi- cient nerve or courage to confront an invader and fight for an empire. On the appearance of the army from Gaul, she and Valentinian withdrew to Aquileia. 68 ST. AMBROSE. Even this retreat did not seem secure. Embarking at one of the ports of Istria, they sailed through the Adriatic, and rounding the shores of Greece, uhi- mately reached Thessalonica, one of the principal seaports of the Eastern Empire. The flight of the emperor and his mother seemed to absolve his subjects from their allegiance, and at all events put an end to that personal bond of union between governor and governed which is so powerful in pre- serving an hereditary monarchy, and so indispensable to an elective empire. The Westerns submitted to Maximus without a struggle. But a terrible time followed. Piacenza, Modena, Bologna, and not a few other towns and cities were taken, spoiled, and partly overthrown, and many of their inhabitants made captive. Ever active in doing good, Ambrose exerted himself to procure means of ransom for these miserable sufferers, and even went so far as to break up and sell the sacred vessels of the churches to procure the necessary funds. This proceeding was made the ground of strong objection to him by the Arian party, but defended by his friends, and notably by Augustine. Maximus, meanwhile, endeavoured to get the Bishop of Rome on his side, and accordingly wrote Siricius, who had succeeded Damasus in 384, a letter, in which he professed the utmost respect for him and his clergy and a deep attachment to the Catholic faith. But that prelate was as wise as Ambrose, and possibly had had the benefit of his counsel. Maxi- mus did not gain him as an adherent ; and a decree was shortly afterwards issued restoring the idols which DEATH OF JUSTINA. 69 had been removed by the late emperor : the invader, having failed to secure the Catholics, made a bid for the heathen. The capture of Milan was the last event of magni- tude in the life of Justina. Worn out by the fatigues of her flight, or broken down by disappointment and shame, or overcome by exasperation at knowing that Ambrose had escaped her, and was thenceforth to be a power in Milan, she breathed her last in the middle of the next year (388) ; whether in exile or not is un- certain, but i)robably in her own home. Ambrose was freed from an implacable foe, the Church from a powerful protector of heresy, and the evil genius of her son and of the Western Empire was no more. 70 ST. AMBROSE. CHAPTER XL THEODOSirS. A.D. 388. There could be no doubt of the policy which it behoved Theodosius to adopt The weakness and confusion in which he found his empire in 379, and from which it had not recovered in 3 83, rendered it then expedient for him to temporize : the strength and order to which he had now brought his dominions made it not only possible but necessarj- for him to offer a vigorous and decided resistance to the invader of the West The same ambition which had led Maximus to move from Treves to Milan, would, if he were not checked and forced to retire, lead him in a few years to push on still further in the same direction : and it would be better to forestall" such a movement, and to remove the possibilit}^, rather than have to combat the actuality, of an eastern invasion. Moreover it was an admirable opportunity for satisf}-ing the warlike longings of those barbarian subjects of the Empire who had come from the north of the Danube, and though settled, and as yet tolerably tranquil, were still but half-tamed To employ their energies in a way congenial to their tastes, and at the same time to lessen their number, was both a safe and a politic POLICY OK THEODOSIUS. 7 1 measure. And honour and justice led in the same direction. The son of that Valcntinian to whom he owed his early advancement, the brother of that Gratian who conferred on him the Imperial dignity, was now a fugitive and a suj)pliant within his dominions. Could he with honour refuse him the counsel and aid he sought, and stand by and see him dethroned without a single word or blow in his favour ? If we could find that Ambrose at this period had paid a visit to the East, or had written to Theodosius, we might well imagine that the voice which had t^vice pleaded for Valentinian with the usurper had not been silent before a duly-recognised emperor, and that the Bishop of Milan had urged on the ruler of the East the imperative duty of defending, and the shameful- ness of deserting, his youthful colleague. Ambrose, however, though he appears to have quitted Milan, and found himself secure in that Aquileia which was not a sufficiently safe refuge for the flying empress and her son, does not seem to have gone any farther eastward. His retirement was necessary, owing to the confusion and tumult inseparable from the occupation of a city by troops, even though they were received as friends by the populace, who rather acquiesced in than desired their presence. The bishop himself had in fact nothing to fear, even had he been a man who feared anything : for Maximus was on the side of the orthodox, and, as we have seen, though passionate and ambitious, was powerfully impressed in his favour. Some men under such circumstances might have been induced to take the part of one who was at least a d€f(uto sovereign and a probable friend. But Ambrose 72 ST. AMBROSE. had tact enough, as a statesman, to see that his was not the winning side : and still more, as a Christian, could not, whatever he might gain by it, entertain the idea of deserting the cause of one who seemed to have been confided to his care. To the pohcy and the sense of honour, each of which by itself would have been sufficient to determine Theodosius in his line of action, a third motive was subsequently added. He was a widower : his beloved and saintly wife, Flaccilla (or Placilla, or Placida, for we meet with all three forms of the name) had died in 385, about a year after giving birth to his second son, Honorius. The princess Galla, one of the three daughters of Justina, made an impression on him, which, mainly through the adroitness of her scheming mother, resulted in her becoming his second wife : and so to the other claims which Valentinian had upon him was superadded that of a brother-in-law. The envoys whom Maximus had sent to treat with him were dismissed with an indecisive answer, for he was not the man to throw away an opportunity by premature disclosures. He made ready secretly, as Maximus himself had done, and when all was ripe for action marched suddenly upon the invader, stimulated and assured of success by an Egyptian ascetic named John, in whom he had great confidence. He took the road to Milan : but all was decided before he reached that city. The troops of Maximus encoun- tered him (August 27) in Pannonia, at Sissek, on the banks of the Save, and again at Pettau, on the Drave, and were almost annihilated : their master fled to Aquileia, while the wretched assassin Andragathias, DEAIH OF MAXIMUS. 73 who was now commander of the fleet, and had hoped to become the favoured and confidential minister ot" a powerful potentate, flung himself despairing into the river. The people, who had so readily given uj) A'alenlinian for Maximus, were just as ready to sur- render their new lord ; and Ambrose, the loyal friend of the two emperors, was (probably) there, and, we may be sure, did not jilead the cause of the vanquished leader, who found himself compelled to fly, and fell into the hands of the conqueror. He begged to be allowed to live and become his lieutenant or depen- dent : and for a while Theodosius seemed inclined to spare, if not to employ him : but the remembrance of Gratian was enough to extinguish any lingering disposition to mercy, and Maximus was surrendered to the soldiery, who lost no time in putting him to death. That his followers were treated with the utmost clemency was due mainly to the entreaties of Ambrose. The victor with his army entered Milan in triumj^h, where he passed the winter, and employed himself in restoring order to the recovered dominions of his youthful brother-in-law and colleague ; one of his first measures being to rescind the order for the restoration of idols. He soon found himself brought into collision with the bishoj), who had now returned to his own city, and was as bold and determined in maintaining what he conceived to be the interests of the Church against an orthodox and victorious emperor, as he had been when contending for the rights of the orthodox with an heretical and weak-minded emi)ress. In this par- ticular instance, while we admire his frankness, we I 74 ST. AMBROSE. cannot but feel that, according to the rules of justice and charity, right was with the instincts of the em- peror, whom he opposed and finally over-persuaded. The Christians in a small town called Fort Cal- linicus, at no great distance from Aquileia, had, pro- bably during the time of anarchy which must have succeeded the flight of Valentinian, in an outburst of fanaticism burnt a Jewish synagogue which had been erected in the town ; and about the same time cer- tain monks in the same place had destroyed a chapel belonging to the Gnostic sect known by the name of Valentinians. The injured parties appealed to the emperor Theodosius, who forthwith ordered that' the bishop of the town where the outrage had taken place, who was charged with having instigated it, should see that the synagogue was properly rebuilt ; and added that the monks should be punished for what they had done in the matter of the chapel. With our tolerant habits and different modes of thought, we can scarcely understand the commission of the offence, but, supposing it committed, are inclined to consider the Imperial decree to have been most equitable, if not too lenient to the offenders. We can agree with Ambrose in his refusal to surrender churches to the .Ajians ; we cannot understand his taking the part of the rioters of Fort Callinicus. We should applaud a prelate who declined to allow a church in his diocese to be given up for Unitarian worship ; but we can hardly imagine the bishop of a country city — say Ely or Bangor — recommending the forcible demolition of a synagogue or a Mormonite meeting-house ; or, sup- posing for a moment his lordship to have been so in- REFUSAL lO KKPI.ACF. A SVNACOGUK. 75 conceivably and ridiculously intolerant as to i)rocurc such a breach of the peace, we should scarcely expect the archbishop of his province to denounce the natural proposal that he should replace the ruined edifice. But things were difterent fifteen centuries ago, and in Italy. Ambrose endeavoured to obtain a modification of the emperor's order, and finding his ])roceedings of no avail, addressed a letter of remon- strance to him. It begins with an apology for doing what he felt to be his duty in expostulating, and a not undeserved commendation of the fairness and kind- ness of Theodosius. The writer then goes on to ex- press his entire approval of the action of the bishoj), and to avow himself ready to take on himself the resix)nsibility of the deed, in temis which almost make it seem as if he had really had some share in it. To make a Christian bishop, he argues, replace a building in which Christ is denied, or to punish people for de- stroying a virtually heathen conventicle, where the thirty-two sons of the system of Valentinus are adored, would be to play the part of a second Julian, and to let Jews triumph over God's Church ; the synagogue so built might bear the inscription, "Temple of Impiety, erected out of the spoils of Christians."' To the argument that setting a house on fire must be always punishable, whatever the character of the house, he dexterously opposes the fact, that not only had no notice been taken of the burning in past years of the houses of several of the prefects at Rome, but that a short time before, when the house of Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople, had been burnt in an Arian riot, Theodosius had been induced by his son Arcadius F 2 76 ST. AMBROSE. to overlook what had happened. Finally, he addsv alluding skilfully to the late victory gained by the person he is addressing, the majority of Christians at Rome had prophesied the fall of Maximus because he had published an edict in favour of the Jews under somewhat similar circumstances after the burning of a synagogue at Rome. The letter is remarkable, as showing the feelings then entertained towards the ancient people of God. To the contempt and aversion felt for them by the Italians, apart from all religious considerations, — a sentiment of which we find abundant proof, for in- stance, in the Satires of Juvenal, to mention no other writer, — there was added the utter detestation and loathing which every Christian thought it his duty to entertain and express, as though each unfortunate Israelite were personally chargeable with and respon- sible for the murder of the Prince of Peace; that scorn and hatred which in later times marked out the Jewry and the Ghetto, and produced and won belief for the story of Hugh of Lincoln, and such-like tales of horror and profanation. It is strange to us to find such sentiments not only held and avowed, but gloried in, by a man like Ambrose. Not satisfied with sending his letter, he took a still more decisive step. A few days after, the emperor,, as usual, attended church, and the bishop took occa- sion to preach a sermon, of which he gives an account, as we saw he did of some previous discourses, in a letter to his sister. The Old Testament lesson of the day was Numb, xvii., the account of Aaron's rod that budded ; and the preacher deduced from it the priestly SERMON I'RKACHKI) AT TMR F.MPF.ROR. 77 duty of rebuking and power of censure. 'I'he New Testament lesson was from St. Luke vii., the story of the forgiven sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. "The Church,' he went on to say, "has tears to wash the feet of Christ, and hairs to wipe them withal, oint- ment to ])0ur on them, and kisses to imprint on them; the synagogue, Hke the proud Pharisee, has none." Then turning to the emperor, he reminded him how many gifts God's providence had bestowed on him, and bade him in return offer water and kisses and ointment to the Body of Christ. The drift of the sermon was palpable, and not least so to the emperor himself. As Ambrose descended from the i)ulpit, he exclaimed, " So, my lord bishop, you have been preaching at me this morning !" The bishop was about to celebrate holy communion, but a little dialogue ensued here. Such conversational interludes are permitted in synagogues among us at the present day, but are considered so unseemly in our churches, even after service is over, much more in service time, that we read the story with some surprise. Ambrose replied, " I have not been preach- ing at you, but rather for your good." " ^Vell," replied the emperor, " my order about the rebuilding of the synagogue by the bishop was a little too severe, but that has been rectified. As to the monks, they are guilty of many offences." On this Timasius, one of the chief officers, who was standing by, began to express himself strongly against the monks, when Ambrose cut him short, telling him bluntly that he \va.s talking to the emperor, not to him ; the emperor he knew to be a God-fearin:^' man, he would deal 78 ST. AMBROSE. with him (Timasius) very differently. One would have thought that enough had now been said on either side, considering the sacredness of the place and time, and the rank of the two parties. But Ambrose still remained standing before the emperor. At last he said, " Give me some security with regard to your future action in the matter, that I may be able to make the oblation with a quiet mind." The emperor nodded, but said nothing ; and still the pertinacious prelate remained standing. " I will have the rescript amended," said the emperor. But Ambrose replied that that would not do for him ; the whole proceedings must be quashed, so that there might be no possibility of the Christians sustaining any injury. The emperor promised it should be so,, but the bishop was not satisfied till he had heard the formula equivalent to " On my sacred word and honour " {Age fide vied). These words were at last pro- nounced, and Ambrose proceeded to the holy table. This was not the only rebuff that Theodosius received, and, to his great credit, received without resenting, at the hands of Ambrose during the earl}' part of his stay in Italy. He valued the man's in- flexibility in the discharge of what he felt to be his. duty, and saw clearly that such a faithful and intrepid servant of his God and of his Church would be a loyal adherent to his emperor. Fidelity to the Church has been by some thought incompatible with loyalty to the State, so that one's duty to God is best dis- charged by resisting the powers ordained of Him ; and, conversely, stanch Churchmen have been held open to the charge of being disobedient subjects.. THE KMI'EKOR KKr.UK.Kl). 79 This was evidently not the view either of Theodosiiis or Ambrose. It was the custom in Constantinople that the emi)eror, after making his offering at the holy table, remained with the clergy in the sanctuary. On a certain great festival (prokibly Christmas, 388^) which occurred during his stay in Milan, Theodosius went up and made his offering, and having done so, remained, as he had been accustomed to do, where he was. But the archdeacon was soon sent to desire him to depart from the place assigned to clergy alone, and to show him a [)ost of honour without, not within, the holy place. " The purple," remarked the bishop, "makes princes, but not priests." Ambrose's ad- monition seems to have had a strong effect, for on his return to Constantinople more than three years later, Theodosius, being invited as usual to continue in the sanctuary, declined to do so, adding a strong expres- sion of approval of the conduct of the Milanese prelate, who had taught him the diflerence between a l>rince and a minister of the Church. ' The atTair is by some placed two years later, and at th: time of the emperor's readmission to communion, but it more probably occurred at this time. 8o ST. AMBROSE. CHAPTER XII. THE SIN AND PENANCE OF THEODOSIUS. A.D. 389-390. In the early spring of the year 389 the two emperors removed from Milan, and entered in triumph the ancient capital of the Roman Empire. Short work was made with those relics of heathenism which the tolerance or weakness of preceding Christian emperors had allowed to remain. Symmachus pleaded for the altar of Victory; but as he had not long before written a panegyric on Maximus, his advocacy rather damaged his cause. Statues of gods were thrown down, the pagan temples and chapels, said to amount to 424 in number, were closed, the privileges of the pontifices, flamines, and all the idolatrous hierarchy abolished, and the offering of sacrifices forbidden : a special commission was given to certain officers of rank to search out and seize all instruments of idolatr)', and to confiscate all heathen endowments for the use of the emperor, the army, or the church. An appeal for their restoration, supported by not a few Chris- tians, was made to Valentinian ; but he absolutely refused to listen to it. An edict which followed in the next year was even more stringent in its character. Any one offering sacrifice, or divining by entrails, was JOVINIA.V. 8 1 declared guilty of high treason, and liable to capital punishment ; the minor offence of using other pagan obscrwinccs was forbidden under ])ain of forfeiture of the building where the rite was performed, or of a heavy fine. While Theodosius was thus busily employed in sweeping away all traces of religion other than that of the Christian Church, the bishops were turning their attention to the internal condition of the Church, and waging war against heresy and heterodoxy, as the €mjx.'ror was extiri)ating idolatry. Jovinian,an Italian monk, a native either of Milan or Rome, and at one time an inmate of a monastery maintained at Milan by Ambrose, had broached certain opinions, which, though we should entirely agree with some of them, and consider others permissible, were by no means in accordance with the general feeling of the majority of Christians of the time. Those who contradict, with whatever truth, the current opinions of their own day, are often betrayed into maintaining, and still more often accused of maintaining, some directly erroneous pro- positions. Wiclif, and Luther, and Ridley, and Wesley, said and wrote things that might better have been left unsaid and unwritten ; and were charged with saying and writing and doing much more, which in their hearts they utterly rejected and abhorred. Jovinian was no exception to the rule. Himself unmarried, and of abstemious, if not ascetic, habits, he held that celibacy and fasting were not in themselves meri- torious, and that the married life was as holy as the unmarried ; that all sins, as such, were ecjual in the sight of (iod; and that all future rewards, as due 82 ST. AMBROSE. only to the merits of Christ, would be equal also. To these propositions he added, or was said to have added, an indiscreet expression about the Virgin Mary, and the doctrine that one could not sin after baptism. For this he was styled a Manichaean, a blasphemer, a wolf howling in the fold of Christ. One does not see anything wolfish or blasphemous even in his erroneous theories; and as to Manichaeism, his depreciation of asceticism was opposed to Mani- chaean theory, certainly ; though, according to Augus- tine, the practice of the Manichagans of the time was inconsistent with their principles, being extremely lax and immoral. Siricius, who had, as has been already mentioned, succeeded Damasus as Bishop of Rome five years before, held a synod of Roman clergy, which declared Jovinian's teaching heretical, and excommunicated him, with eight of his followers. The accused, who had up to this time been living at Rome, then re- moved to Milan, where their opinions had been first published. The Bishop of Rome immediately sent three of his presbyters with a letter addressed to the Church of Milan, announcing the Roman decision and sentence. The letter, it may be observed, contains no trace whatever of any assertion of Papal authority. The Milanese clergy soon met in synod, and repeated the condemnation pronounced at Rome. The epistle sent to Siricius in reply to his own, salutes him as a brother (not as Vicar of Christ or Head of the Universal Church), examines and answers some of Jovinian's teachings, and announces the excommuni- cation of their author and his adherents by an MASSACRE AT THESSALOMCA. 8^. unanimous vote of the Milanese synod. The (so- called) heresy, Augustine remarks, was soon repressed, and became extinct, never having gone beyond the perversion of a few i)riests. The organization of the West was a longer task than Theodosius had calculated on. Instead of being able to return to Constantinojjle witliin a few months from the death of Maximus, it was more than three years before he thought it safe — and even then he was mistaken — to entrust the reins of government to a mere youth like Valentinian, however promising,, upright, and energetic. His absence from his own dominions was far from being without its effect. Personal rule requires that the personal presence of the ruler should be continually felt ; his absence can hardly be compensated even by the ablest of lieu- tenants. The jjrotracted stay of Theodosius in Rome and Milan was indirectly the cause of a terrible tragedy. The peoi)le of Thessalonica, an important and populous seaport and metropolis of the province of Illyria, already well known to us as the refuge of Valentinian and Justina, were on bad terms with the magistrates of their city ; but their ill-temijer had for a time vented itself in words rather than deeds. Botheric, a Goth, the commander of the garrison, had, in the early part of 390, imprisoned for a gross offence one of the most ])opular charioteers of the circus. The devotion of the Thessalonians to the chariot-race was as entire as that of the i)eople of Rome or Constantinople ; and the populace on the dviy of the games lamented the absence of their favourite, and clamoured fur his release. Botheric ^4 ST. AMBROSE. was inflexible. Enraged by his stern refusal, and already fancying themselves to have grounds for dis- satisfaction with the ruling powers, they burst into open rebellion, seized him and several of his officers, murdered them brutally, and dragged their corpses about the streets. Tidings of the riot were brought to Milan. The Spanish blood of Theodosius was roused at the news, and he began to threaten the direst vengeance against the guilty city. But Am- brose was at his side, and succeeded in calming his excitement for the time, and obtaining from him a promise that the affair should be calmly and judi- cially dealt with. Unhappily, however, the bishop "vvas required to preside at a S}Tiod which sat to repeat formally the solemn protest which he had already made before Maximus against the cruelty of Ithacius, bishop of Sossuba, towards the Priscillianist heretics. During his absence other counsellors came to the emperor's side. They roused his fiery temper by sensational accounts of the Thessalonian outrage, and argued that lenity would be misplaced and dan- gerous ; it might be construed into a confession of -weakness, and instead of exciting admiration of his calmness and justice, would only tend to inspire the disloyal and excitable people of the East with the hope of further impunity for still more grievous offences. In an evil moment — for it was the work of a short time — he yielded to the promptings of his •own choleric disposition and his evil advisers, and ■sent orders that the people (assembled in the circus) should be put to the sword. The decree, unfairly obtained, was treacherously MASSACRE AT THESSALONICA. 8$ executed. Not a word of the coming punislmient was breathed in the doomed city. A fresh exliibition of games was announced, and, in order to make the number of victims as large as possible, the whole l)coi)le were invited to witness it in the name of the emperor. Absence, it was hinted, would be con- sidered as an intentional mark of disrespect. Anxious to stand well in his good graces after what had hap- l)ened to incense him, the Thessalonians crowded to the circus. Botheric's troops were ready : always greedy of blood, they now thirsted for vengeance also. The signal was given, and no games began^ but a promiscuous massacre. Before the sun had set, seven thousand at least — some said more than double the number — of all ages, sexes, stations, and nationalities were lying silent in death ; mown down^ says Theodoret, like ears of corn at harvest-time. A counter order eventually arrived from the emperor. It put an end to the slaughter, but could not resusci- tate the victims. The dreadful news was communicated to Ambrose in a letter from Anysius, the successor of his sainted friend Ascholius in the bishojjric of Thessalonica. It is a curious specimen of the rhetorical and inflated epistolary style then in vogue. After giving Ambrose to understand that a terrible blow had been struck at their happiness and ijrosi)erity, the good bishop goes on to entreat his kind offices with the emperor in favour of the afflicted city: " for certain abandoned and accursed men, tools of the devil, have torn her locks and brought the baldness of reproach on her head. She who once was beautiful and well- 56 ST. AMBROSE. ■favoured, with joyous eyes like Rachel, is now tender- eyed, like Leah, with affliction ; she who was of good address, is now covered with shame ; she who was free of speech in joy, is now silent in disgrace ; she -\vho once sheltered strangers, is now stripped bare by strangers. And if Rachel now weeps at seeing all her children slain, it is said to her, 'How is the faithful city Zion become an harlot !' But she cries aloud to you, father, from afar, like the woman of Canaan; she falls down to you, as the woman with the issue of blood to the Saviour, desiring to touch the hem. of your dignity : and who can be her helper but your HoUness? Guide the sacred ears of our lords to pity ; exhort the pious, supplicate the com- passionate, who under the seal of Christ have silenced the Western thunder of tyranny, that they may have mercy on those whom they have saved from the barbarians, that they may rescue the vessel now •sinking with all her crew. Let not the devil, who raised the tumult, say, 'I have prevailed!' for even God disregarded not a disobedient and gainsaying people." Ambrose was overwhelmed with horror at the tragical tale, and confounded at the way in which the emperor had been cajoled into violating his promise ; his dismay was shared by the bishops who were with him on the business of the synod. Theo- ■dosius was absent from Milan at the time when the news came, but returned a few days after, and in due ■course of time proceeded to the church at which he usually worshipped. He was met at the door by the indignant prelate, who addressed him in a speech EXCOMMUNICATION OF THEODOSIUS. 87 preserved by Theodoret, which cannot be better ex- hibited than in the rendering of our own Hooker : — " Emperor, it seemeth that how great the slaughter is which thyself hast made thou weighest not ; nor, as I think, when wrath was settled did reason ever call to account what thou hadst committed. Notwith- standing, know thou shouldst what our nature is, how frail a thing and how fading ; and that the first original from whence we have all sprung was the ver)- dust whereunto we must slide again. Neither is it meet that being inveigled with the show of thy glistering robes thou shouldst forget the imbecility of that flesh which is covered therewith. Thy subjects, O emperor, are in nature thy colleagues ; yea, even in ser\-ice thou art also joined as a fellow with them. For there is one Lord and Emperor, the Maker of this whole assembly of all things. With what eyes, therefore, wilt thou look upon the habitation of that common Lord ? With what feet wilt thou tread upon that sacred floor? How wilt thou stretch forth those hands from which the blood as yet of unrighteous slaughter does distil? The body of our Lord all- holy how wilt thou take into such hands? How wilt thou put His honourable Blood unto that mouth, the wrathful word whereof hath caused against all order of law the pouring out of so much blood? Dei)art, therefore, and go not about by after-deeds to add to thy former ini(]uity. Receive that bond wherewith from heaven the Lord of all doth give consent that thou shouldst be tied, a bond which is medi( inable, and procureth health." The emperor retired, for he knew Ambrose to be 88 ST. AMBROSE. inflexible. He either invited the bishop to meet him, or proposed to visit him himself; but the prelate declined, and addressed to him a letter, to the same effect as his speech. He expresses in it his great personal regard for him, and acknowledges his piety and zeal, but hints in guarded words at his own dis- appointment in finding that the emperor's natural impetuosity had not been repressed by good counsel. Then he denounces the Thessalonian crime, and de- clares that penance, public penance, must be done for it, after the example of David. Till it should be done he could not celebrate the Eucharist in his presence. This determination, he declares solemnly, was forced on him in a dream, in which he saw the emperor come to church, and found himself unable to officiate at the holy table. No reply was made to this letter, nor did either of the parties move for a long time. The bishop had spoken, and it was not for him to take the initiative, or proffer a pardon which was not sought for. He went on with his pastoral work and study, among other things, holding a long conversation with two eminent Persians, who had come to Italy on purpose to visit and confer with him. The imperial offender was perhaps unable to bring himself to a public con- fession of his fault, or to comply with the terms on which alone he could be admitted to the full privileges of a Christian. His pride revolted at what his con- science told him he deserved ; and so, though that conscience was still active, he made no sign. In this way eight months passed, while he remained still at Milan. INTERVIEW OF RUFINUS WITH AMIiKOSK. 89 Christmas-time now drew near, and all were pre- ])arin<; for the glad celebration of the Saviour's birth, but the excommunicated emi)eror sat sorrowful in his ]>alace. Rufinus, the via^istcr palaiii — lord steward of the household we might call him — ventured to ask the cause of his grief. 'I'heodosius replied with tears, " Vou are mocking me, Rufmus ; you do not com- prehend the nature of my trouble. I am lamenting my unhappy lot ; the holy Church is 0))en to slaves and beggars, but is shut to me ; and heaven is closed to me, for I remember the words of our Lord which distinctly say, ' Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.'" " Let me run," said Rufinus, *' and i)ersuade the bishop to release you from your bonds.' " You will not be able to do so," replied the emperor; "I know the justice of his sentence, and am sure that he will not violate the Divine law out of respect for Imperial power." Rufinus, however, eventually succeeded in obtaining leave to make trial of the bishop. He seems to have treated the matter all through with considerable levity, and probably did not conceal his sentiments when he accosted him. But he received a very different answer from what he had expected. '' You are as impudent as a dog, Rufinus," said the prelate. " It was you who advised the horrible massacre, and yet you exhibit no shame ; you neither blush nor tremble, though you have offered such violence ta the image of God." The lord steward, whose character Ambrose had not untruly, though rather l)rus(|uely, described, i)erse- vered in sjtite of this unfavourable reply, and remarked that the emperor was coming, and would be there 90 ST. AMBROSE. presently. " I warn you," was the answer, " that if he does come, I shall prevent him from entering the sacred portal. If he then chooses to convert his imperial authority into tyranny, I shall gladly receive death at his hand." Rufinus took a thoroughly anti-ecclesias- tical view of the affair ; he would probably have been happy to do for his master what some eight centuries, later our Henry II. is said to have wished his courtiers to do for him to an unaccommodating prelate — "rid him of a proud priest " ; and would certainly, if he had dared, have counselled its being done. He did not, however, go so far as this, but simply sent a message to Theodosius telling him of the result of his interview with the bishop, and begging him to remain in the palace. The message was delivered as the emperor was either passing through or transacting business in the Forum. Reluctant as he had felt to submit to the direction of Am.brose, he was still less inclined to be dictated to by his lord steward ; and the attempt made to induce him to resist the authority of the spiritual ruler perhaps confirmed him in the intention of submitting to that authority, and hastened its execution. "I will go," he exclaimed, " and re- ceive the chastisement I deserve." Proceeding to the consecrated precincts, he refrained from entering the church, but went into a parlour where the bishop was sitting, and begged for absolution. After the behaviour of Rufinus, it is not surprising that Ambrose looked upon the visit in the light of a menace, and taxed the emperor with tyranny, insolence towards God, and contempt of His laws. But he received an assurance that he was mistaken. " I am come in na rENITEN'CE OF THE EMPEROR. QT spirit of rebellion against constituted laws, nor am 1 intending to force my way through the sacred gates. I am here to beg that you will grant me release, remembering the mercy of our common Lord, and not close against me that door which He opens to every penitent.'' The bishop evidently considered the eight months' delay in making this request as a contumacious resistance to spiritual authority, and an obstinate refusal to exhibit or feel anything like true contrition ; and it is far from imi)robable that men from the court had expressed themselves to him in a manner which by no means gave him a just idea of the drift of Theodosius's thoughts. Those who had advised the massacre and those who hated Ambrose would join in using their utmost endeavours to prevent the emperor from expressing sorrow for his hasty and cniel order, and in doing all they could to keep up an impassable breach between him and the bishop. The answer to the emperor's humble words was still a stern one. " What penitence have you been showing for your great fault ? ^^'hat remedy have you applied to the incurable wound you have in- flicted?" " It is your duty," answered the penitent, " to prepare the remedies ; mine to accept what is offered me." " Since, then," said Ambrose, " you allow your temper to act the part of judge, and permit anger instead of reason to pronounce sentence, you must make a law which shall render such hasty orders null and void. When a sentence of death or confiscation of property is pronounced, let thirty days elapse before it is put into execution. After this time G 2 92 ST. AMBROSE. has passed, and you have become cool, let your decree be shown to you. You will then be able to decide rationally whether it is just or not. If the latter, then the writing can be destroyed ; if the former, it may be ratified. Where the judgment is right, a little delay will do no harm." The emperor consented. The regulation suggested by Ambrose was not new to him ; a similar rule had been laid down by Gratian, but had been either forgotten, or not adopted by him- self. The necessary document was speedily prepared and signed, and the excommunication was removed. Laying aside every ornament that could mark his rank, Theodosius entered the church with a deep sigh of relief, and fell prostrate on the floor, smiting his breast, and crying, " My soul cleaveth unto the dust : O quicken Thou me according to Thy word " ; and with every sign of the profoundest compunction besought and received absolution and readmission to the communion of the Church. To the day of his death he never ceased to deplore his error, and was so watchful over himself and so careful not to offend, that the more he was irritated the more ready he was to pardon ; and offenders were said not to fear, but to wish, to see him angry. Ambrose testified his belief in the sincerity of his repentance by inscrib- ing to him the book he had written in 384, entitled, " The Defence of the Prophet David." THKODOSIUS RETURNS TO THE EAST. 93 CHAPTER XI I r. EUGENIUS. A.D. 392-393- After a stay of more than three years in Italy, the greater part of which time was spent, not at Rome, the old capital of the Republic, but at Milan, which, since the time of Maximian, had become the chief city of the empire, Theodosius hoped it to be safe, and felt it to be high time, for him to return to his own dominions. Accordingly in the early spring of 392 he took leave of Ambrose (Valentinian was absent in Gaul), and set out for the East. During the time his youthful colleague (now just twenty years old) was in his company, he had carefully imparted to him sound political instruction; and had combined with it earnest exhortations to adopt the faith of his father and brother, the true Christian faith. For the memory of his mother Valentinian had probably but little respect ; for Theodosius and Ambrose he entertained the deepest reverence. His Arian leanings, if he ever had any, were soon exchanged for an earnest desire to be admitted to the membership of the Church; and his hatred of idolatry was so decided, as to make many believe that the adherents of the old 94 ST. AMBROSE. religion had been for months engaged in a con- spiracy against his life. Under these circumstances, Theodosius had but little apprehension in leaving Italy. The affairs of religion, he thought, would be well provided for in the hands of an emperor now become orthodox, and guided by such a counsellor as the Bishop of Milan. The Far West, he imagined, would be little disposed to rise, after the fate of Maximus ; but, to make matters sure, he had appointed to the post of commander-in-chief of Gaul a Frank named Arbogastes, a man of great ability and energy, loud in his protestations of fidelity to his patrons the emperors. But the appointment was a mistake, and a fatal one. The Frank, all the while that he seemed to be holding the unquiet spirits of his province in check, was secretly playing his own game. The troops were corrupted, Franks were thrust into the most im- portant military posts, and the loyal Italian servants of Valentinian gradually eliminated, their places being filled by friends of his own. The young emperor had now been residing for some time at Treves. So anxious had he become to be received into the bosom of the Church, that he sent and repeated a pressing invitation to Ambrose to come to him and administer the Sacrament of Baptism, which he was earnestly desirous of receiving at the hands of one who had been so faithful to, and so highly valued by, his father and his brother. Partly owing to the news of some barbarian demonstration on the Italian frontier, partly from a wish to meet Ambrose half-way, he left Treves, and came southward as far as Vienne. This independent movement, which MIRDEK OF VAI.I NTIMAN. 95 betokened an intention to act without consuUinji Arbogastes, was by no means satisfactory to that per- sonage, whose intention was to detain his emi)eror in a virtual captivity, which might some day be converted into an actual one. His dissatisfaction was raised to its utmost height when Valentinian placed in his hands a formal dismissal from all his offices. Tearing the document into shreds and flinging them on the ground, the Frank insultingly replied, "My authority was not given by you, and you are powerless to take it from me." Valentinian had inherited the (juick temper which was the death of his illustrious father. In a transport of pardonable rage he snatched a sword from one of his guards, and was with some difficulty prevented from inflicting a mortal wound on his inso- lent general. An emperor with a will of his own was not to be tolerated by Arbogastes. A few days after — it was Whitsun Eve, May 7, 392 — Valentinian was found in his own chamber a corpse. The cause of death was strangulation, nor was there the faintest doubt as to the head that planned or the hands which peq)etrated the deed. It was well known that the rotection of Providence. Ambrose hastened to dis- avow such a feeling, and to assure the emi)eror of the real cause of his absence. He congratulated him heartily on his success, and commended his pious humility in the midst of triumph. " I took your Piety's letter with me," he wrote, " and laid it on the altar, and held it in my hand when I made the obla- tion." Finally, he reminded him of the duty of being merciful. There was every reason why he should refer to this subject. A large number of persons, most of them more or less compromised by adherence to Eugenius, but some few of them guiltless of any but compulsory submission to him, had taken refuge in the churches. Ambrose knew, by experience, what Theodosius's temper- was, and what direction the counsel of his advisers was likely to take, and dreaded both that the sanctity of churches might be invaded, and that severity might be used towards men who might be won by clemency, or, indeed, towards those who had rather desen-ed encouragement and consolation. He, therefore, not only mentioned their rase in writing, but instructed Felix, his deacon (after- wards Bishop of Bologna), who was the bearer of the letter, to plead for them. Not long after, he wTotc again to intercede on behalf of these wretched fugi- 104 ST. AMBROSE. tives, mercy to whom would be a fit thank-ofifering for victory. "Their tears," he said, "I cannot endure without sending a supplication to forestall your Clemency's coming." The emperor responded to his appeal by despatching an officer to take charge of the suppliants; and Ambrose thought it best not to trust to letters, but to have a personal interview. He went to Aquileia, and was received with every mark of respect and affection. The emperor granted his requests ; he knew, he said, how much he owed to the prayers of iVmbrose ; he felt also, doubtless, that to be merciful was to be wise. The event did not disap- point him : the pardoned adherents of Eugenius were among the most faithful to him and to his sons. Theodosius was on the point of starting for ]\Iilan, but Ambrose returned with all possible speed, 'and was fortunate enough to be in the city in time to receive him with those honours which he was glad to see bestov/ed, not so much on a triumphant soldier as on a God-fearing prince. There was in truth every •cause for rejoicing. Once more there was a gleam of hope for mourning Italy, a glimpse of peace for the ■distracted empire ; once more East and West were united — though for the last time — under a single and a capable head. It was not to last long. The anxieties of rule, and the fatigues and perils of the late campaign had told upon Theodosius. But a few weeks had elapsed from the date of his victory at the Frigidus, when he was taken ill of dropsy. The unusual inclemency of the weather, excessive rain and dense fog having prevailed for many days, perhaps aggravated his disease ; at all dp:ath of theodosius. 105 events, lie became convinced before very long tliat his end was near. He had left Arcadius, the elder of his sons, in charge of the East, and now sent for the younger, Honorius, whom he intended to place on the Western throne. The young Ccesar reached his destination safely, and the satisfaction of seeing him and his elder brother, who accompanied him, caused the Imperial sufferer to rally for a short time ; so that Arcadius felt justified in returning forthwith to the Eastern capital, where his presence was needed. A splendid show of horse and chariot races in the Circus (a favourite exhibition at Milan, as indeed at all Italian cities), in honour of the prince's arrival, was fixed for January i6th, 395. The emperor attended the morning's show, took interest in the proceedings, and seemed to all to be in improved health. But appearances were delusive. After the midday meal the more aggravated symptoms of his malady began to show themselves ; the exertion had l)robably been too much for him. He was unable to appear again at the races, and Honorius was com- ix;lled to attend alone and represent him. He grew rai>idly worse, and in the course of the night passed away from the troubles of his high dignity to rejoin his beloved Flaccilla in another world. In his la.st moments he commended his young sons to the care of the great Stilicho, husband of his niece Serena ; then called for Ambrose, entreated him to be a father to them, as he had been to Gratian and Valentinian, and told him how very near to his heart was the wel- fare of the Church of Christ. It was determined that his body should not be ii I06 ST. AMBROSE. interred at Milan, but should be conveyed to Con- stantinople, there to lie with the remains of his pre- decessors in the Empire of the East. Before its departure, and forty days after his death, solemn obsequies were celebrated at the city where he had sinned the great sin of his life, w^here he had show^n his deep penitence, where he had celebrated his last triumph, and drawn his last breath. The funeral oration could be spoken by none but Ambrose. The rhetorical element, though present and palpable, is not so painfully prominent in it as in that on the death of Valentinian. The preacher spoke feelingly of the ability, clemency, and many virtues of the departed emperor, paying a compliment to the talents of his sons and successors which a few years un- happily showed to be entirely undeserved. Most of all, however, he extolled his humble piety. " No doubt," he said, " the devout emperor is now at rest, in peace and light, in the company of the saints who have gone before." An allusion to Constantine the Great here led him to digress into an apparently purposeless narration of the story — or rather the strange legend — of the finding of the Cross by Helena. Finally, he comforted poor little Honorius, who sat crying bitterly at not being allowed to accompany his father's body and go back to his brother Arcadius at Constantinople, his old home. The preacher reminded him that he was now an emperor, and had a solemn duty towards all, so that he must no longer think of his father only. " Do not fear," he concluded, " that your father's triumphant remains, wherever they may go, will appear shorn of honour. Italy does not FUNERAL OF TIIEODOSIUS. I07 think so, she who has beheld magnificent triumphs, and whose children, freed a second time from tyrants, are waiting to extol the author of their liberty. Con- stantinople does not think so, who sent forth her prince a second time to victory, and, much as she would, could not retain him. She looked for trium- phal solemnities on his return, to do honour to his victories; she looked for an emperor of the whole world, surrounded with an army from Gaul, sui)portcd by the forces of the whole world. But Thcodosius now returns to her with higher power, with greater glory, for it is a troop of angels that accompanies him, a crowd of saints that follows him. Blessed indeed is the city that is receiving an inhabitant of Paradise, and will entertain, in the splendid abode where his body is to rest, a denizen of the heavenly city above." H 2 loS ST. AMBROSE. CHAPTER XV. THE END OF A GREAT LIFE. A.D. 395-397- Ambrose's own term was now drawing to a close. He was in his fifty-fifth year, scarcely more than a middle-aged man according to our reckoning. But the anxieties and labours of twenty years had had their effect upon him ; and his ascetic mode of life, if it enhanced his spiritual powers, did not certainly increase his physical strength. He allowed himself no midday meal except on Sundays and saints' days, and, owing to a fortunate peculiarity of his own church, on Saturdays also ; the Saturday feast, we learn, was one of the usages of the Church of Milan, for in Rome the " Sabbath " (the day before the Lord's Day) was kept as a fast. And at the same time he was continually engaged in preaching, writing (not by an amanuensis, but with his own hand), and in giving counsel to those who resorted to him. The wear of this branch of the pastoral office must have been excessive. Numbers flocked to him to give liim their confidences before performing that public penance for sin which was customary at that time, and to ask his advice and consolation ; and he threw DANCER OF THE EMPIRE. IO9 himself heart and soul into each case, "rejoicing," says Paulinus, ''with them that did rejoice, and weeping with them that did weep ; for he would weep so with one who acknowledged his errors with a view to penance, as to force him to weep also." His assiduity about the due performance of the rites of religion was equally great, and involved almost an equal tax on his energies, for he would do single- handed at baptisms what five bishops of his time could scarcely perform together. When we remember that at Milan in the fourth century '' a baptism " implied commonly the immersion of a number of adults, and was not confined to the pouring of water on a few infants, we shall see that the bodily fatigue of a solemn baptismal day to the officiating bishop (for it was he, not the presbyters, still less the deacons, who usually administered the sacrament) must have been enormous. The death of Theodosius, while it could have no effect upon his austerities and his labours, must have increased tenfold his anxieties for Church and State. The Huns, a new and terrible enemy, were beginning to threaten the East. The Goths, under Alaric, were stirring in Greece. Gildo the Moor (the brother of that Firmus whom the father of Theodosius had subdued for Valentinian I. in 374) was a rebel, and all but in- lependent, in Africa, and had proclaimed himself a upporter of the persecuting Donatists. With a gentle but unpromising boy of ten (Honorius) for emperor of the West, and an equally gentle fool of eighteen (Ar- vriting this letter, — sometime 114 ST. AMBROSE. in February, 397, — that he was called upon to officiate at the consecration of the Bishop of Pavia. After returning from the service he was taken ill, and com- pelled to retire to his bed. It was soon only too evident to all that his danger was extreme. Stilicho, who had learnt his worth from Theodosius and from his own experience, felt that his loss would be a terrible blow to Italy. Something must be done, he thought, to bring it about that so valuable a life might be spared. Summoning all the most influential and valued of the bishop's friends, he by turns entreated and commanded them to go to his bedside and bid him pray to be permitted to live. They went and proffered their strange request : the dying prelate calmly replied, " I have not so lived among you as to be ashamed to live on : but I do not fear to die, for our Lord is good.'' The prayers, if offered, were in God's providence not granted : the end drew visibly nearer, and men began to think who should be chosen to fill his place when he was taken from them. It happened that four deacons (one of whom, Venerius, afterwards became Bishop of Milan himself) were standing at the farther end of the gallery in which his couch was placed, and conversing, as they thought, in a scarcely audible tone on this important question. But either they forgot, in their warmth, to moderate their voices, or the sick man's senses, as not un- frequently happens, were preternaturally sharpened : when they mentioned the name of Simplician, they were terrified to hear the bishop express his approval by exclaiming three times, ^' Old, but good." It is perhaps unnecessary to add that Simplician was his successor. DEATH. 115 He sank rapidly ; but as the outward man perished, the inward man was renewed : the Lord Jesus, he told Bassianus, bishop of Lodi, who liad been praying with him, had come to his side and smiled upon him. At last (it was Good Friday, April 3, 397) he ceased to speak : he lay for some hours with his arms stretched out in the form of the Cross, his lips moving, but no sound audible. Midnight passed, and Hono- ratus the newly-consecrated bishop of Vercclli, who had been with him, had left his side, and was retiring to rest, when he thought he heard a voice which repeated thrice, *' Up, hasten, he is departing." Without delay Honoratus entered the sick chamber, and gave the dying prelate the Blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood. He received it, and a moment after was at rest. It was Easter Eve, April 4, and his body was carried to the "greater" church : thence on Easter Day to the church which bears his name. There he was laid, close to his beloved brother Satyrus. His funeral was attended by a throng of all ranks and ages : and not Christians only, but Jews and heathen, came to testify their respect for the great and holy man who had departed from among them. His catechumen Fritigil journeyed all the way from her German home to see and speak with him : but she came too late ; she could only gaze weeping on his honoured tomb. It6 ST. AMBROSK. CHAPTER XVI. AMBROSE AS POET AND MUSICIAN. Upwards of eighty metrical compositions have been ascribed to the pen of St. Ambrose. The great majority of these are certainly the production of different hands, and of a somewhat later age. There are but twelve which' are considered to be indubitably the composition of the great Bishop of Milan, and two of these are found imbedded in liturgical hymns of greater length. He seems, however, to have struck a key-note of Church poetry. "I grant," says Grimm, " that the hymns attributed to Ambrose, whom we may justly call the father of Church song, are not all his; I cannot, however, think that the hymns commonly ascribed to him, but not recognised by editorial critics, were composed later than a century or two after him, they have so much of the simplicity of the others." His metre is for the most part carefully regulated by quantity, though in one or two instances he seems to have neglected quantity for accent, so as to render it necessary for those who recast the hymns of the Roman Breviary in a strictly classical form to make a few alterations. His lines occasionally rhyme, but so irregularly as to make it pretty clear that the rhyme was unintentional. There is no trace of the accen- tuated metre, with set and perfect rhyme, of the later Latin hymns. rOETRV. 1 I 7 His style as a hymn-writer is throughout grave and severe, but devout, and profoundly accurate in theo- logical expression. More austere than his rontem- l)urary Prudentius, and without any of the impassioned fervour of such writers at St. Bernard, he yet impresses us by his dignified simplicity. " We feel," says Arch- bishop Trench, "as though there were a certain cold- ness in his hymns, an aloofness of the author from his subject, a refusal to blend and fuse himself with it. Only after a while does one learn to feel the grandeur of his unadorned metre, and the profound, though it may have been more instinctive than conscious, wisdom of the poet in choosing it, or to appreciate that noble confidence in the surpassing interest of his theme which has rendered him indifferent to any but its simplest setting forth. It is as though, building an altar to the living God, he would observe the Levitical precept, and rear it of unhewn stones, upon which no tool had been lifted. The great objects of faith in their simplest expression are felt by him so sufficient to stir all the deepest affections of the heart, that any attempt to dress them up, to array them in moving language, were merely superfluous. The passion is there, but it is latent and repressed, a fire burning inwardly, the glow of an austere enthusiasm, which reveals itself, indeed, but not to every careless be- holder. Nor do we presently fail to obsene how truly these poems belonged to their time, and to the circumstances under which they were produced : how suitably the faith which was in actual conflict with, and was triumphing over, the powers of this world, found its utterance in hymns such as these, wherein Il8 ST. AMBROSE. is no softness, perhaps little tenderness, but a rock- like firmness, the old Roman stoicism transmuted and glorified into that nobler Christian courage, which en- countered and at length overcame the world." The grandest and noblest of his hymns, in the opinion of all editors, is that for Advent. An almost literal rendering of a portion of it may serve to give an idea of its stern simplicity. The metre employed, the rhymeless eight - syllable line, is that of the original. Redeemer of the nations, come, Show them a virgin mother's Child : Amazed be all the wondering world, For such a birth beseems our God. # * # # " Out of His chamber" He proceeds, That royal hall of purity, " A giant," ' of two natures joined, " To run His course " rejoicingly. He goeth from the Father forth, And to the Father speeds again, Descending to the deep of hell, Returning to the throne of God. With the Eternal Father One, With belt of flesh Thou girdest Thee, The weakness of our mortal frame So strengthening with enduring might. ' The "giants" of Gen. vi. 4 were considered to be creatures of a double nature, the offspring of women wedded to spiritual beings ; or, as the mythology of Hesiod has it, of Ouranos (heaven), and Ge (earth). The term ' ' giant " is applied in Ps. xix. 5 to the Sun of Righteousness : and this was imagined to be because of His two natures. Human and Divine. It may be as well to add that the Hebrew words rendered " giant " in the two passages are quite different. POETRY. I 1 9 Now brightly shines Thy manger-bed, And night a new-born radiance breathes, Which nightly shade shall never dim, Which shines to faith eternally. There is much severe beauty in the Matin Hymn. The version given imitates its occasional rhyme. O Partner of the Father's light, Thyself the Light of Light, and Day, With hymns we bring to end the night : Be with us as we kneel and pray. Remove the darkness of our minds. And chase the demon troops away ; Banished be slothfulncss by Thee, Lest it o'erwhelm the idle soul. So, Christ, have mercy on us all, Who all believe and hope in Thee : Blest to thy suppliant servants be This early strain of holy psalm. The contribution of Ambrose to the music of the Western Church has been so thoroughly remodelled and systematized by St. Gregory, that it is impossible to determine exactly what and how much is due to the master-mind of Milan. It seems clear^ that he introduced the j)ractice of antiphonal chanting from the East, and probably not a few of the melodies he employed were from the same source. Some have imagined that these melodies were a reproduction of those used in the Temple service at Jerusalem, tradi- tionally preserved both by Jews and Christians in the churches and synagogues of the East, and that the • Sec p. 57. I20 ST. AMBROSE. Ambrosian basilica, while the faithful kept their vigils within its walls, resounded to strains in which David and Solomon had joined some fourteen centuries before. But our ignorance of the Hebrew gamut, and the probability that it differed essentially from the four Greek scales with which Ambrose was acquainted, renders this opinion less tenable than beautiful. It would certainly seem to link us yet more closely with the chosen people under the older covenant if we could think that not our psalter only, but our chant also, was an inheritance from the sweet psalmists of Israel ; but fact refuses to give way to sentiment. Compared with the popular church music of our own time, the Ambrosian music appears as severe as the Ambrosian poetry. And yet, as the latter was a comfort to St. Augustine when he lay awake and thought sadly yet joyfully of his departed mother, so the music touched his heart when first he joined in it as a Christian. " How I wept," he says, " at Thy hymns and canticles, touched to the quick by the voices of Thy melodious Church ! Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth distilled into my heart, and thence there streamed forth a devout emotion, and my tears ran down, and it was well with me therein." And though he elsewhere says he dreaded lest he should give too much attention to the sound, too little to the sense, and was disposed to banish all chanting *rom the churches, save the simple "plain tune, after the manner of distinct reading," used in Alexandria by the command of St. Athanasius, he cannot help admitting the value of the Church's song, and, by implication, commending the work of MUSIC I 2 I St. Ambrose in connexion with it. "When I remember the tears 1 shed at the chants of Thy Church when first I recovered my faith, and that I am moved not by the chant, but by what is chanted, when it is chanted with a clear voice and suitable modulation, I acknowledge again the great usefulness of the insti- tution." 122 ST. AMBROSE. CHAPTER XVII. ST. AMBROSE AS A THEOLOGIAN. It is one of the marvels which meet us in the course of ecclesiastical history, that Ambrose, the la^^yer and unbaptized layman, becam.e in a week the profoundly learned and devoted prelate.^ Though not yet bap- tized, he had been early admitted a catechumen, and no doubt had been allowed access to the Holy Scriptures and to the writings of Christian authors, both of his own and of earlier times. And of this access he must have availed himself largely. Within a few months from his baptism he writes a work, that on Paradise, full of scriptural allusions and deep divinity. That much of his theology is borrowed is true : that is to say, we recognise in his writings that he has been consulting the works of others ; and we know as a fact that he was a good Greek scholar, and a student of Philo, Origen, and Basil. But his depth and accuracy are all his own. He \^Tites as one who has read and thought too. The promising young advocate, the busy lawyer and politician, the elegant scholar, had not confined his studies to the things of this world. Side by side with his Cicero and his Virgil, ' See pp. 28, 29. THEOLOGV. 123 his yEschylus and his Plato, had been well-used rolls, treating of higher matters than philosophy or law or romance, — the eternal truths revealed by the Eternal Spirit. And his spirit had communed with them. The same God who in His providence had designed to call him from the council-chamber to the altar had in the same providence guided his mind not to things temporal only, but to things eternal : so that when the call came, the chosen vessel was not unprepared for the Master's use. His legal training was not without its happy effect : it moulded him into that accuracy of thought and expression which is so remarkable in all his writings. He does not, how- ever, approve, as a nile, of teaching Christian mysteries to the unbaptized. The doctrine of the sacraments, if communicated before baptism to the uninitiated, would, he thought, damage rather than edify. We, in our Western Church, and in this nineteenth centur}', are more interested than we are generally aware in his theology and his theological method. We are so accustomed to connect the great name of Athanasius with that cardinal doctrine, the coequal Deity of the Redeemer and the Sanctifier, that we suffer its brilliancy to overpower the brightness of the other scarcely less illustrious champions of the truth as it is in Jesus. Yet it is the fact that the West owes a vast debt to Ambrose. It was he more, perhaps, than any other Western father, whose energy and theological definiteness checked the wave of Arianism which the semi-Christian Goths were bringing with them, and which, but for him, would have spread over Italy, Spain, Gaul, and Britain. Not in the I 2 124 ST. AMBROSE. synod of Aquileia only, but in almost every writing that has come down to us from his pen, as in almost every one of his public acts, we find him the devoted defender of the Nicene teaching, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. But there is more than this. Of all the Fathers, from St. Ignatius down to St. Bernard, none exerted such an influence over the Latin Church as St. Augustine of Hippo. He is, without the possibility of gainsaying it, the leading spirit of Western theology : " no sermon with- out Augustine " is a Spanish proverb ; and we all remember our own Chaucer's * ' But I ne cannot boult it to the bren, As can the holy Doctour Seynt Austen." And not only so, but he was in an especial manner the favourite of the chiefs of the Reformation. The same fatalist tendency which, we would almost say, inevitably characterized Augustine as a converted Manichaean, the adversary of Pelagius, made him dear to those who were lifting up their voices against the will-worship and the Pelagian self-righteousness which connected themselves with the teaching of Rome. To those who felt and knew that " the way of man is not in himself " even the horrors of " reprobation " seemed nearer the truth than the idea of deserving grace of congruity, or accumulating merit by ascetic self- maceration, or profuse and inconsiderate almsgiving. On the other hand, we can hardly help seeing that the same Augustinian theosophy, coarsely stated and unduly pressed, has exercised an unhappy influence on our own times by being, to some extent at least, ON THE FAITH. I 25 the source of no small portion of the infidelity of these later days. Men have shrunk from belief in the God of revelation, because He was represented to them as One who deliberately created with the l)urpose of consigning His creatures helplessly and hopelessly to never-ending misery. If then Augustine has so influenced for Western Christians the middle ages, the Reformation, and the nineteenth century, we cannot but be deeply interested in one who had so much to do as Ambrose with forming and directing the Christianity of Augustine. For though in some points the scholar may have broken away from the master, or modified his teaching, still we must in the main be feeling the results of Ambrose's mode of dealing with his noble convert We cannot tell to what extent his calm judgment may have negatively influenced that convert, and preserved him from carrying to an erroneous extreme those principles on which others have framed a mistaken, not to say- repulsive, system of divinity. If Augustine is what he is with the teaching of Ambrose, what might he have been without that teaching? The bishop of Milan was at least the guide of the guide of the theology of the West. The writings of Ambrose all abound with definite theolog)' ; but the distinctly dogmatic treatises which we have from his pen are those on the Faith, in five books, on the Holy Ghost, in three books, on the Incarnation, and on the Mysteries. The history of the five books on the Faith (a.d. 378-9) has already been told. They are directed, he informs us in the outset of the first book, mainly 126 ST. AMBROSE. against the errors of Sabellius, Photinus, and Arius ; and he briefly confutes all three from the opening verses of St. John's gospel (i. § 56). '•^ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginnifig with God. ' Was with God ' he says, and repeats ' was ' four times. Where does the scoffer find that He was not ? Elsewhere, too, St. John in his Epistle says, That which was in the beginning : ' was ' has an indefinite extent; whatever explanation you may devise, the Son ' was.' Our fisherman has in this short paragraph excluded all heresies. ' That which was in the beginning ' is not included in time nor preceded by a beginning. So Arius may hold his tongue. And that which ' Vv-as with God ' is not con- fused by mixture, but kept distinct by the solid per- fection of the Word which remains with the Father ; so that Sabellius may be silent. And the Word was God. Therefore this Word is not in the utterance of speech, but in the designation of heavenly power, so that Photinus is confuted. And as He ' was in the beginning with God,' the inseparable unity of the Eternal Divinity in the Father and the Son is plainly taught, so that Eunomius^ is put to the blush." And again (v. § 104): ^'' If David then in spii'it call Him lord, how is He his son ? By one question our Lord has shut out the Sabellians, the Photinians, ' Eunomius was a disciple of Aetius, who taught that the Son was unlike [anomoios) in nature to the Father ; whence the name of Anomoians given to his party. Eunomius was made Bishop of Cyzicus about A.D. 360, but was soon afterwards deposed for heresy. ON THE FAITH. I27 and the Arians. For when it says The Lord said to viy Lord, Sabellius is shut out, who will have it that the Father is the same as the Son ; Photinus, who judges according to the flesh, is shut out, because none could be Lord of King David but One who is God, for it is written. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou sen'c. \\o\.\\d a jirophet reigning under the Law hold an opinion contrary to the Law ? Arius is shut out, who hears that the Son * sits at the right hand ' of the Father ; so that if he argues from human usage, he convicts himself, and pours back on himself the poison of his sacrilegious argument, and, while he interprets the inequality of Father and Son after human fashion, erring from the truth in respect of Both, advances the One Whose honour he seeks to diminish, being ready to own Him to be first Whom he hears to be on the right hand. The Manichaean is shut out also ; for He does not deny Himself to be Son of David according to the flesh, since when the blind men cried, Jesus, thou Son of David, have ?nerey on us, He was pleased with their faith, and stopped and healed them ; but He declares that it does not agree with His proper eternity that He should be named by the faithless ' son of David ' only. For He is Son of God against Ebion, Son of David against the Manichaeans ; Son of God against Photinus, Son of David against ^Llrcion; Son of God against Paul of Samosata, Son of David against Valentinus ; Son of God against Arius and Sabellius, inheritors of pagan error. Lord of David against the Jews, who, when they saw the Son of God in the flesh, with unholy madness believed Him to be a mere man. 128 ST. AMBROSE. But in the Church's faith the Son of God the Father and the Son of David is one and the same ; because the mystery of the incarnation of God is the salvation of the whole creation, as it is wTitten that He by the grace ^ of God should taste death for every man ; that is, that, without any suffering on the part of His Divinity, the whole creation should be redeemed by the price of the Lord's blood ; as it runs in another place, the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. It is, therefore, one thing to be called Son with reference to the Divine Substance, another to be so called with reference to the taking flesh upon Him : for in respect of the Divine generation the Son is equal to God the Father, and in respect of His taking flesh He is a servant; for He took on Him^ says the Apostle, the form of a servant ; but still the Son is one and the same. On the other hand, in respect of His glory He is Lord of the holy patriarch David; according to the sequence of corporeal succes- sion He is His son, not as coming short of Himself, but as gaining for Himself the right of our adoption." All passages of Scripture which seem to speak of the Son as inferior to the Father are to be referred, he shows, to Christ's humanity (ii. § 59) : "It was in His human nature that He doubted, and was weary, and rose again, for it is that which has fallen that rises. In His human nature, too. He said that on ' St. Ambrose here reads "without" God instead of *'by the grace " of God. Theodoret and Theophylact do the same, alleging that the ordinary reading is Nestorian, separating the Manhood from the Godhead of Jesus Christ. St. Ambrose understands it of the impassibility of the Divine Nature. ON THE FAITH. I 29 which a question is often raised, Afy Father is x^ra/t-r than /. . . . He is less than the Father in His human nature ; ran you wonder if He, speaking in the i)erson of a man, called the Father greater, when in the per- son of a man He said I am a worm and no man, and again Ifc hhis brought as a sheep to the slaughter 1 If in this respect you call Him ' less,' I cannot deny it ; l)ut, to use the language of Scripture, He was not born less, but 'made lower.* Why made lower? Being in the form of God, Be thought it not robbery to be equal witJi God, but tnade Himself of no reputation ; not, certainly, relinquishing what He had, but assum- ing what He had not, for He took o?i Him the form of a seri'ant. In short, that we might know that He was made lower by taking a body on Him, David showed that he was prophesying of a man, by saying What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man that Thou visitest him 1 Thou hast ?nade Him a little hnver than the angels. And the apostle, intcr[)reting this passage, says : IVe see Jesus, JVho 7cas made a little laiver than the angels, for the sufferijig of death crowned with glory and honour, that He without God ^ should taste death for every man. . . . How well the apostle has put it, without God should taste death for ei'ery man, lest we should imagine that the suffering was of His divinity, not of his flesh I " Again, referring to a text continually alleged by the Arians, he remarks : ** Hence we understand that what was written of the Incarnation of the Lord, The Lord created me the beginning of His 7i>ays, for His ' See preceding nolo. 130 ST. AMBROSE. works} signifies that the Lord Jesus was created of a virgin to redeem the works of the Father. It cannot be doubted that this was said of the mystery of the Incarnation, since the Lord took flesh to free His works from the bondage of corruption, and to destroy, by the suffering of His own Body, him who had the power of death. For the flesh of Christ was for the sake of the works, His Divinity before the works : because He is before all things^ and by Him all things consists It would be wrong to omit the powerful logic by which he substantiates that article of the Athanasian creed, "the Son uncreate" (v. § 137). "The Son is the Lord of Glory (for the apostle speaks of ' crucifying the Lord of Glory') ; but gloiy is not given to creatures ; therefore the Son is not a creature. " The Son is the ' express image' of the Father. Now every creature is unlike heavenly existence ; but the Son is not unlike God the Father ; therefore the Son is not a creature. " The Son tJiought it 7iot robbery to be equal with God. Now no creature is equal_with God, but the Son is equal ; therefore the Son is not a creature. "Every creature is changeable; but the Son of God is not changeable j therefore the Son of God is not a creature. ^ Prov. viii. 22. The passage in the Hebrew was as it is rendered in the Latin Vulgate and our Authorized Version, ' ' The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old." But in the LXX., which St. Ambrose's version follows, an itacism pointed out by St. Jerome has turned " possessed" into "created." ON THE FAITH. 131 "Every creature, by its own natural capacity, receives the accidents both of good and of evil, and perceives the abatement of them ; but with the Son of God there can be no addition to or abatement of His Divinity ; therefore the Son of God is not a creature. "God will bring rccry uwrk of His into judgment ; but the Son of God is not brought into judgment, for He Himself is Judge ; therefore the Son of God is not a creature. '• , . . . The Son quickens, as the Father ; for as the Father raiseth up the dead and quiekeneth them, eirn so the Son quiekeneth luhom He will ; the Son raises as the Father does, the Son preserves as the Father does ; how can He be unequal in power Who is not unequal in grace ? So also the Son, as the Father, does not destroy. Therefore, that no one should fancy there were two Gods, or introduce a division of power, He said / atid My Father are One. How can a creature say this ? Therefore the Son of God is not a creature. " To be a king and to be a slave are not the same thing. Now Christ is a king, and the son of a king ; therefore the Son of God is not a slave. But every creature is a slave, whereas the Son of God, who from slaves makes sons of God, is no slave ; therefore the Son of God is not a creature." The discourse on the Lord's Incarnation was com- posed and delivered, a.d. 382, at the request of two Arian courtiers of Gratian. The two gentlemen, after challenging the bishop to handle the subject, were discourteous enough, according to Paulinus, to 132 ST. AMBROSE. take a drive out in a gig when they ought to have gone to church to hear his sermon, and suffered for their offence by being thrown from their carriage and killed. The treatise, as we might expect, traverses much the same ground with the five books on the Faith, and the author confesses as much (ch. vii.). It is necessary for him, however, not only to insist upon the consubstantial Deity, but to maintain against oppo- nents the perfect and sinless Humanity of Christ (§ 59). " It is written, they say, that the Word was made flesh. It is wTitten, I do not deny it ; but consider what follows, A7id dwelt among us [in 7is'\, that is, the Word who took flesh dwelt in us, dwelt, that is, in human flesh, and therefore was called Emmanuel, that is, God with us. So the Word was made flesh stands for ' was made man.' As also it says in Joel, / will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh ; for this does not mean upon irrational flesh, but a coming out- pouring of spiritual grace on men is promised. Sup- pose you take it literally, and imagine from the expression the Word was made flesh that the Word of God was changed into flesh, you cannot deny that it is written of the Lord that He did no sin, but was made sin. Was the Lord therefore changed into sin ? No, but He was called sin because He took our sins on Him. For the Lord was called a curse, not because He was changed into a curse, but because He took on Him the curse which belonged to us, for cursed is every one, it says, that hangeth on a tree. You cannot then wonder that it is written the Word was made flesh, ON THE INXARNATION. 1 33 when the flesh was taken up by the Word of (}od ; since it is written of the sin which He had not that He was made sin, that is, not by nature and the operation of sin, though He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, but, in order that He might crucify our sin in His flesh. He took upon Himself for us the weaknesses of a body already liable to the conse- quences of fleshly sin." But the sinless body is not perfect man without a soul (§§ 63, 68). "And therefore, when He took man's flesh, it follows that He took the perfection and fulness of incarna- tion, for nothing in Christ is imperfect. Therefore, He took flesh to raise it again ; He took a soul, but a perfect, reasonable, human soul What use would it have been to take flesh without soul, since the flesh is certainly insensible, and the irrational soul is neither liable to the consequences of sin, nor worthy of reward ? He therefore took for us that which in us was still in danger. What use is it to me if He did not redeem the whole of me ? But He did redeem the whole of man, who said, Are ye angry at Me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day ? He redeemed the whole of me, because the believer rises again into a perfect man, not in part, but wholly." And this perfect Ciod-man is the revelation of the Father to men (§ 112). " The Father then is holy, and the Father is per- fect ; the Son too is holy and perfect, as the image of God. The image of God, because all that belongs to God is seen in the Son, namely eternal Divinity, 134 ST. AMBROSE. Omnipotence, and Majesty, As, then, God is, so is He seen in His image. Whence you must needs believe the image of God to be such as God is. For if you withdraw anything from the image, it will surely appear withdrawn from Him Whose the image is ; if you believe the image to be deficient, God will appear in His image less than He really is. For as you estimate the image, such will that Invisible One, of Whom the image is, appear to you. The image said, He that hath seen Me hath seeft the Father-. And as you estimate Him whose image you believe the Son to be, so of necessity must the Son be estimated by you. Whence, as the Father is uncreate, the Son also is uncreate ; as the Father is not deficient, the Son is not deficient j as the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty." The three books on the Holy Ghost were ^vritten at the request of the Emperor Gratian in the year (a.d. 381) in which the doctrines of Macedonius and the Pneumatomachi were condemned by the first Council of Constantinople. Ambrose seems to allude to the decline of the Arian party in the prologue : *'Even Constantinople," he says, with a. slight under- current of Occidental jealousy, " has now received the word of God." He culled materials for the work from Didymus, Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, and other writers ; and Jerome most unfairly ridicules him as not having improved his authors in the process of translation, and as having produced a poor and weak result, embellished with rhetorical graces, but wanting in power. A perusal of the work impresses us with no idea of deficiency ox THE HOLY GHOST. j:) on the part of the writer, but docs certainly confirm us in tlie notion that the critic was not entirely free from prejudice and jealousy. We may admit, however, that the work is not perfection. 'Hiere is a tendency to repetition, an occasional want of method, and a frequent divergence into mystical interpretations of Scripture very little to the point, which are blemishes in an otherwise great and valuable whole. The line of argument taken by Ambrose is the simi)le and logical one that Divine attributes are throughout Scripture given to the Holy Spirit ; that in respect of grace, love, communion, pardon, light, life, creation, operation, counsel, w411, He is One with the other two Holy Persons ; that His Personality is as clearly stated as that of the Son ; and that those expressions which seem to convey the idea of Him as a created or inferior being, are also applied to the Son, so that if they do not disprove the Deity of Christ, they cannot be held to throw any doubt on the Deity of the Spirit. And the warning against false teaching is very solemn (i. § 47). " Consider carefully why the Lord said, J]7iosoever speaketh a word ogaifist the Son of Afivi, it shall be /orgtve?i him ; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. Is there any difference between the offence against the Son and that against the Holy Spirit ? No ; for as the dignity is one, so the injury is one. But if any one, misled by the appearance of the human body \c>{ Christ], thinks less highly than he should do of the flesh of Christ (for we ought not to have low notions of that 136 ST. AMBROSE. Flesh which is the palace of virtue and the fruit of the Virgin), he is in fault, yet is not excluded from pardon, which he may gain by faith. But if any one denies the dignity, majesty, and power of the Holy Ghost to be eternal, and imagines that devils are cast out, not by God's Spirit, but by Beelzebub, there can be no entreaty for pardon where there is the fulness of sacrilege ; because he who has denied the Spirit, has denied the Father and the Son, since the Spirit of God is the same as the Spirit of Christ." Ambrose does not hesitate to speak of the Holy Ghost "proceeding" from the Father and the Son; but he refers the " proceed" apparently to the tem- poral mission of the Spirit (i. § 114). " The Spirit, then, is not sent as if from a place, nor does He proceed as from a place when He pro- ceeds from the Son ; as the Son Himself, when He says, / came forth froin the Father^ and am come into the world, destroys all opinions which may be formed of movement, as in bodies, from place to place. Similarly, when we read that God is within or without, we do not include God in, or separate Him from, anybody. . . . Wisdom says, / ca7tie out of the mouth of the Most High, not so as to be out of the Father, but with the Father, because the Word was with God; and not only with the Father, but in the Father ; for He saith, / am in the Father, and the Father in Me. But when He goes forth from the Father, He does not retire from a place, or separate Himself as a body from a body ; nor when He is in the Father is He included as a body in a body. And the Holy Ghost, when He proceeds from the Father and the Son, is ON THE HOLY GHOST. 1 37 not separated from Father or Son ; for how can He be separated from the Father who is the Breath of His mouth? And this is at once a proof of His Eternity, and an expression of the unity of His Divinity." AVe find towards the end of the work an energetic protest against Tritheism (iii. § 95). '' According to our judgment that God is One, there is understood one Divinity, and a oneness of Power. As we say that God is One, both confessing the Father with a true name of Deity, and not denying the Son, so we do not exclude the Holy Ghost from the unity of Deity : and yet we do not assert, but deny, three Gods, because it is not oneness but division of power that constitutes plurality. For how can the unity of Divinity admit of plurality, when plurality is of number, and the Divine nature does not admit of number? (§ 106). But you may say, l)erhaps, * If I call the Spirit Lord, I shall speak of three Lords.' But when you call the Son Lord, do you either deny the Son or acknowledge two Lords ? Far from it, for the Son Himself said, Yc caiuiot scnc hvo lords \tnaster5\ : but He did not deny Himself or the Father to be Lord, for He called the Father Lord, as you find it, / thank Tlice, O Father^ Lord of Jieaven and earth ; and He spoke of Himself as Lord, as we read in the Gospel, Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so / atn. But He did not si)eak of two Lords ; on the contrary He showed that He did not when He gave the warning, Ye cannot scne tTt'o Lords. ¥oT there are not two Lords where the Lordship is one ; because the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and therefore there is one K 138 ST. AMBROSE. Lord. ... So as we do not say there are two Lords when we style both the Father and the Son Lord, so we do not say there are three Lords, when we confess the Spirit to be Lord. ... So also the Father is holy, the Son holy, and the Spirit holy, but there are not three Holies, because there is one Holy God, one Lord. For there is one true Holiness, as there is one true Divinity." The one short tractate, "On the Mysteries" is singularly in accordance with the teaching of our Prayer Book as regards the number of the true Evangelical Sacraments. The "mysteries" are not seven, but two. Not only are we glad to find the " two only " of our own Catechism thus upheld by the authority of one of the four great doctors of the West, but a special interest attaches to the work : it is a reproduction of the course of instruction given to the newly-baptized at Easter 387 ; and there is, as we have seen, every reason to believe that Augustine was one of them. They are solemnly reminded of the various details in the ceremony of their admission into the Christian Church; the entrance into the baptistery, the renunciation of the devil, the turning to the east, the descent into the water, the profession of faith in the One coequal Trinity, the unction, the gospel which tells how our Lord washed His disciples' feet, and the chrisom vest. They are taught that the element of the regenerating sacrament was prefigured in the water of the primeval earth over which the Spirit moved ; in the Flood ; in the cloud-covered sea through which the Hebrews passed ; in the water of Alarah, sweetened by the mystic wood ; in the Jordan, ON THE MYSTERIES. 1 39 where Naaman washed and was cleansed ; in the pool of Lethesda, stirred by the angel. Lut the water is nothing in itself: (§ 19) : — " You have been told not to believe only what you see ; lest you should say, * Is this the great mystery which eye hath not seen nor ear heard^ neither hath it entered into the heart of man to eoneeire? I see water, which I used ever)- day to see ; can it cleanse me, whereas I often have gone down into it, and have never been cleansed ? ' Learn from this that water does not cleanse without the Spirit. And so you have read that the three witnesses in Baptism are one, the spirit, and the water, and the blood : because if you remove one of them, the sacrament of baptism does not exist. For what is water without the Cross of Christ? a common element, without any sacra- mental efficacy. But again, the mystery of regenera- tion cannot be without water, for unless a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he eannot enter into the kingdom of God. Now even the catechumen believes in the Cross of Christ, for he too is signed with it : 1 but unless heis baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, he cannot receive the remission of sins, nor obtain the gift of spiritual grace." From the font the newly-baptized proceed to the altar, to partake in that holy feast of which David in mystery sang in the 23rd Psalm; prefigured in the ' The form of admitting a catechumen included the use of the sign of the cross (w p. 4). St. Augustine speaks of himself in childhood as having been "signed with the sign of the Lord's Cross, and salted with His salt." (Confcs. I. xi.) K 2 I40 ST. AMBROSE. gifts of Melchizedek, and the manna in the desert, but far above either as the Hght is above the shadow, the reaUty above the figure ; for Christ Himself is there, to be the spiritual food of His people (§ 58) : — "Whence also the Church, seeing the grace to be so great, exhorts her children and her neighbours to hasten together to the sacrament, saying, Eat^ O friends; drink, yea. drink abundantly, O beloved. What we eat and drink the Holy Ghost has expressed for you by the Prophet elsewhere, saying, O taste and see how gracious the Lord is, blessed is the man who trusteth in Him. Christ is in that Sacrament, because it is the Body of Christ : it is not therefore a bodily but a spiritual food. Whence also the Apostle says of its type, Our fathers did eat spiritual meat, and dri?ik spiritual dri7ik ; for the Body of God is a spiritual Body, the Body of Christ is the Body of a Divine Spirit : for Christ is a Spirit, as we read : The spirit before our face is Christ the Lord [A. K, The breath of our nostrils, the a?toinied of the Lord.'] And in Peter's Epistle we have Chist suffered for us. Finally this meat strengthe7is our heart, this drink makes glad the heart of 7nan, as the Prophet has declared." Ambrose evidently did not withhold the cup from the laity, for these words are not addressed to priests, and the theory of concomitance, invented to console the laity for losing half their Eucharist, finds no place in his writings. He did not hold the sacrament to be " a bare sign, an untrue figure of a thing absent " ; nor yet did he try to explain the mystery by any device such as that of Transubstantiation, but was contented to believe, without discussing or defining, the Real Spiritual Presence. SCRIPTURAL EXPOSITIONS. 14 1 CHAPTER XVIII. ST. AMHROSE AS AN INTERPRETER OF SCRIPTURE. Bv far the greater part of the works of St. Ambrose consists of expositions of Scripture. All of these appear, Hke his works of dogmatic theology, to have been intended for delivery in public, either as set discourses, or in the form of instruction given in what the language of our Church and time would call Bible Classes. We constantly meet with allusions to passages in the service of the day, with parenthe- tical observations and digressions, and with remarks on incidents of the time, natural enough in a speech, but unlikely to be met with in a carefully-arranged treatise or commentar}'. Of comments on the text of Scripture we have two : the " Enarrations " on thirteen Psalms, in- cluding the 119th, and an Exposition on the Gospel of St. Luke. The other Expositions are exegetical tractates on the events or i)ersonages of the Old Testament. The " Hexaemeron," or account of the six days of Creation, is, of course, a treatise on that work of the Deity as recorded in the ist chapter of Genesis ; the remainder are on Adam and Eve (or Paradise), Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the blessings of the Patriarchs, Job, David, Elijah, Naboth, Tobit. Commentators, both Jewish and Christian, agree 142 ST. AMBROSE. with St. Ambrose that of Scriptural exposition there are at least three (if not four) methods. First comes the historical, literal, or critical, expounding the written Word with reference to its immediate meaning, the time at which and the circumstances under which it was written or spoken, and inquiring into its simple literal import. Secondly, we have the practical, moral, or tropological, examining the teaching of the Word, and the rules which it gives for the direction of our life and actions. Thirdly, there is the spiritual, mystical, or anagogical, pointing out the more or less hidden reference which it bears to Christ and His Kingdom, whether in the way of type and figure, or of implied and covert doctrine. It is to this latter method that Ambrose mainly inclines. If we may judge from his interpretations of Scriptural names, and the extraordinary meanings he attaches to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in his Commentary on the 1 1 9th Psalm, he was entirely ignorant of the original language of the Old Testament : but we know he was an excellent Greek scholar ; and he adheres to the guidance of Origen, with whose writings he was conversant, and everywhere seeks to unfold, much as he did, the spiritual significance of the pas- sage, event, or character, with which he is dealing. Other portions of Scripture lend themselves more readily, some to one, some to another of the three methods ; but the Psalter, he says, adapts itself to all (Ps. xxxvii. §1) : — ^' All Divine Scripture is either natural, or mystical, or moral. Natural in Genesis, in which is expressed how the heaven, seas, and earth were made, and how this world was formed. Mystical in Leviticus, in SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURK. 1 43 which is contained the mystery of the priesthood. Moral in Deuteronomy, in which man's life is shaped according to the precept of the Law. Whence also Solomon's three books appear to be chosen out of a number : Ecclesiastes out of the natural, Canticles out of the mystical, Proverbs out of the moral. But since the body of all the Psalms is one, there is no division or distinction in them, but none of these methods of teaching, whichever the case may require, is omitted from them." But of the excellence of the spiritual over the other kinds of interpretation he speaks most strongly, comparing the moral and mystical modes to the two sisters of Bethany, and exalting the spiritual Mary far above the practical Martha (Ps. i. ver, 3, § 42). *' The mystical saves and delivers from death : the moral is an ornament for decoration, not a help to our redemption. That the mystical is more excellent than the moral even our Lord Himself teaches in His Gospel, saying of Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and heard His word, when Martha was busied about serving, and complained that her own sister did not help her in the duties of the table, Martha, Martha^ Mary hath chosen that good part which shall fiot be taken away from her. If she who waited on Christ at table was not comparable to her who desired to hear the word, what worker can we compare with one who is anxious for the knowledge of eternal things ? Yet so that faith is not wanting to the work of the one, nor work to the knowledge of the other, as in the case of ^Lary; lest either the leaves be without fruit, or the fruit without its natural protec- tion be uncovered and open to injury." 144 ST. AMBROSE. Ambrose has no doubt about the Messianic im- port of the Psalms. We find him distinctly laying it down in the Preface to the Enarration on the I St Psalm, § 8 :— " What others announced by dark sayings appears to be plainly and openly promised to him [David] alone, that the Lord Jesus should be born of his seed, as the Lord said to him. Of the fruit of thy body shall I set upon thy seat. In the Psalms, therefore, not only is Jesus born for us, but also takes on Him the health-giving Passion, rests, rises again, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father. What no man had taken upon himself to say, this Prophet alone announced, and afterwards the Lord Himself declared in the Gospel." And he carries this principle out to the full : — Ps. xxxvi. 9. — " Rightly it is said 7;^ Thy light shall we see light ^ according to the saying, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. With Thee, therefore, O Well of Life, we shall see the Father present. For as Thou wast with the Father in the beginning, God the Word, so the Father Who is in Thee is always with Thee, for He is with Him in Whom He is. And the Advent of our Lord and Saviour is foretold. Who at His coming on earth declared, / and My Father are One, that is. We are One Light, as We are One Name. AVe are Both One by unity of Light and Name ; or rather the Trinity is One by unity of substance, but with the difference of each Person. Trinity signifies a difference of Persons, Unity signifies Power. It might be said to the Father too, For with Thee is the 7vell of life, that is, the Word was in Thee from Whom life proceeded, and always was, because He was with ON THE PSALMS. I45 Thee. All things were made by Him and in Him ; and He is the Life of all, and has manifested Thee to us, that men's hearts may be illuminated unto the knowledge of Thy Majesty." Ps. xxxviii. 10. — "Lastly, that you may know it is rather to be understood of Christ, he has added. As for the li^ht of mine eyes it also is gone from me. Who is the true light of all but Christ Jesus, of Whom John says, That icas the true Light which lighteth rrery man that comcth into the 7Uorld 1 for He it is AVho lightens both the bodily eyes and the mental vision. Let us beg therefore that He will always pour His light into us, and always be with us, as He was with David, who therefore ventured to say. For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light. He, indeed, as a prophet had seen a great light : may his lantern shine for us, that we may not err. And the Word is a lantern, as the Word is the true Light, which lighteneth the whole world. Lord, Thy Word is a lantern unto my feet.'* Ps. xl. 10. — " /// the volume of the book it is written of Me. Yes, it is written of Christ in the beginning of the Old Testament that He should come, to do the will of God the Father in the redemption of mankind ; since it is >\Titten that He formed Eve, in the likeness of the Church, to be a help to man. For what can be a defence to us, in the weakness of our body and the troubles of these times, but only the grace given to the Church, whereby we are re- deemed, and our faith, by which we live? In the volume of the book it is written : Bone of my bones and jlesh of my Jlesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ; 146 ST. AMBROSE. and they shall be 07ie flesh. Listen to one who tells us who is speaking, and to what the mystery refers ; This is a great mystery ; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church^ Ps. xli. 9. — " What is hath laid great wait for me ? The Greek has a word meaning hath magni- fled ; and the Lord has movingly explained both words in the gospel, saying, H^e that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. . . . When I was a boy I saw a wrestler after throwing his adversary strike his forehead with his heel, which was a remarkable thing, because in it he insulted the vanquished. And this is the meaning of the saying, hath laid great wait for me; by this word the Lord declares the arrogance of one who insulted Him. Judas lifted up his heel against Christ when he betrayed Him, but he did not lift it up un- punished. Adam still lifts up the heel which was wounded by the serpent. Christ, indeed, had washed the feet of Judas, and he had heard Him say. He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. But what grace washed, treachery had polluted. Judas, therefore, lifted up his heel to his wounding. He did not truly hold the Head who lifted up his heel against Christ. Adam lifted up his heel against himself, Judas his against Christ, and therefore the serpent wounded him more griev- ously than others. He lifted up his heel, who offered the treacherous kiss, to lay wait for his Master ; and therefore it is written in the prophet, hath laid great wait for me. He who lays wait practises some trick by which he throws or wounds his adversary-. ON THE PSALMS. I 47 Therefore Judas is said to have laid wait, because by his kiss he inflicted a wound, by which he gave the IK^rsecutors a sign to rush upon the Saviour. So he laid wait like a serpent ; because a serpent injects venom with his mouth, and wounds the heel with his fangs; and Judas wounded not the Divinity of Christ, but the end of the heel of His body. And Judas, too, lifted up his heel like a proud and in- solent wrestler, in order to smite the Saviour's head ; but he could not strike the head of Christ, for the head of Christ is God. He bound his own head with the knot of the hideous halter, to take away from himself the means of salvation." The exposition on the 44th Psalm has a melan- choly interest for us. It was the last work of the great Milanese prelate, the unswerving champion of the faith. It was never delivered; its concluding sentences were dictated and committed to writing only a few days before his decease. And in it he is still true to his principle ; he still sees Jesus in the Psalter, with a spiritual sight not darkened by the weakness of the failing body, but intensified in its keenness by the nearer approach of the brightness of eternal day. Commenting on ver. 11 of this Psalm, Thou hast given us like sheep appoi7ited for meat., he says : " Our good Lord Jesus Christ Avas made a sheep for our banqueting. Do you ask how ? Listen to one who says, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; and consider how our forefathers in figure divided and ate the lamb, signifying the Passion of the Lord Jesus, on Whose sacrament we feed daily. Through the Sheep Himself, therefore. 148 ST. AMBROSE. they became flocks for meat, as Aquila says ; or flocks for eating, as Theodotion expresses it ; or pas- ture of the eaters, as Symmachus has it. But a good banqueting is not to be feared, but to be desired by the saints; for otherwise one cannot arrive at the kingdom of heaven, since the Lord Himself has said, Except ye eat My flesh, and drink My blood, ye shall ?iot have eternal life. It is clear, therefore, that our Lord is the meat, the banquet, the nourishment of the eaters, as He Himself says, / atn the livino Bread which came dow?i from heaven. And that you may know that, since He so came down, all has been done for our sake, the holy Apostle says. We are all one bread. Let us not fear, then, because we are become sheep appointed for ?neat. For as the flesh and blood of the Lord Himself has redeemed us, so also Peter, and the holy Apostle Paul too, and the other apostles, endured much for the Church when they were beaten with rods, stoned, and thrust into prison. For the Lord's people are made to stand firm, and the Church has gained her increase by their endurance of injuries and experience of dangers ; since others hastened to martyrdom, seeing that no loss befell the apostles by their sufferings, but that by (the sacrifice of) this short life they gained immor- tality." So, again, on Ps. xlvi. 5. God shall help her, and that right ea?'ly, he explains " right early " with a minuteness equal to that of the acknowledged inter- pretation of the xxii. Psalm. " By this is signified that the resurrection early in the morning brings us heavenly aid, driving away the ON THE PSALMS. 1 49 ni-lU and restoring the day, as the Scripture says, Aicake, thou that shrpcst^ and arise front the dead, ami Christ shall ^ive thee lii^ht. See the mystery. Christ suffered towards eventide; therefore it was that according to the law the lamb was slain towards eventide. It was in the morning that He rose ; for so it is written, the first day of the iceek cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Towards the evening of the world He is slain, when the light was beginning to fail ; for the whole world was in darkness and would have been wrapixid in more miserable darkness still, had not Christ, the Everlasting IJght, come to us from heaven to pour out on mankind a season of innocence. So the Lord Jesus suffered, and pardoned our sins by His own blood; the light of a purer conscience shone out, and the day of spiritual grace beamed forth. Whence also the A[)Ostle says. The night is far spent, the day is at handP And on Ps. xlviii. 2 : — " Beautiful for situation, the joy of the luholc earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the Great King. \\'hy she is the joy of the whole earth is clearly expressed : it is because the Lord Jesus has gathered for Himself a Church from among sinners. Therefore those who before were the sides of the north, that is, associates and adherents of the devil, to whom it is said, Aiuake, O north ivind, and come, thou south, are made the faithful in Christ. For of them is it said. They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount /ion ; nntl so they become the Mount Zion 150 ST. AMBROSE. by the grace of Christ and the sacrament of bap- tism." Christ is the key to a difficult passage, Psahii xlix. 14 : — ^^ Like sheep they are laid in the grave ; death shall feed on the?n; and the upright shall have dominio7t over the?n in the mortwig ; and their beauty shall con- sume in the grave from their dwelling. Those who would not let Christ feed them, death shall feed on them. Who then would drive away the Good Shepherd, Who lays doian His life for His sheep, because the care of His flock pertains to Him ? Or who would choose death the hireling, to be brought to him with the due reward of deeds of wickedness ? Know, O man, that Christ is the true Shepherd, Who feeds unto life. Death has entered, and leads some to destruc- tion, and devours those over whom it is able to prevail because of their sins. Though they have in this life eagerly pursued wealth and favour, that they might have dominion over others, yet in the resurrection servitude shall be theirs, when the brightness of the morning dawns on the righteous, the figure of whom is Jacob, set as a lord over his brother. And a miserable servitude it will be, that, at the time when others are called into the glory of light and splendour, their glory will be waning and consuming in the darkness of the grave." On the Latin and Greek rendering of Psalm Ixii. i, Shall 7iot my soul he subject imto God? {A. F., Truly my soul waiteth upon God), Ambrose 'takes occasion to make an affectionate reference, at some length, to the memory of the pious Gratian, murdered in 2,^7,, UN THK PSALMS. 151 some six years and more before the date of the enarration (a.d. 390). And, as the versions agree in reading for the words we translate they delight in lies something which they rendered / ran in thirsty he remarks on the guilty thirst of the tyrant who, as he declares, devised at a banquet the murder of his imixirial prisoner. But he has first shown the reference of the first verse to Christ, and guarded against misapprehension : — " Subjection then is the supereminence of human virtue, not the diminution of Divine power. For if they say that the Son is less than and not equal to the Father, because He was subject to God the Father, is He therefore less than His mother, because He was subject to His mother ? for we read of Joseph and Mary, And He was subject unto them. However, we do not lose but gain by that affection of His through which the Lord Jesus has infused grace and faith into us all, that He may make us with faithful spirit subject to God the Father. Therefore with a new and pro- found meaning the Aj)Ostle says that He will be subject unto the Father in us, when there is in all the fulness of faith, and a kind of unity in devotion. For now, so long as we differ in opinion, we in a manner lessen Christ's kingdom ; for all things are not yet subject to Him whose kingdom is unity : but z^Jun all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him That put all things under Him, that God jnay be all in all, as it is written. For now He is above all in power ; but it is needful that He be in all by will, and this will He will have when He knows all that is within us to be full of 152 ST. AMBROSE. Him and void of sin. Christ is not therefore yet subject to the Father, because He is not yet all in all ; but when Christ is all in all, God will be all in all. Whence we gather that the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one : because He who receives the Son receives also the Father and the Holy Ghost : for the power, grace, and operation of the Trinity is one." It is perhaps in the Exposition on the 1 1 9th Psalm that the powers of the preacher and commentator are best seen. The work belongs to a.d. 385-6 ; years of bitter persecution for the bishop at the hand of Justina and the Arian party. Besides explaining the Psalm, which he considered as a sort of miniature of the whole Psalter, he quotes freely from the rest of the Psalms, and from other books both of the Old and New Testament, expounding as he quotes. He uses the Canticles so largely that the chief part of the comment on that book which has been compiled from his works is drawn from this portion of them. The literal, moral, and mystical senses have each of them their due amount of attention ; and the heretic, the Jew, and the philosopher alike become in turn the object of the preacher's burning words. Sometimes, it is true, the illustrations are quaint, but they are always telling : — (Verses 153 — 160). "Here begins the 20th letter Res (Resh), which is interpreted by the Latin word signifying ' head ' or ' primacy.' . . . All the vigour of life and grace of beauty is in the head. The snake is said, when it is pressed by danger, always to hide its head, and, coiling itself into a circle, to ON THE PSALMS. 153 defend this jxirt alone, leaving the rest of the body exposed ; because it is said that if the vigour of the head be ])reserved, it can repair the other members when wounded. So do thou also keep the head, in a moral sense, and in a mystical sense too. Christ is the mystical Head, because by Him all things cofisist, and He is the Head of the bod)\ the Church. He who has lost this Head will not be able to derive any advantage from living. In this alone we, who are formed after the image of God, and the likeness of virtues, differ from brutes. Faith separates us from being like to animals void of reason. O ye human serpents, keep well this Head : though all the limbs be beaten, the whole body burnt in the fire, plunged in the deep, or torn by beasts, yet if this Head be guarded, life is unhurt, and safety assured ; for no one can perish from whom Christ is not taken away." All hearts will thrill in unison with the sweet earnest prayer he draws from the conclusion of the Psalm. *' seek Thy scn'ants, for I do ?wt forget Thy commajidmcnts. Come then. Lord Jesus, seek Thy servant, seek Thy weary sheep ; come, O Shepherd, seek Joseph like a sheep. Thy sheep has strayed whilst Thou wert delaying and staying on the mountains. Leave Thy ninety and nine, and come and seek the one that has strayed. Come without dogs, come without evil workers, come without the hireling who knows not how to enter by the door. Come without helper, without any to announce Thee ; I have long waited for Thy coming. I know Thou wilt come, for I do not forget Thy commandments. Come not ivith a rod, but /;/ loT'e and in the spirit of meekness.^' L 154 ST. AMBROSE. The ten books of " Expositions " on the gospel of St. Luke are rightly called by this name rather than by that of Commentary. They are by no means a complete comment, but rather a series of sermonets on certain passages of St. Luke, arranged in the order of the gospel itself, or, as we should say, according to chapter and verse. Their date of publication is fixed at the same year of troubles and persecutions (386) as the Enarrations on the 1 1 9th Psalm ; they were probably delivered orally during the two years im- mediately preceding their collection into a whole. Auxentius the Arian is not indistinctly alluded to in the comments on x. 3 : / se7id you forth as la??ibs among wolves. And on ^^wars and commotions^' (xxi. 9) we have another historical illustration : — " None are better witnesses to the heavenly words than ourselves, on whom the end of the world is come. What wars and what rumours of wars we have known ! The Huns rose against the Alans, the Alans against the Goths, the Goths against the Tay- fali and Sarmatae. The exiles of the Goths have made us too in Illyricum exiles from our fatherland, and the end is not by-and-by. How universal has been famine, and epidemic, among oxen and other cattle, as well as among men ! so that even in the case of those of us who have not endured war, pestilence has made us like people crushed by war." There is a difference of opinion about the merits of the Expositions. According to Rufinus, St. Jerome (one of the most captious of critics) alluded to this commentary when he said that of two works of Ambrose one was dull both in sense and language, ON ST. LUKE. 155 the other sportive in words but sleepy in meaning. But Jerome was particularly and unreasonably jealous of Ambrose, It is true, however, that the expositions on St. Luke, though valuable, and full of thought and sound theology, are not so lively and sparkling as those on the Psalms. The author revelled in the mystical, and seems therefore under constraint when he is, by the nature of his text, rather confined to the literal or moral. In fact, he takes every opportunity of breaking away from his restraint into something at least allegorical or figurative, if not absolutely mystical. In dealing with the 3rd verse of the ist chapter, he cannot speak of the deposit of the Gospel committed to Theoi)hilus, *'one whom God loves," without a figurative inteq:)retation of the moth and rust which we are bound carefully to prevent from corrupting it. The rust is covetousness, carelessness, worldly ambi- tion : Photinus, Arius, Sabellius, the spirit of anti- christ which denies the Incarnation, are moths that lacerate the sacred vestures in the store. Again, the food of the Baptist is significant. Ambrose does not, as a modern preacher or lecturer might do, give a graphic sketch of life in the wilderness, investigate the nature of the locusts and the wild honey, and discuss the question between the vegetarian and the opposite view, but works out a somewhat far-fetched meaning: — "The food of the prophet is a mark of his ofifice, and tells of a mystery. What so useless, in respect of a man's duty, as catching locusts, and what so full of meaning in respect of proi)hetic mystery ? For locusts, the more unprofitable, idle, fleeting, wandering, L 2 156 ST. AMBROSE. noisy they are, the more fitly they represent the Gentiles, who, without labour or profitable work, without dignity, without voice, utter a melancholy sound, but know nothing of the word of life. This people is the food of prophets, because the larger the number of them congregated together, the more plen- tiful the advantage of prophetic speech. And the grace of the Church is prefigured in the wild honey, not found by the Jewish people in the hive of the law, but scattered, by the wandering of the Gentiles, over the fields, and the leaves of the forest, as it is written. We found it in the fields of tJie wood^ Of a similar character, — not historical, but figura- tive, — is his explanation of the difficult word in vi. i, rendered in our version "second Sabbath after the first," but literally "second-first Sabbath." " It is curious that St. Luke says 'second-first,' not * first-second,' for that which is best ought to be put first. It is the second, because a first according to the law went before it, and there was a punishment prescribed if any one worked on it ; it is the first, because the Sabbath according to the law, which was first, is done away, and this, which was ordained second, has become the first. For as it is lawful to work on the Sabbath, and there is no punishment for one who works, the very name of Sabbath did not remain, its force according to the law being done away. However, though one was first in order, the other in principle, the latter was not therefore less than the former, for the first Adam is not to be com- pared with the second Adam ; tJie first man Adam ivas made a living soul ; the last Adam was made ON ST. LUKE. D/ a quickening spirit . . . the first jfian is of the earth eiirthy ; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. The second was preferred before the first, for one was the cause of death, the other of life. So also we have the word * second-first' Sabbath; second in number, first in grace ; fur the Sabbath in which men are exempted from punishment is better than that for which a l)unishment is prescribed. The law is first, the (iospel second ; but fear is lower than grace." Even a remark of. St. Paul which we should look upon as to be understood literally, and literally only, is made to bear a figurative sense : — " // may be, he says, that I will abide, yea, and 7vinter with you ; and farther on, But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost, for a great door is opened unto me. He winters with the Corinthians, because he was troubled with their errors, and their affection toward the service of God was cold ; he keeps Pente- cost with the Ephesians, and imparts to them mys- teries, and refreshes his soul, because he sees them to be glowing with the warmth of faith." A similar exposition is made, incidentally, of the remark in St. John xviii. i8 : — "/Z was cold. If we consider the time of year, it could not be cold, but the cold was where Jesus was not confessed, where there was none to sec the light, where He was denied Who is a cons utning fire. So the cold was that of the mind, not of the body. Lastly, Peter stood near the coals because he was cold in heart. The Jewish flame is hurtful, it burns, but docs not give warmth. The fire is hurtful which si)riiik]es the soot of error (so to speak) even over the minds of 158 ST. AMBROSE. saints, at which even Peter's inward eyes were darkened. Those were not eyes of flesh and blood, but eyes of the mind, with which he saw Christ." The parable of the barren fig-tree, again, is ex- plained mystically, not morally ; the exposition, how- ever, is not far-fetched, but most instructive and edifying : — " These three years I co7ne seeking fruit on this Jig- tree. He came to Abraham, to Moses, to Mary ; that is, He came in the sign, in the law, in the body. We recognise His coming by its benefits. In one there is purification, in another sanctification, in another justification; circumcision purified, the law sanctified, grace justified. One was in all, and all in One. For none can be cleansed, but he who fears the Lord ; none is fit to receive the law but he who is purified from fault; none comes near to grace but he who knows the law. Therefore the Jewish people could neither be purified, because they had the circumcision of the body, not of the heart ; nor be sanctified, because they knew not the virtue of the law, follow- ing the carnal rather than the spiritual {for we know that the law is spiritual) ; nor be justified, because they did not repent of their offences, and therefore knew nothing of grace. Justly, therefore, no fruit was found in the synagogue, and therefore it is commanded to be cut down." It is curious to light on a little confusion of names which we are hardly prepared for in so accurate a theologian, though it does not justify the sweeping condemnation of the critic. Just as Polycrates and Clement of Alexandria confounded Philip the deacon ox ST. LUKE. 159 with Philip the apostle, and claimed the latter with St. Peter as an apostolic precedent for marriage, so Ambrose fails to distinguish the two (or three) who bear the name of James. There went up into the mount of transfiguration, he says, *' Peter, who re- ceived the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; John, to whom is committed the Lord's mother; James, who first ascended the episcopal throne." Whether James, the Lord's brother, first bishop of Jerusalem, James the less, James the son of Alphieus, are one or two persons, is not by any means a settled point ; but Ambrose is clearly wrong in speaking of the son of Zebcdee as first bishop. Another mistake, or misconception, on the part of the commentator is justly criticised by Jerome. He joins with St Hilary of Poictiers (on St. Matthew xxvi. 70) in a strange piece of special pleading in favour of St. Peter in his denial of our Lord ; and all will probably agree with Jerome's caustic remark that it defends the erring disciple at the expense of the truthfulness of Him who said Thou shalt deny Mc thrice. " But let us consider the form of his denial, which I see to be differently stated by the different evan- gelists. It was so new a thing for Peter to be able to sin, that his sin could not be understood by the evan- gelists. Therefore, when the maid stated to Peter that he was of those who were with Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew has set down that he first replied, I know not 7vhat thou sayest. So also Mark, who followed Peter, and may have learnt more accurately of him. This is the first utterance of Peter in his denial ; but he l6o ST. AMBROSE. does not seem in it to deny the Lord, but to withdraw himself from the woman's betrayal of him. And consider what he denied ; it was his being of those who were with Jesus of Galilee, or as Mark puts it, with Jesus of Nazareth. Did he deny having been with the Son of God? It was only saying, I know Him not as Galilean or Nazarene whom I know as the Son of God. . . . Being asked. Art thou also one of those who were with Jesus of Galilee ? he shrank from the word of eternity; for those who had a beginning of being ' were' not, that is to say, He alone was Who was in the beginning. Finally, he says, / a?n not ; for it belongs to Him alone to be Who is always. Whence also Moses says, I AM hath sent ??ie. . . . Lastly, according to Matthew, being pointed out as having been with Jesus, he said, / know not the man. . . . And he rightly denied Him as man whom he knew to be God. . . . John has set it down thus, that being asked by the maid whether he were one of that man's disciples, he first replied / a?n ?iot. He who was Christ's was not a man's apostle. In fact, Paul also declared himself to be no man's apostle, saying, Fatd, an apostle^ not of ?nen, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ aftd God the Father. . . . The answer is consistent in every case ; for he who said / knozu ?iot the man, replied properly enough when asked whether he were of 'the man's' disciples, I am ?iot. He did not therefore deny himself to be Christ's disciple, but a man's disciple. So both Peter and Paul denied Him as man Whom they confessed to be the Son of God. . . . Luke also has written that Peter, when asked whether he was of them, answered ON ST. LUKE. l6l at first, / kfioic Jlim not. And he spoke well ; for it were rash to say he knew Him whom the mind of man cannot comprehend ; for 710 man knoiccth iJic Son but the Father. Again, in his second reply, according to Luke, Peter said, / am not. He had rather, you see, deny himself than Christ. . . . And at the third question he said, / knaiu not what thou saycst, that is, ' I know nothing of your sacrilege.' " The expositor himself is hardly satisfied with his defence of the apostle, for he goes on thus : — " We excuse him, but he made no excuse ; for an ambiguous answer does not beseem one who con- fesses Jesus, but an open confession. What use is there in employing ambiguous words, if you wish to appear to have made a denial ? So Peter is repre- sented as not having answered thus of set purpose, because wficn he thought thereon he 2uept." His defence of Peter is, however, not owing to anything approaching to the modern Roman view of papal supremacy. He treated Damasus, as we know, with respectful courtesy, but by no means submissively ; and in the same spirit he deals with the passage (St. Matt. xvi. 18) which was naturally present to his mind when explaining the correspond- ing portion of St. Luke (ix. 20) : — "The Rock is Christ ; for they drank of that spi- ritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ ; and He did not refuse to His disciple the grace of that word, so that he too should be Peter, as having from the Rock (petra) solidity of endurance, firmness of faith. Strive therefore that thou also mayst be a rock. Therefore look for the rock, not 1 62 ST. AMBROSE. out of thyself, but in thyself. . . . Thy rock is faith, the foundation of the Church is faith. If thou be a rock, thou wilt be in the Church, for the Church is on a rock. If thou be in the Church, the gates of hell will not prevail against thee. The gates of hell are the gates of death, and the gates of death cannot be the gates of the Church." Of the more literal part of the expositions, which, as has been already observed, though valuable, is not so brilliant as the comment on the Psalms, space will allow but two specimens. One is the explanation of the discrepancy between the later part of the two genealogies of the evangelists Matthew and Luke. "We remark that St. Matthew has stated that Jacob, father of Joseph, was son of Matthan ; Luke that Joseph, the husband of Mary, was son of Heli, and he has described Heli as being son of Melchi. How can there be two fathers, Heli and Jacob, to one man? and how two paternal grandfathers, Matthan and Melchi ? But if you search accurately, you will find that according to the rule of the old law two brothers were fathers of two half-brothers by one wife. For it is related that Matthan, who was descended from Solomon, had a son Jacob, and died, leaving a wife living. Melchi then married her, and she had a son Heli ; again Heli, his brother dying without issue, took his brother's wife, and had a son Joseph, who according to the law is called son of Jacob." The other passage is one containing his views on one point at least of what we now term eschatology. He seems, like Gregory of Nyssa and John of ON ST. LUKE. 163 Damascus, to be following the teaching of Origen, his favourite. " He who docs not bring peace and love to Christ's altar shall be bound hand and foot, and taken and cast itiio outer darkness; there sJiall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. What is the outer darkness ? Are there any prisons or quarries to be undergone there ? By no means. But all who are outside the promises of the heavenly commands are in outer darkness, because the commandments of God are light, and whoever is without Christ is in darkness, because Christ is light in the darkness. Therefore there is no gnashing of bodily teeth, nor any perpetual fire with bodily flame, nor any bodily worm. But these phrases are used, because as fever and worms are produced from indigestion, so if any one does not digest his sins, by the interposition of sobriety and abstinence, but by mingling sin with sin brings on a sort of indigestion with offences old and new, he will be burnt with fire of his own, and consumed by his own worms. Whence also Isaiah says, JValk in the light of your fire^ and in the sparks that ye have kindled. The fire is that produced by sorrow for crime ; the worm is this, that the sins of the irra- tional soul afflict the mind and sense of the guilty, and, as it ^vere, prey on the bowels of his conscience ; and these are engendered like worms in each man, as if from the body of the sinner. In fact, the Lord has declared the same by Isaiah, saying. They shall look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against Me ; for their worm shall not die^ neither shall tJuir fire be quenched." 164 ST. AMBROSE. The Hexaemeron (a.d. 389). — The idea, and much of the material, of these six sets of discourses on the history of the Six Days of Creation, as given in Gen. i., are taken from the Hexaemeron of St. Basil. But Ambrose does not slavishly adhere to his model ; Origen and Hippolytus were evidently in his mind as he wrote, and he not only refers to Aristotle and Plato, but quotes Virgil and Pliny by name. In- deed, it is palpable that he had the Georgics by heart. The object of Moses, or rather of Him Who in- spired Moses, was, he says, not to give us scientific truths, nor to introduce us to the wisdom of the Egyptians, but to teach us about God and our hope in Jesus Christ. Yet the preacher cannot help diverging into science and natural history, though he generally endeavours to defend the divergence by some moral lesson or mystical exposition drawn from physical truth. Li the beginiiing^ he tells us, means " in Christ," for all things 7vere made by Him^ arid 7vithout Him was not anything made. The sun repre- sents Christ, and the moon the Church : the sun knoweth his going down, refers to the Passion ; He appoi?ited the ?noo?i for certain seasons, to the vicissi- tudes of the Church, her alternating seasons of persecution and peace. The gathering together of waters tells of the Church, gathered from the valleys of heresy and heathenism, and the morasses of self- indulgence and impurity, into a community which is founded upofi the seas and prepared upon the floods, so that the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their waves to the Lord of all. Beasts, birds, THE HEXAEMERON. 165 fishes, reptiles, insects, all have their moral or mystical lessons to teach us ; and the vine, and the fig-tree, and the very grass of the field are not with- out their warnings and their promises. One reads with interest, not unmixed with amuse- ment, the scientific belief of an educated Roman and (jreek gentleman of the fourth century as contained in these remarkable discourses. Ambrose is no Darwinian: matter, he says, is not uncreated, but had a commencement /// the hci^uuiing, that is, before time began. It was created in the rough, and in disorder, and moulded into regular form, that God might display His power to arrange as well as to create. Each plant and animal is produced afkr his kind by a perpetual ordinance of the Author of all ; and peculiarities, such as the neck of the camel and the trunk and legs of the elephant, are the special creation of God. Ambrose holds that the world is spherical ; that the sun is naturally and not acci- dentally hot, and that light must be distinguished from the sun, being prior to the sun ; that the moon influences the tides ; that eclipses of the moon are caused by the earth's shadow ; that the circumference of the earth is about 180,000 stadia (22,000 miles). He considers the brain to be the centre of the nervous system, and the heart of the arterial, and has in other respects a fairly correct idea of human l)hysiology. He is acquainted with the mode of respiration in insects and fishes, knows the habits of the hippopotamus and the elephant, and is aware of the value of opium as a medicine. I le argues most sensibly against astrology and the fatalism which it 1 66 ST. AMBROSE. necessarily implies : once admit its principle, he says, "and you cannot praise a good man or con- demn a bad one, since each appears to correspond to the necessity of his nativity"; Jonah was cast into the sea, and afterwards rescued, the penitent thief saved, the Apostles converted, St. Peter delivered from prison, St. Paul cured of his blindness, and pre- served from the viper, not by the power of a natal star, but by the providence and grace of God. With all these correct and reasonable notions we have, on the other hand, the most extraordinary fancies, mis- apprehensions, and fallacies. He holds, of course, the doctrine of the four elements, though he rejects the idea of the fifth, or quintessence. He believes, or tells as if he believed, the old tales of the phoenix and the halcyon; of the lion being terrified at a white cock, and being cured of sickness by eating a monkey ; of the elephant dreading a mouse, of the bear licking its cubs into shape, of the wolf striking a man dumb by looking at him unseen, of the eagle holding up its young to see if they can face the sun unmoved, with this addition, that the rejected eaglets are taken and brought up by the coot. Quails, he says, feed on hellebore ; blackberry leaves thrown on a serpent will kill it ; vultures do not pair ; snakes cure blindness with fennel; tortoises eat serpents, and, if poisoned, take marjoram as an antidote ; the cicada sings loudest at mid-day, because at that time the air is purer. He gives a receipt worth trying, though it is to be feared he attributes too much virtue to it; mosquitoes, he tells us, can be kept off by the use of an ointment made of wormwood boiled in THE HEXAEMERON. 167 oil. The Suez Canal, one of the great facts of our own days, is considered by him as an im- possibility, after the failures of Sesostris and Darius ; but no doubt a railroad and an electric telegraph would have been placed in the same category. The work is a strange tissue of facts and fancies, of the literal and the mystical, of science and reli- gion. And yet there is in it nothing ridiculous, and much that is admirable. The power and wisdom of Ciod and the truth of Scripture are upheld in almost every page; and, like a true evangelical teacher, Ambrose finds Christ everywhere. We have seen how Christ was for him "the beginning": he not only begins, but ends with the Saviour ; for his con- clusion runs thus : — " Thanks, then, to our Lord God, who has made a work in which to rest. He made the heaven, I do not read that He rested ; He made the earth, I do not read that He rested ; He made the sun, moon, and stars, I do not read even then that He rested : but I read that He made man, and then He rested, having one whose sins He might forgive. Or, per- haps, there was then a mystical intimation of our Lord's coming Passion, in which it was revealed that Christ was resting in man, appointing for Himself a rest in the body, for the redemption of man, as He Himself said, / laid Me doicn and slept ^ and rose up (li^ainy/or the Lord sustained MeP On Paradise (a.d. 375). — This book, or rather set of sermons, is believed to be the earliest of Ambrose's works. The discourses were delivered 1 68 ST. AMBROSE. and collected in the year immediately following his consecration. There is observable in them a kind of juvenility of style, which is much what we should expect to find in the first sermons of a neophyte bishop of five-and-thirty. He is evidently indebted to Philo, whom, indeed, he mentions by name, remarking that as a Jew he could not com- prehend the spiritual sense of the Scriptures, but was compelled to confine himself to their bearing on morals. While not rejecting the literal sense of the Scripture on which he is commenting, Ambrose per- mits, and inclines to, an interpretation partly mystical, partly allegorical. The garden of Eden is the holy soul ; the river that waters it is Christ. Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Phrath (the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates) represent the four virtues of wisdom, purity, courage, and righteousness, which characterize the four ages of the world ; the period from the Creation to the Deluge being that of wis- dom, that from the Deluge to the Law the age of purity, the time of the Law the period of courage, and that of the Gospel the age of righteousness. The serpent is pleasure. Eve sense, Adam intellect; and the temptation represents to us the depravation of the intellectual man through the allurements of sen- sual gratification. This interpretation the writer adheres to in a letter to his friend Sabinus, some years later. He next proceeds to examine a number of heretical and infidel questions asked and objec- tions raised. The most important is an objection or difficulty which takes this form : " Did God know or not that Adam would disobey ? if not, His wisdom is PARADISE. 169 not infinite; if lie did, He gave a superfluous and useless command." The answer is, God, though He foreknew Adam's transgression, did not lay on him any necessity of transgressing, any more than He laid on Judas a necessity of betraying his Master. Both might have abstained from sin : the fault lies with the transgressor, not the giver of the com- mandment. God is not unrighteous, who permits humanity to be tried. How then, it is asked, since the woman was the cause of man's fall, do we find it said of Adam in his solitude, // is jwt good, while man created male and female is pronounced very good i 'I'he reply is that the woman was to be God's instrument in producing souls whom He might save, and still more in producing the Saviour of those souls; for it is written, she shall be saved in child-bearing, a promise which undoubtedly relates to the Messiah. The allegorical exposition is here taken up again. God walking in the garden is to be understood of His varied modes of presence through the Holy Scriptures, and of His varied dealings with the soul. The (jucstion put to Adam, Where art thou ? inquired not about his place, but his spiritual condition ; " How low has thy sin brought thee, that thou fliest from thy God !" And, lastly, the curse on the ser- l)ent, on thy belly shall thou go, signifies the degraded character of sensuality, and d//st shall thou eat, the fact that it has to do with the earthly and bodily, not with the spirit. The book ends abruptly. It is extremely probable that the last discourses on the Fall have not come down to us. We look in vain for an explanation of .M lyo ST. AMBROSE. the coats of skins, the guard set over the tree of Hfe, and, above all, of the Messianic promise, It shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise His heel. Cain and Abel. — This treatise, or set of dis- courses, belongs also to the year 375, and is, we are told at the outset, a continuation of the book on Paradise. We observe in it the same juvenility of style, and the same, or even greater, indebtedness to Philo. The interpretation is allegorical throughout. Ambrose begins by showing that Cain and Abel represent respectively the worldly-minded and the religious, and are a figure of the Synagogue and the Church. He then digresses, and rambles freely, re- marking discursively on Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Moses (whom he believes to have been translated, not really dead and buried), and Pharaoh. Return- ing to the point, he gives us a somewhat more literal comment. The offerings of Cain and Abel furnish an opportunity of giving advice on the subject of prayer : we should offer to God the best produce of our souls, and offer carefully : " Take care not to speak without thought, for the lips of the thoughtless lead him into evil ; take care not to extol thyself in prayer, for the prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds ; take care not to divulge unwarily the mysteries of the Creed or Lord's Prayer ; knowest thou not how grievous it is to commit sin in prayer, where thou hopest for a remedy ? Surely the Lord has taught by the prophet that this is a grievous curse, saying, Let his prayer he turned into sin." The Hebrew words which we render. If thou doest well, shall thou not be accepted} a?id if thou doest not NOAH AND THE ARK. I71 7tr//, sin Ucih at the door, are turned in the LXX. and Latin into, If thou offer aright, but divide not ari^i^ht, Jhou hast sinned ; be stilt : and the passage is explained thus : Cain offered aright, but he did not divide aright, for he offered not readily and quickly, but in process of time; and of the fruit only, not, like Abel, of the first-fruits. After the murder, we are told to remark, it is not the loving brother, but the voice of thy brotJicr's blood that calls for vengeance : and the fratricide dreads temporal death more than eternal judgment, while God spares him in mercy, to give him space for repentance. Noah and the Ark. — This work appears to have been completed in 379, during the troublous time following on the defeat and death of Valens, when the author had himself just recovered from a dan- gerous illness, and was lamenting the decease of his only brother. Like the foregoing books, it contains evident traces of Philo. It has come to us in an imperfect state : the conclusion is as abrupt as that of the Paradise ; there are at least two palpable lacunar ; and St. Augustine twice quotes a passage from it which is not found in our text. Ambrose in this book distinguishes expressly be- tween the literal and the '' higher" sense ; and in his remarks on the various portions of the narrative is careful to give each, first explaining the literal mean- ing with its practical teaching, then stating the allegorical significance. Of the spiritual sense, strangely enough, we find nothing : of Noah as a type of Christ, and the Ark as prefiguring the Church, there is not a single word. M 2 172. ST. AMBROSE. For the "gopher" or cypress wood, the material of the ark, the LXX. has " squared" planks; the Vulgate renders it "smoothed" planks. St. Ambrose's Latin version follows the Greek ; and he takes occa- sion from the word to institute an extraordinary- comparison between the fabric of the ark and that of the human body. According to the " higher " sense, which he then proceeds to develop, the open- ing of the windows of heaven signifies mental trouble, the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep the perturbation of the body and its senses. The waters prevail fifteen cubits uptaard, to show how all the senses of men are overpowered by the flood of passion ; for (he explains) there are five senses, and each of them is threefold, comprising object, subject, and act (as, for example, sight sees the visible) ; the senses, therefore, are properly represented by thrice five. The clean beasts mean the senses of the wise man, the clean fowls his thoughts ; the raven is vice, which loves the blood of passion and finds a home in it ; the dove is virtue, which cannot rest in the flood, but returns to the soul with the olive-leaf of peace, and does not consent to dwell on the earth till the tide of evil has passed away. As the green herb have I given you all things proves, according to the letter, the lawfulness of eating some kinds of flesh : the higher sense is that irrational passions are to be as subject to the wise man as herbs to the gardener : the promise that there should no more be a flood to destroy all flesh implies that God will re- strain the force of human passion ; the bow in the cloud is His power, which like a bow is now drawn isi ABRAHAM. 173 jadgment, now slackened in mercy. Noah's drunken- ness and nudity are not, as in the Hteral sense, an offence and a warning, but a ground of praise ; for they betoken the withdrawal of the wise from all earthly thoughts and earthly gratifications.^ The only Christian piece of symbolism occurs near the end of the book, where the 350 years of Noah's life after the P'lood are treated of The 300, like the same number in the 318 servants of Abraham (such is the e.xplanation given in the epistle attributed to St. Barnabas and adopted by Ambrose in the book on Abraham), is expressed by the Greek tau^ the sign of the cross, and so signifies Christ ; the 50, the jubilee number, represents the gift of the Spirit ; the 350 years therefore tell us of pardon and grace. The two books on Ahraham, with several others, belong to the year 387, the date of the baptism of Augustine. The idea of the work may possibly have been taken from Philo, but not the language and expressions. In the first book Ambrose proposes to follow the examples of Plato in his " Republic," and Xenophon in his " Cyropa:dia." They drew the pattern of a perfect commonwealth and a perfect man ; he will sketch a wise and religious character. But their patterns were mere fiction ; his will be far superior, being the true history of a real servant of Cod. So he goes through the Scriptural account of Abraham's life, showing the practical lessons to be learnt from it. The typical is not forgotten : Sarah is the Church; as St. Paul shows ; Isaac carrying the ^ In \\\Q. Elijah Ambrose acceplalhc literal sense {sec p. 193). 174 ST. AMBROSE. wood is Christ bearing His cross ; the ass on which Isaac rode signifies the Gentiles ; and in seeing all this Abraham saw Christ ; wherefore the Lord said, Abj'aha??i rejoiced to see My day; and he saiv it, and was glad. We are warned, in reading that God did tempt Ab?'aJiani, not to confound God's temptations with the devil's ; " the devil tempts that he may ruin^ God that He may crown." And we find here and there pieces of Christian counsel : bishops should be hospitable, like Abraham ; Christians ought not ta marry Jews or heathen ; ladies are not to make the earrings and bracelets of Rebekah a plea for excess. in jewellery. The text of the second book is not perfect. In it Ambrose designs not to give the practical, but the allegorical meaning, or " higher sense," of the life of Abraham, just as he did (he says) when writing of Adam and Eve. Abraham is the wise soul. It must quit the " Haran" of earthly passion, and go to "Bethel,'^ God's house, and there call upon His name ; it may be driven by stress of circumstances to " Egypt," temptation and trial, but will soon depart thence '' very rich," retaining all its virtues, and return ta Bethel ; it will not be able to dwell with " Lot," a man half inclined to sin, but will resign to him the earthl5r joys of the " Jordan valley," and receive from God the assurance of " possessing the whole land," since nothing is wanting to the truly wise. When the *' four kings," the sensual pleasures derived from the four elements, overpower the " five kings," or five senses, and take the waverer Lot captive, the wise ISAAC AND THE SOUL. 175 soul, ill the power of the " 318," that is, of the cross of Jesus, will rescue him ; and " Melchizedek," the king of righteousness, will bestow His blessing. The wise soul will take nothing of the earthly spoil, but will, according to God's direction, offer to Him, earth, sea, and air, or body, sense, and speech, under the figure of the divided heifer, goat, and ram, toge- ther with the undivided dove and pigeon, signifying purity and grace ; the " smoking furnace," or be- clouded humanity, which contemplates the offering, will be followed by the "burning lamj)" of heavenly illumination ; and God will promise to the progeny of "Sarah," the Church, the possession of future glory ; the mark of her children on earth will be the " circumcision," or entire purification of the Spirit. To the same year belong Isaac and the Soul, and The Benefit of Death. In the former Ambrose passes on from the wedlock of Isaac and Rebekah to the spiritual union between the soul and its Lord, the Church and her Master, the Spouse and the Bride ; and at once enters upon a series of expositions on texts from the Song of Songs, for which he is much indebted to Origen's commentary on that book. One of the most beautiful of the many sweet passages in the comment is that on chap. v. ver. 2, 3 : — ** / sleep, but my heart waketh. . . . Though thou be asleep, yet if Christ knows the devotion of thy soul, He comes, and knocks at its door, and says, Open to Me, My sister. \Vell is it said, sister, because the marriage of the Word and the soul is spiritual Souls know nothing of wedlock and earthly bonds, but arc as the ani^els in heaven. Open, He says, to 176 ST. AMBROSE. Me, but shut against strangers ; shut against the world. Come not forth to things material, leave not thine own light to seek another's ; material light produces thick darkness, so that the brightness of true glory is not seen. Open, then, to Me, but open not to the enemy ; do not give place to the devil. Open thyself to Me, be not straitened ; open thyself wide, and I will fill thee. And since in going through the world I have found too much trouble and offence, and could not easily obtain a place to rest in, do thou open thyself, that the Son of Man may lay His head in thee^ for He cannot rest save on the humble and meek. The soul hearing the cry, Open to Me, My sister. My love, My dove. My un- defiled, for My head is filled with deiv, that is, with worldly temptations, being suddenly disturbed, and ready to rise as she is bidden, replies, wafting the perfume of aloes and myrrh, the signs of burial, / have put off my coat, how shall I put it on 1 I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them ? She is afraid to rise up again to temptation, lest she come again to crime and sin, and begin to pollute her steps and the progress of her virtues with the traces of earth. Thus does she give proof of the perfection of her virtue, having won such love from Christ, that He comes to her, and knocks at her door, and comes with the Father, and sups with that soul, and she with Him, as John says in the Revelation. For having heard the call, CoJtie with Me from Lebanon, My spouse, with Me from Lebanon, and knowing that in the flesh she cannot be with Christ, but is with Him if she is so in spirit, she conforms herself to His will, so as to be THE nEN'EFlT OK DEATH. IJJ conformed to the image of Christ, and is no more conscious of the weeds of the flesh. . . . I have put off my coafy hcnu shall I put it on i She has put off that coat of skins which Adam and Eve received after their sin, that coat of corruption and passion. H(no shall I put it on ? She docs not seek to put it on, but signifies that it is so cast away that it can be her clothing no mofe. / ha-'c washed my feet, how shall I defile them / that is, I washed my feet when I came forth, and raised myself above that which is earthly : how shall I defile them by returning into the dark prison of passion ?" In The Benefit of Death, Ambrose replies to the question, *' As life is a good, must not its contrary, death, be an evil ? " Of death, he says, there are three kinds: i. Death in sin, which is evil; 2. Death to sin, which is good : 3. The Separation of body and soul, which is dreaded by some because it is called destruction, and because of the pagan horrors con- nected with the next world ; but it is really good, as being a deliverance from sorrow and danger, an end to sin, and the way to a better life. We must wait for it patiently, and practise it, so long as we are here, by self-denial and what is appropriately called morti- fication. He then cjuotes the second book of Esdras (vii. 32, 'i^'T^) which he appears to consider as authentic and canonical, inquiring which was the earliest, Plato or Esdras, and asserting that St. Paul followed Esdras, and not Plato : and indeed, in a letter written in this year to his friend Horontianus, he recommends the study of the book. From the i)assage (quoted he proceeds to lay down that departed souls remain. 178 ST. AMBROSE. some in pain, some in bliss, till the Last Day. Of the bliss of the latter there are seven gradations, for it is written every o?ie in his ozvn order. The first is freedom from temptation, through victory over the flesh ; the second, freedom from care and dread ; the third, the being, through remembrance of obedience, without any fear of the judgment ; the fourth, rest in prevision of coming glory ; the fifth, the 'sense of light and freedom ; the sixth, the shining forth as the sun ; the seventh, the confident anticipation of the vision of God. Then comes the consummation of all, when " we shall go to those who are sitting do\^m with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God, because when bidden to the supper they did not make excuse. We shall go where is the paradise of joy, the garden of Eden, where the Adam who fell among thieves no longer weeps over his wounds, where the thief himself rejoices in his share of the heavenly kingdom, where there are no clouds, no thunder, nO' lightnings, no stormy wind, no darkness, no eventide, where neither summer nor winter will vary the seasons. There will be no frost, no hail, no rain, no need of yonder sun, or moon, or stars, but the brightness of God alone shall shine. For God will be the light of all ; and that true Light which lighteth ez^ery man shall beam on all. AVe shall go where the Lord Jesus has prepared mansions for His servants, that where He is we may be also. For so hath He willed it. Hear Him telling what those mansions are : /;/ My Father^ s house are many mansions ; and what His will is : / will come again, saith He, and receive you unto My self y that zuhere I am there ye may be also'^ retreat from the world. 1 79 Retreat from the World, or, Jacob in Padan- ARAM, belongs also to the year 3S7, and, like many other works of Ambrose, owes not a little to Piiilo. Its object is, as the title shows, to point out the advan- tage of retirement from the pursuit of worldly things, and the withdrawal of the soul from the earth, as a sort of representation or practice of death while the body still remains in the world. Ambrose appeals to the appointment of the six cities of refuge as teaching us the need of such withdrawal ; and, it must be added, entirely fails to make out his point The cities where the accidental homicide was to be sheltered from the avenger of blood cannot be made to tell us anything about the duty of being unworldly. With more propriety does he allege the advice of the parents of Jacob, that he should flee from his brother to Padan-aram ; though even here one fails to see how Jacob in Laban's house, though certainly in re- tirement from his home, could be considered as an instance of shrinking from the world. Nor does St. Paul, let down in a basket from the window in Damas- cus, and flying from Aretas, teach us, as Ambrose says, a lesson o{ JIis;/it from the world's intemperance and impurity. The ejaculation of David, O that I had wings like a dove^ has reference rather to escape from enemies than from worldliness ; and can only by a certain violence be made to api)ly, as Ambrose makes it aj)ply, to the subject of his discourse. Elijah, Elisha, St. John the Baptist, Lot in his retreat from Sodom, and Susanna in her privacy, are far more to the purpose ; he quotes them, but unfortu- nately does not dwell on them. On the whole, this £60 ST. AMBROSE. book ; though eminently de\x>ut, and not inelegant in its language, is the poorest and weakest of the saint's writings^ Jacob and the Blessed Life. These two books are also of the year 3S7. In the first, Ambrose shows that the life of virtue is the truly blessed life : it is attained by self-restraint on the part of men, wisdom, and discipline, aided and fostered by the grace of Christ. To Him we must cling, whatever may betide us; for outward troubles do not interfere with the blessed life in Him. In the second book we are shown how Jacob (and others), though under trial, enjoyed this blessed life. This is brought out in a comment, partly moral, chiefly mystical, on the various points in the life of Jacob. Esau, we learn, represents the S\Tiagogue, Jacob the Church ; the goodly raiment of Esau given to Jacob is the privileges forfeited by the Tews and ^ven to the Church. The singular deWce of the rods in the sheepfold is a preaching of the Trinity : for the green poplar, hazel, and chestnut are in the LXX. storax, walnut, and plane ; and of these storax, which jields incense, signifies the Father, to whom incense is offered ; walnut, of which Aaron's rod was made (so the LXX. has it, instead of ''almond'), betokens the priest- hood of the Son; and the plane-tree, on which vines are trained (though Horace says the reverse ), is the s}-mbol of the Holy Spirit. After Jacob's departure, Laban, whose name means " white,"* for Safa/i is transformed into an angel of light, demands his propert}- of Jacob, and receives nothing, for the prince of this norld £ameih, and hath nothing in Me, Here Jacob is a JJIOOB. JOSEPH. l8l type not of the Chmcfa, but of Christ ; and so he is in the interpretatioD of his mairiage. Leah, die tender-eyed, is the pmblind Law, Rachd the Chmdi of the Gospel Both belong to the Loid; but He lored Rachel first and best Lastly, Jaoob is the likeness of dse human soul : the vrestling widi God is striving to become like Him, the toodi of the th^^ tnfjw^ the impoTtiDg the knovled^ of Christ cmdfied, aiKl so, as A^ halted mptm kit th^k, the am rose upon him, that is, Dirine illnminjli on came by the teaching of the crossw Blesed thns in his Hfe, the patriarch vas also blessed in his death, when he uttered the prophetic benedictions : so, too, was Joseph in prison, Isaiah in martvTdom, Jeremiah in the dungeon, Daniel in the lions' den, and the mother of the Maocabees» when she and her sons soffered for the troth's sake. This last aDnskn sends the author off into an aocxxmt of the sofiering of tfas Maccabees, with a warm pane- gyric on their firmness mider the cmd petsecntiaa of the triant Antiodms, with which the book uke of the hlindnrss of the Jews, who reacted tibeir Lord. He is sent to sedL hs bieUu en, is hated 152 ST. AMBROSE. by them, they seek to slay him, and finally hand him over to the heathen : just so it was with Christ. The coat stripped off him is the flesh of Christ, and this alone was torn and stained with blood j the Deity of Christ could not suffer. Brought down into Egypt^ Joseph was a type of the Lord, who came down to sinful men. Here the stream of Evangelical interpretation is interrupted. We expect to hear how Joseph in his temptation was a figure of our Lord in His, and how in descending into the prison and in coming out of it he foreshowed the burial and resurrection of Jesus. But we find none of this ; only a tirade against women and courtiers. Evidently Ambrose had not forgotten his disputes wdth Justina and the usher Calligonus. From the advance of Joseph to dignity the thread is taken up again. His ring, and vesture, and chariot, signify the priesthood, wisdom, and dignity of Jesus ; his Egyptian wife is the figure of the Gentile Church; the resort of all to him for food shows how all must come to Jesus for the food of their souls. And so his brethren came to him without Benjamin at first, as the Apostles came to Christ without St. Paul, of whom Benjamin is the representative ; as Benjamin was kept in his old home, so St. Paul was kept from Christ by the Law. But at last Benjamin is permitted to go, and Reuben the Law, and Judah the Gospel, are sureties for him. The cup in the sack is the special gifts which St. Paul enjoyed : " He gives not all things to all men. Corn is given to many, the cup to one. ... It is not every one, but the prophet THE r.LESSIXCS OF THE PATRIARCHS. 1 83 only, wlio says, 1 7inll receive the cup of salvation^ and call on the name of the Lord.'^ Then Joseph causes all men to go out from before him, for Christ was sent to the house of Israel only, and then embraces Benjamin, as Christ revealed Himself to St. Paul, and embraced him with the arms of His mercy. Pharaoh is glad, that is, the Gentile Church rejoices over the redemption of the Jews ; and finally, Jacob is brought by his sons from starving Canaan to Joseph and abundance, even as God's people are brought from the trammels of the Law into the abundant grace of the Church of Christ. The history of Joseph is naturally followed by the BLESSINGS OF THE PATRIARCHS, an exposition almost exclusively Messianic of the benedictions in chapter xlix. of Genesis. As Ambrose renders from the LXX. version, his text differs largely from the Vulgate, Latin, and from ours. The blessing, or rather censure, of Reuben does not, as the Jews erroneously imagine, refer to the sin he had committed ; the reference is not to the past, but to the future. It foretells the insults and death of Christ ; and the "couch" is the Cross, on which saints rest, but which was " defiled " when Christ's body was nailed on it by the Jews. Similarly the censure of Simeon and Levi is prophetic. It does not refer to their dealings with the Shechemites, which were excusable if not praiseworthy, or Moses would not have uttered a blessing on Levi, to be fulfilled in the fact that our Lord was connected with that tribe, as we gather from the priestly names Levi and Nathan in His genealogy as given by St. Luke. It was fulfilled 184 ST. AMBROSE. when the priests and scribes took counsel against Jesus and put Him to death, for Simeon was the tribe of scribes, and Levi that of priests. Judah, the lio7i's whelps betokens the Son of God. Fro7n the prey is rendered by the LXX. and Ambrose, " from the rod," an expression which is referred to the rod out of the stem of Jesse. He stooped doicni, ivho shall raise him up ? foretells the burial of Christ, and His resurrection through His own power, not another's. Shilo is rendered in LXX. (according to the reading which Ambrose adopts), " he for whom it is re- served " ; and this is interpreted of Christ, for Whom the Church is gathered together and reserved. The ass bound to the vine represents the Gentile Church bound to the True Vine ; the garments are the Manhood washed in wine^ that is, filled with the spirit and purified, and the clothes washed in the blood of grapes^ are the nations cleansed by the blood of Him who hung like a grape on the cross. The eyes glad (a. v. red) with wine, are prophets who see visions by the Spirit ; the teeth whiter than (a. v. white with) milk, are Apostles, who, cleansed and whitened by grace, feed first themselves and then others on milk as a preparation for stronger food ; as it is said, / have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it. Zabulon is the Church, a haven from the storms of heresy, and the sea of unbelief; and his border shall be unto Zidon, that is, she receives sinners and Gentiles. Issachar "desired the good, resting between the lots"; such is the LXX. rendering of the strong ass crouching down between two burdens^ and prefigures Him Who THE r.LESSINGS OF THK PATRIARCHS. 1S5 chose the good, and rested between the Old and New Testaments. He saw tJic latid^ that is, the nations of the earth, that it was pleasant, for by grace they should bring forth good works in abundance ; and He bcnved His shoulder to bear the cross and the sins of men. Dan is antichrist, the judge and the tyrant. But he will not prevail over God's chosen ; the serpent bit the heel of Christ, so that He fell ; but He fell not on His face, He fell backward, and so still looked up to God; and even thus His people will still wait for the Lord's salvation. In his version of the blessing of Gad, Ambrose's Greek halts. The word we render "troop" is in the LXX. "a pirate-crew,'' cor- rectly enough. Misled bya similarity of words, Ambrose translates the passage " temptation tempted him, and he himself tempted them forthwith " ; and under- stands it of the treacherous (questions asked of Christ, and the questions which He put in reply. Asher is of course the Bread of Life, and the royal dainties he yields are the Holy Eucharist. The Hebrew word for "hind" also means "the bough of an oak"; and the blessing of Naphthali in the LXX. runs " a bough at liberty, yielding beauty in its produce." Ambrose makes it "a vine." In the discourses on Jacob, the vine is Christ ; here he considers the " vine at liberty" to be the people of God, a branch of the True Vine, showing growth in grace. Joseph, both in the sermons on Jacob and in these, is a type of Christ. The fruitful l>ouj>^h is with Ambrose " son to be ennobled," and over tlie wall, " return to me," referring plainly, he says, to Christ's ascension and return to the Father ; the blessings prevailing unto N 1 86 ST. AMBROSE. the utmost hound of the everlasting hills are His head- ship over all. Benjamin, as in the previous book, is a type of St. Paul. He (in Ambrose's version) " shall eat still in the morning, and towards evening distribute meat to princes " ; for St. Paul was a wolf when he perse- cuted, but as Apostle of the Gentiles distributed spiritual food to princes, as to Sergius Paulus and Publius of I^Ialta. The Defence of the Prophet David (384) is another set of Scriptural expositions. They were de- livered to meet the difficulty felt and expressed by some in seeing a man of God in an adulterer and murderer. Ambrose explains that God allows His saints to show weakness, in order that they, as St. Paul says, may not be exalted above measure^ and that we, seeing them to be of like infirmity with ourselves, may not think it hopeless to imitate them. David, however, is to be highly commended, because with all the temptations of rank and power surrounding him, he only fell once. The goodness of his character is seen in his treatment of Saul, Absalom, Shimei ; in his choice of the punishment for his pride in num- bering the people ; in his refusal of the water of the well of Bethlehem, — though therein is a mystery, for he really wanted not material water, but the precious blood of Jesus, who was born at Bethlehem. After this exordium begins a short " Enarration" on the fifty-first Psalm, the expression of David's peni- tence \ and, as such, his own defence of himself It has much evangelic teaching in it : Wash nie, speaks to the Christian of holy baptism ; I acktiowledge my TOBIAS. 1S7 transgressions J of Christian penitence ; Thou shall open viy It'pSy of forgiveness; the sacrifices of righlcoiisncss^ of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Complaint of Job and David might beentitled. On the Miser}' of Man. The discourses comprised in these four books belong most Hkely to the sad year 383, when famine and sword afflicted the Empire, and Church and State ahke were thrown into mourning by the death of Gratian. Ambrose shows, in a running comment on portions of the book of Job and of the Psalter, how each in his own way bewails the \\Tetchedness of men ; Job sternly and vehemently, David more gently, as befits the hart panting after the waterbrooks, the type of Christ. Job laments our weakness and ignorance, our continual trials and temptations, the fears that beset us. David in the Psalms speaks of sorrow and tears, and complains how God appears to forsake us, and the righteous seems to be confounded with the wicked. Both unite in surprise at the prosperity of the ungodly. The true consolation is to be found in thoughts of the providence of God, and in the possession of Christ. The ungodly may prosper for the present, but they lose their future. The discourses on Tobias (377), Elijah and Fast- ing (390), and Naboth the Jezreelite (395), pertain rather to the pastor than the theologian. They are neither expositions of Scripture nor statements of doctrine, but strong protests against the common and fiishionable vices of the day. Those on Tobias are among Ambrose's earlier sermons. Tliey are directed against the money-lender. This personage N 2 l88 ST. AMBROSE. has always been a difficulty ; he is a trouble to us now in India, and indeed is known and dreaded all over the East, while the West is far from being in- sensible of his presence. Nor was he less of a trouble in earlier times, and among the Romans. The Twelve Tables in B.C. 450 tried to meet the evil by fixing the legal maximum rate of interest at unciariumfeniis, one-twelfth of the capital per year of ten months, or, as we should express it, 10 per cent, per annum. The Lex Genucia in 341 prohibited the taking of interest entirely ; but it was impossible to enforce the law, and the maximum legal rate was eventually fixed at cenfestmce, or 12 per cent, which arrangement continued till the time of Justinian, who altered the rate to 6 per cent. But extortionate and illegal demands were not rare : Tacitus sighs over the evil of usury, and Horace alludes to 60 per cent, paid in advance. In the Christian Church there always was a feeling against lending money on interest, and Ambrose denounces it. It has been imagined that he did not object to all interest, but only to an illegal and enormous rate ; but he quotes too distinctly the texts hath not given his money upon iisury, and lends, hoping for nothing again, to allow us to think that he would tolerate usury even in the most modest form. What he would have permitted in our days, with our national debts and our regular systems of banking and credit, is another question. The fair dealing of Tobit, who demanded no interest from Gabael on the money deposited with him, and almost apologized for asking for the principal, sup- plies the preacher with a text for a bitter invective USURY. 189 against the evil of money-lending. He points his discourse here and there with a play on words; fenus, interest, is compared with fa'num^ hay, and aiiOy the dicer, with ieo, the lion ; and he does not hesitate to compare the usurer with Judas and the devil. We have a graphic description of the tricks practised by the man of money in order to get the prey into his claws. *' I shall have to break up my family plate to accommodate you ; it will be a great loss to me; what amount of interest will compensate for the loss of the workmanship ? But I will do it for you as a friend, and when you pay me I can have the plate re-made. Let me have the interest on the I St of the month regularly, and I will not i)ress for the principal, if you cannot make it up." Then we have the swarm of harpies that crowd about the man who has borrowed money ; it soon runs away, for the perfumer, and spice-dealer, and poulterer, and fishmonger, and wine-merchant, are all at him; he lives splendidly, till at last the money-lender makes his call, and then he is in sad trouble ; he sells his fine clothes and his wife her jewels for half their value, to pay the interest only. Again, we are sho>vn the usurer at the side of a young man of fortune, just come into his property: "a capital estate for sale, an admirable investment — I can find the i)urchase- money, and it is at your service." The interest is allowed to accumulate, and is added to the principal, till the debtor is at the creditor's mercy, and passes his days and nights in misery-, trembling at every knock. And so at last children have been sold to pay their father's debts, and the rites of burial have 190 ST. AMBROSE. been refused to persons who died unable to pay. In one of these cases, Ambrose tells us, he ordered the funeral procession to go and stop in the front of the creditor's house till he was shamed into giving way. Then the money-lender watches gamblers, incites them to continue their play, and volunteers to lend money when needed ; and thus even Huns, though subject to no one else, have been obliged to succumb to him. The borrower, however, is not without blame ; he should not accept a loan if he has no prospect of being able to pay; and it is absurd to swallow the bait when the hook is so plainly to be seen ; even a fish would not be so foolish. It may be objected, why does the bishop go out of his way to attack an old-established cus- tom ? this money-lending and usury-taking is no new fashion. "No more is sin," is the reply, "it is the oldest of fashions ; but this is no plea in its favour." On the whole, we had better follow the example of Tobit : the only usury that is not MTong is spiritual profit ; the best interest is to be looked for hereafter, not here. The sermons on Elijah and Fasting deal with the luxury, and especially the drunkenness, of the day. Ambrose is an ascetic, and a strict temperance man ; he admits, however, the lawfulness of a moderate use of wine. " God knew," he says, speaking of the vine in the Hexaemeron, "that wine temperately drunk procured health and increased discretion, ^ . . but when immoderately taken was the cause of crime. . . . Abundance of corn, wine, and ©il given us by the Lord from the dew of heaven is ELIJAH AND FASTING. I9I reckoned among the choicest blessings." And, in the Abraham^ *' so drink as not to be overtaken." But the picture that he draws in these discourses of the habits of his day with regard to into.xicating liquor is very darkly shaded We feel a sort of grim comfort in learning that things are no worse in this respect now among ourselves than they were at Milan fifteen centuries ago. He describes men without a shirt to their backs, or a halfpenny to pay for the day's expenses, let alone the next day's, sitting in front of the taverns, and chattering grandly on poli- tics, or what not, with an occasional fight, while they drink out a week's earnings ; he takes us to the officers' mess, where, decked out with their gilded belts, Babylonian sashes, and golden gorgets, and with a grand display of plate on the table, they drink before dinner, drink at dinner, and after dinner drink heavily against one another — in all such parties to refuse to drink the Emi)eror's health is considered a mark of disaffection. At last, after bragging loudly of their martial exploits, they are hoisted up on their horses by their grinning attendants, only to roll off again, or fall dead drunk on the floor, and are carried home on their shields. Others have a way of swilling large bumpers at a draught ; to take breath is an offence, and the offender must pay forfeit. Nor is the evil confined to men ; women may be seen in the streets behaving indecorously under the influence of licjuor, to the amusement of dissipated young men and their own deep disgrace. The results are profli- gacy, disease, insanity — the preacher describes, in- deed, some of the symptoms oi delirium tremens — and 192 ST. AMBROSE. poverty also ; but for intemperance there would be no slavery. Gluttony and luxurious living, too, are despicable ; one does not like to think of the alter- cations between the master and his cook about the price of fish, foie gras, and pheasants, and the hard work, and hard beatings besides, in the kitchen which attend upon a great dinner. Denunciations of luxurious living, and the extrava- gance which is its companion, are not confined to these discourses. We hear in the Cain and Abel of the saloon with its sculptured walls, of the marble floor covered with slopped perfumes and spilt wine, with fish-bones and faded flowers ; of the laughter, plaudits, and general din of the guests : in the Tobias of the absinthe bitters and the rare desserts : in the Hexaemeron of fowls stuffed with oysters, gilded chandeHers, carefully-tended warming apparatus, ivory couches, droves of slaves : in the Naboth of the money frittered away on silk and jewels : in the 7wtes. on St. LuJze (vii. 25) of the effeminate gentlemen who must needs dress in silk, because woollen was so heavy. Fasting and sobriety, he proceeds to say, are best for the health both of soul and body ; no one ever hurt himself by fasting. The first law given to man, Thou shaltnot eat of it, recommended fasting (Ambrose says nothing of the freely eat of the previous verse), and its violation was man's ruin. Abstinence is recommended to us in many ways. Animals set us an example ; the very elephants do not drink too much ; they do occasionally imbibe immense quanti- ties of water, but this is only to discharge it from NABOTH THE JEZREELITE. 1 93 their trunks on some offending tradesman.' Noah's one offence of drunkenness was committed in ignor- ance, and is a warning to us ; Lot and Haman warn us also ; and Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, Judith, John the Baptist, tell us of the s})iritual blessings of temperance. The sermons finish in a manner we are scarcely prepared for. The preacher launches out into a denunciation of commerce, as ministering to luxury. " God made the sea, not to be sailed upon, but because of the beauty of the element. ... It is tossed with storms, you ought therefore to dread it, not to use it." He ends with an earnest exhortation to the unbaptized no longer to delay their reception of the Sacrament. Nahoth the Jezreelite is the title of Ambrose's last sermons, for the discourses on the 44th Psalm were left unfinished. They contain an eloquent and withering denunciation of the rich who neglect the poor. Some squander their money on self-indulgence, dress, and wine, and dainties. Others are misers, sa stingy that one of them, when served with an egg,, complained bitterly that a fowl had been killed. These heaj) uj) their corn year after year till their very bams are bursting with the food kei)t back from sale till the price is higher. Meanwhile the poor, even those engaged in ministering to luxury, are stan'ing^ One, after many agonies, sells his children for bread,, and struggles with himself which he sliall let go first; ' It is amusing to fin«l this traditional Indian story of the elephant's revenge as early as the fourth ccntur)*. T94 ST. AMBROSE. another prefers suicide to perishing with hunger ; and only hesitates which mode of death he shall prefer. And the unfeeling rich come to church all the while, and fast too, but for their own advantage only, with- out a thought of their poorer brethren. This is not the true way of storing or of being rich. " If thou wilt be rich, be poor unto the world, that thou mayest be rich unto God. He that is rich in faith, in sim- plicity, in mercy, in wisdom, in knowledge, he is rich unto God. There are those who in poverty have abundance, and those who in the midst of riches are in want. The poor have abundance, whose deep povei'ty abounded unto the riches of their liberality: rich men have lacked and hungered." And again, "/ have no room where to bestow my fruits. You have the means of making room, never fear. I take you at your own word. You have much goods laid up for 7?iany years^ you may have abundance both for your- self and for others. You enjoy the general good harvest, v^hy pull down your bams ? I will show you where you may better bestow your corn, where you may fence it in well, so that thieves may not be able to take it away. Enclose it in the heart of the poor, where no weevil can devour it, no lapse of time damage it. You have garners, the laps of the poor : you have garners, the houses of widows : you have garners, the mouths of infants, so that it may be said to you, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. These are garners which last for ever, these are barns which no future plenty can require you to pull down. ... Be a spiritual hus- RICH AND POOR. 1 95 "bandman : sow wliat will bring you gain. It is good to sow in widows' hearts. If the earth renders you fruits more plentiful than it received, how much more will the recompense of mercy render to you many tiuKs what you have bestowed ! '* 196 ST. AMBROSE. CHAPTER XIX. AMBROSE AS A PASTOR. The influence which Ambrose seems from the first to have acquired and exercised over all that came in contact with him would show him, had we no other proof of it, to have been no ordinary man. It was not because he was a safe man for a judicious com- promise, but because of his sterling and recognised value, that he was elevated from the magistrate's bench to the episcopate by the well-nigh unanimous voice of a diocese. He must have been singularly gentle and courteous, for both the Valentinians, Gratian, and Theodosius, loved him ; but there must have been something about him beyond mere gentle- ness and courtesy, for Valens and Justina were afraid of him, while they hated him, and all his compro- vincial bishops and brother metropolitans looked up to and respected him, even if they did not entirely agree with him. The great Augustine, we know, venerated him. The Persian nobles who visited him at the time of the penitence of Theodosius were full of admiration when they left him. AVhether the mosaic said to represent him is a real likeness or not is uncertain, but it shows just that mixture of firmness and gentleness which we should expect in the features of the young Consular elevated by his own great merits^ AMBROSE AS A PASTOR. 197 and the grand Bishop, the master-mind in his own day of the Western Church. And we read much about him to the same effect. He was firm enough with Palladius and Auxentius : he had, as we have scon, the moral courage to break up the Church plate in order to raise money for the ransom of captives taken in the civil wars,' and to brave all the Arians' comments on the proceeding, with all their ferocious obloijuy ; but still, as we have also seen, his biographer tells us " he was one of those who rejoice 7i'ith them t/iat do rejoice^ and weep with them that weep.'' The secrets of confidential intercourse do not seem in those days to have been very closely guarded, for we arc further told " he uttered to none the causes of the offences which any one confessed to him, save only to God, with Whom he interceded, leaving a good example to priests who should come after him, that they should be intercessors with God, rather than accusers before men." And yet we fail to trace the same character in those of his letters which have come down to us. They are kindly, but stiff in the extreme. They are principally concerned with Scripture and theology ; the expositions they contain are mostly of the mystical kind, often very far-fetched. The coldness remarkable in his poetry shows itself in his correspondence. He writes to his sister, and always with the coldest respect, styling her " your holiness"; he condoles with Faustinus on the death of his sister in a frigid imitation of Sulpicius's letter to Cicero on the death of Tullia ; he encourages some clergy who • Sie page 68. 198 ST. AMBROSE. had got disheartened under difficulties and were thinking of throwing up their orders ; gives Vigilius advice on his consecration ; expresses his profound respect for Simplician, and discusses some theological questions for him ; and thanks Felix, bishop of Como, for a present of some remarkably fine truffles, all in the same correct but chilly strain. The three books On the Duties of Ministers (391) may be considered as a pastoral work, although they are by no means intended for the ministers of the Church alone. They contain a system of Christian ethics, framed, Ambrose himself tells us, on the model of Cicero's well-known three books, "On Duties," and addressed to his sons in the faith, just as Cicero's work was addressed to Marcus, his son. Duties, says Cicero, are concerned with virtue (honestum) and utility (utile). The first book must therefore discuss virtue, the second utility, and the third must compare the two together, and different degrees of the two with one another. The Christian pastor and moralist follows on the same lines, but he introduces a new element, unknown to, or disregarded by, Panastius and his Roman disciple — the future life. All good, and all utiHty, must be ultimately measured by reference to God and eternity. After a preface, some- what in the Ciceronian style, he proceeds to discuss, in the first book, the virtues of mercy and compassion, modesty, decorum, freedom from anger, moderation ; and after a somewhat digressive examination of these, during which he diverges to the subjects of Divine Providence, omniscience, and justice, and to the right way of managing the voice and gestures, of conversing, THE DUTIES OF MINISTERS. 199 preachincT, and arguing, he proceeds to a more set treatment of four heads of the virtuous. These he specifies as — i. Wisdom or prudence, the origin of the other three ; 2. Justice, the safeguard to society, to be combined with benevolence, both active and passive ; 3. Courage, both passive, in the form of calmness and endurance, and active, in the form of warHke braver)-, as exhibited in the Maccabees ; 4. Self-restraint, or temperance. In the discussion are inserted some hints to Le- vites, who hold the " mifiistcriiim " (deacons), and to those who have received " sacerdotium,'^ or priesthood, a term which includes the presbyterate and episco- pate. They are to take care and not to go to too many- convivial parties, lest they have to listen to, and per- haps join in, something objectionable ; they are not to make too many jokes, nor to modulate their voices like actors ; the young deacons are never to visit ladies except in the company of a priest or bishop. The marriage of clergy is not highly approved, but is permitted, for Ambrose complains that whereas sons generally elected their father's profession in secular callings, especially the military, the sons of clergy rarely took to the ministry. But it is distinctly laid down that a second marriage is unlawful to a cleric, and is a bar to holy orders, even if contracted before baptism. In the second book Ambrose, like Cicero, treats of the useful, or to use another word, of happiness. This consists in knowledge of Ciod and freedom from sin, tjuite irrespective of external circumstances of abundance or need ; for many things which are 200 ST. AMBROSE. held to be good are really hindrances to the Chris- tian. Thus utility coincides with virtue ; and the conditions of utility are love and confidence. For inspiring the latter we need wisdom and justice; love is promoted by a judicious liberality shown in acts of kindness, such as redeeming prisoners, and giving dowries to poor orphan girls. But liberality must not be injudicious. Here we have some hints which would almost suit almsgivers and charity- organizers among ourselves. " A sober measure must be observed, especially by priests, so as to dis- pense not in proportion to the loudness of the appeal, but the justice of the case ; for in no other business is there such greediness in asking. Sturdy fellows, who have no plea but their vagabondism, come and expect to run away with all the money intended for the relief of the poor ; and they are not satisfied with a trifle -, they ask for more, making their clothes an argument in favour of their request, or trying to get their receipts increased by some pretence about their birthday. . . . Many pretend they are in debt ; the truth should be looked into. Others complain that they have been sufferers by robbery ; the injury must be proved, or their person known, that they may be relieved more freely." Remember that Joseph did not give away corn, he sold it, and did far more good by adopting that course. To these hints are added, as in the previous book, some pieces of advice to clergy. They should value good society ; if they seek ecclesiastical honours, they should do so in the right way, not by favouring the rich, but by showing kindness to the poor ; and, above all things. THE DUTIES OF MINISTERS. 20I they should avoid avarice ; they should keep their churches in good order, and be liberal to all. One of their great duties is to preserve intact the deposits of widows, after the example of the Bishop of Pavia. This prelate had in his custody some money belong- ing to a widow, which was claimed under an im- perial warrant. By Ambrose's advice, he absolutely refused to give it up ; and so stoutly did he defend the deposit that he at last got his own way, and saved the old lady's property. The third book declares comparison between virtue and utility to be impossible, because in Christian morals, as has been before laid down, the good and the useful are the same. The rule where duties appear to conflict is not to seek one's own. If the question be put, as it is by Cicero from Hecato, whether in a shipwreck a drowning wise man may take away a plank from a fool, the answer is (like Hecato's), certainly not ; we must think of others, not of ourselves. Following his model, Ambrose in this book cites a number of cases of adherence to, or violation of, duty. Some of them are classical, as that of the faithful friends Damon and Pytheas, the Pythagoreans, and the way in which Pythius the Sicilian swindled Canius in the sale of an estate, as told by Cicero himself. Some of them are Scriptural or apocryphal ; and it is curious to find the singular tale of the sacred fire hidden by the priests at the Captivity, and recovered by Nehemiah (the priest, Ambrose calls him), as related in the 2nd book of Maccabees, alleged as an instance of fidelity, and also as containing a ty])c of holy baptism. Again we have advice to the clergy. o 202 ST. AMBROSE. They must not think too much of gain ; they must not hunt for legacies, nor mix themselves up with lawsuits about money ; and vows which cannot be fulfilled without doing wrong, like Herod's and Jephthah's, are not to be adhered to. (We may remark that Ambrose is of opinion that Jephthah's daughter was actually put to death.) And, to con- clude, in dealing with our friends we must be frank with them, ready to bear much for them and from them, for friendship is a holy thing ; but we must not do wrong for a friend's sake, any more than for our own. The two books On Penitence, assigned to the year 384, may, though partly of a theological character, most correctly be placed under the head of pastoral writings. The first book is almost entirely devoted to combating the error of the Novatians, the Ply- mouth Brethren of the 3rd and 4th centuries, who denied the Church's power of granting absolution, and refused communion to all who had been guilty of post-baptismal sin. Their founder, Novatian, opposed the election of Cornelius as successor to Fabian, Bishop of Rome, in 250, on the ground of inclination to undue laxity of discipHne; and his followers got (Eusebius says, took) the name of Kathari, or Puritans. But we meet with hints that Novatian's character was not irreproachable; his rival, Cornelius, describes him as an unprincipled fellow ; and Ambrose says his schism was not the result of offended purity so much as of mortification at not being himself elected bishop. The sect, as is usual with sects, split into two parties one allowing NOVATIANISM. 203 absolution to lesser sins, the other, with Novatian himself, rejecting it entirely. Though it does not clearly ai)pear that the Novatians limited in set terms the mercy of God, and affirmed the necessary perdi- tion of all who sinned after baptism, yet they seem to have expressed themselves as if there were but little hope for the guilty. " Those whom Christ intercedes for, Novatian accuses. Those whom Christ has redeemed unto salvation, Novatian con- demns unto death. To those to whom Christ says, Take My yoke tipon you, a?id learn of Me, for I am meek, Novatian says, ' I am ruthless.' On those to whom Christ says. Ye shall find rest unto your souls^ for My yoke is easy and My burden is light, Novatian lays a heavy burden, and a hard yoke." Ambrose shows that their opinion is opposed to all the pas- sages of Scripture which speak of God's mercy and Christ's death for man. They argued, as extreme Calvinists now argue, that to adopt any opinion but theirs was to make God changeable ; to which he replies that God has declared to us that He is mer- ciful ; for the Lord luill not cast off for ever. Their objection that man cannot be the instrument of for- giveness, an objection against absolution not alto- gether unknown in our own day, is simply answered by pointing out that, according to their own i)ractice, ba])tism, which conveyed remission of sin, and the laying of hands on the sick, which brought bodily health, were ministered by men. "To deliver to Satan," an expression of St. Paul, does not mean, as the Novatians seemed to think, the abandonment of sinners, but their chastisement by the operation of o 2 204 ST. AMBROSE. the evil one, as Job was by God's permission troubled and afflicted by him. And the same Apostle con- trasts the binding and loosing powers of the Church in his question, Shall I come unto you with a rod, or 171 love and in the spi7-it of 7?ieek7iess ? The rod is ex- communication, the spirit of meekness is restitution to the sacraments, with a reference, probably, to the saving spiritual effect of Christian discipline. In the second book the subject is treated generally, and without express reference to Novatian error. The passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews, // is im- possible to renew the7n again unto repentance, cannot be meant by St. Paul to overthrow his own teaching : he sent absolution to the excommunicated Corinthian on his penitence, and therefore cannot have denied the possibiHty of such forgiveness. The real meaning of the text is that baptism cannot be repeated. The only sin that cannot be forgiven is blasphemy against the Spirit, that is, heresy and schism and guilt obstinately persevered in. Even Simon Magus had a place of repentance proffered him ; even Judas Iscariot might have obtained pardon, if he had offered his penitence not to Jews, but to Christ. Then Ambrose earnestly exhorts sinners to penitence, and tears, and self-accusation, and avowal of their errors ; not forgetting, as we know was his wont, to identify himself with his penitents. " Call then," he says (he has been speaking of the raising of Lazarus), " Thy servant forth. Though bound with the chains of my sins, my feet tied, and my hands fastened, and already buried with dead thoughts and works, at Thy call I shall come forth free, and be found one of PENITENXE, VIRGINITY. 205 those that sit at meat at Thy feast, and Thy house shall be filled with precious ointment, if Thou keep him whom Thou hast deigned to redeem. For it will be said, See how he, not nurtured in the Church's bosom, not trained from boyhood, but hurried from the tribunal, snatched from the vanities of this world, made familiar with the chorister's hymn instead of the court-crier's voice, remains in the priesthood, not by his own goodness, but by the grace of Christ, and sits down with the guests at the heavenly table. Preserve, O Lord, that gift of Thine which Thou didst bestow on me even though I fled from it. For I knew I was not worthy to be called a bishop, because I had given myself to this world ; but by Thy grace I am what I am." As a theologian Ambrose was, we have seen, strenuous and indefatigable in teaching and defending the Deity of the Son and the Spirit. As a pastor he was equally strenuous and equally indefatigable in urging Christians, and Christian maidens especially, to abstain from marriage. He has left no less than six books of discourses preached on the subject, eloquent, earnest, almost fanatical ; of the three de- grees of chastity, wedlock as exemplified in Susanna, widowhood in Anna, virginity in the Blessed Virgin, he holds up the third as the only real and glorious virtue. Though he qualifies his words here and there with a faint admission that marriage is not unlawful, not a crime, and that he must not be held to dissuade marriage, he expresses himself so strongly on the evils of wedlock and the blessings of celibacy, that we are not at all surprised at being told that the girls 206 ST. AMBROSE. of North Italy took the vows in troops, and that ladies actually locked up their daughters to prevent their going to hear him preach. There were at this time a number of monasteries for men, but few convents for women ; we read of one at Bologna, but there seems to have been none in Milan. Those who took the vow of perpetual virginity received consecra- tion at the hand of the bishop, and put on a veil, called maforte, but continued to live at home. They were required to dress and live plainly, to spend much time in prayer and the recitation of the Psalter, and to avoid visiting and entertainments. So intense was Ambrose's admiration of this unmarried life in women, that he mentions with approval the case of St. Pelagia of Antioch, a girl of fifteen, who, with her mother and sisters, committed deliberate suicide rather than comply with the wishes of those who desired them to accept husbands ; and quotes with some satisfaction what we should consider an unfilial and unfeeling reply on the part of a young lady, who being asked at her consecration whether she thought her father, if he had been living, would have approved of her remain- ing unmarried, answered, " Perhaps he was removed by death in order that there might be no bar to my carrying out my wishes." " Very religious," observes Ambrose, "though not quite so affectionate." He began his teaching on celibacy very early. The three books On Virgins, inscribed to his sister Marcellina, and one On Widows, belong to the year 377. " A priest of three years' standing," is the term he applies to himself; "even my fig-tree," he says, " will bear fruit after three years." VIRGINITY. 207 The Discourses On Virgins, and the one book On ViGiNiTY (378), all take the same line: the unmarried is the angelic life ; impurity brought down angels to earth (for so, we have already seen, Ambrose inter- prets Gen. vi. 2), and purity raises earthly maidens to heaven : the Song of Songs shows that women should be wedded to Christ only ; and we have numberless examples of the beauty of virginity : St. Agnes, the vir- gin martyr of twelve in the tenth persecution, on whose festival the first of the sermons was preached ; St. Thecla, the disciple of St Paul, whom the lion refused to touch ; the maiden martyr of Antioch, preserved from disgrace by a Christian soldier who changed clothes with her, and had the honour of dying with her ; and above all, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus, the pattern of the virginal life. We cannot help remark- ing that with all the honour that is paid by Ambrose to the memory of St. Mary, he does not say a word about her assumption or her intercession : her very entrance into heaven is spoken of as an event to come. The book on Widows was addressed to a widow lady, who after violent affliction at her bereavement was thinking of marrying again. Ambrose advises her to remain under a vow of widowhood, which he con- siders next in merit to absolute celibacy ; not, he says, because second marriages are unlawful, but because they are inexpedient. In the year 392 Ambrose consecrated,, or, as the phrase went, instituted, a young lady named after him, Ambrosia, the granddaughter of his great friend Eusebius of Bologna. The sermon preached by the 208 ST. AMBROSE. bishop on the occasion was, with a few additions, sent to Eusebius shortly after. It repeats the old argu- ments, with some good advice as to the rule of life of a consecrated virgin, and is especially to be noted as containing a very distinct dogmatic assertion of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin, in spite of the caution of St. Basil, that it is a subject we had better not meddle with. In the next year (393) Ambrose, as we have already seen, retired from Milan to Bologna on the approach of Eugenius. At Bologna he became possessed of some relics of the martyrs Agricola and Vitalis. These he conveyed to Florence, and placed in a new church which he was invited to consecrate in that city. The church was built at the expense of a rich widow, named Juliana. The consecration sermon was preached by Ambrose himself One is amused to read that, having in the course of it spoken of the foundress, by a slip of the tongue, as Judaea, instead of Juliana, he dexterously turns his mistake to good account : "My tongue made no mistake, but a defini- tion, for i7i JudcEa {Jewry) is God kfiowfi." The sermon, or the book into which it has been developed, is entitled " An Exhortation to Virginity." The preacher begins by addressing both young men and young women in the name of Juliana, and exhorting them to give themselves to that celibate life to which she had already dedicated not only her three daughters, but also her son Laurentius, now a minister of the church of her foundation ; and after seconding the exhortation warmly in his own person, prays for a blessing on the church and those who offered it and VIRGINITY. 209 themselves to God : " When Thou dost look upon that salutary offering, whereby the sin of this world is done away, look also on these offerings of holy chastity, and preserve them with Thy continual help, that they may become to Thee an odour of a sweet savour, offerings acceptable, pleasing to the Lord Christ, and that Thou mayest deign to keep their whole spirit, soul, and body blameless until the day pf Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ." 2io st. ambrose The Works of St, Ambrose. The undoubtedly authentic writings of St. Ambrose are as follows, arranged as far as possible in chrono- logical order : — A.D. 375. Paradise. One book. Cain and Abel. Two books. 377. Virgins. Three books. Widows. One book. Tobias. One book. 378. Virginity. One book. 379. The Faith. Five books. Noah and the Ark. One book. On the Decease of his Brother Satyrus. Faith in the Resurrection. A Second Book on the Decease of Satyrus. 381. The Holy Spirit. Three books. 382. The Incarnation. One book. 383. The Complaint of Job and David. Four books. 384. Defence of the Prophet David. One book. Penitence. Two books. 386. Commentary on Ps. cxix. Commentary on St. Luke. Ten books. 387. Abraham. Two books. Isaac and the Soul. One book. The Benefit of Death. One book. The Mysteries. One book. Retreat from the World. One book. Jacob and the Blessed Life. One book. Joseph. One book. WORKS. 211 387. The Blessings of the Patriarchs. One book. 389. Hexaemeron, or the Six Days of Creation. Six books. 390. Commentary on Ps. i., xlvi., xlviii., xlix., Ixii. EHjah and Fasting. One book. 391. The Duties of Ministers. Three books. 392. Speech of Consolation on the Death of Valentinian II. The Institution of a Virgin. One book. 393. Exhortation to Virginity. One book. 394. Commentary on Ps. xxxvi.-xli. 395. Speech on the Death of Theodosius. Naboth the Jezreelite. One book. 397. Commentary on Ps. xliv. (Left unfinished.) Eighty-four Letters, from a.d. 379-A.D. 396. Seven Public Letters, between a.d. 381 and A.D. 389. Twelve Hymns. Theodoret has preserved a Greek version of a fragment of a lost work, " An Exposition of the Faith "; and another lost work, " On the Sacrament of Regeneration, or on Philosophy, against Plato," is alluded to by St. Augustine in his " Retractations." 1 St. Ambrose himself speaks of a commentary of his own on Isaiah, which is often referred to by St. Augustine. A second " Defence of David," ' The occasion of the allusion is curious. Augustine stated in his work " On Christian Doctrine" that Ambrose said Plato learnt of Jeremiah in Egypt. In the Retractations Augustine admits he was wrong, and shows, from the work alhided to, that Ambrose was of a different opinion. The idea involves a gross anachronism, of course, as Augustine himself shows in his "City of God." 212 ST. AMBROSE. A Virgin's Fall, in one book, The Sacraments, in six books, are sometimes attributed to Ambrose, but most pro- bably are not from his pen. The following have also been attributed to him, but are undoubtedly spurious : — The Fall of Jerusalem. Five books. Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles. Commentary on the Seven Visions in the Apo- calypse. The Forty-two Resting-places of the Children of Israel. The Trinity. The Orthodox Faith. The Dignity of the Priesthood. To a Consecrated Virgin. Sixty-three Sermons. Four Epistles. Two Prayers before Mass. The Holy Ghost. Penitence. Seventy Hymns. The Two Genealogies of Christ. The Dignity of Man's Condition. An Exorcism. The Acts of St. Sebastian. The Conflict of Vices and Virtues. The Calling of the Gentiles. The Customs of the Brahmins. Epistles of Certain Philosophers. Two Letters about a Monk possessed with a devil. Explanation of the Creed. Letter to St. Jerome on the Faith. ( 213 ) CHRONOLOGY. A.D. 325. Council of Niccea. Birth of St. Gregory Nazianzen. 326. St. Athanasius, at 28, made Bishop of Alexandria. 329. Birth of St. Basil. 331. Birth of St. Gregory Nyssen and St, Jerome. 335. Arian Synod at Tyre. First exile of St. Athanasius. 236. Death of Arius. Marcus Bishop of Rome, on the death of St. Silvester. 337. Death of Constantine the Great. Julius I. Bishop of Rome. 338, St. Athanasius restored. 340. Constantine II. killed at Aquileia. Death of Alexander, Bishop of Constantinople, who is succeeded by Paul. Death of Eusebius. Birth of St. Ambrose. 341. Second exile of St. Athanasius. 7th Council of Antioch. 343. Photinus begins his heretical teaching. 347. Birth of St. Chrysostom. Council of Sardica. St. Athanasius restored. 348. Birth of Prudentius, the Christian poet. 349. Synod of Sirmium against Photinus. 350. Death of Constans. St. Hilary Bishop of Poictiers. Magnentius proclaimed Emperor in the West. 351. Condemnation of Photinus by a semi- Arian Council. Macedonius Bishop of Constantinople. 352. Liberius Bishop of Rome. 353. St. Ambrose removes to Rome on his fathers death. Death of Magnentius. 354. Birth of St, Augustine. Death of the Cnesar Gallus. Marcellina receives the consecration of a sister from Liberius on Christmas-Day. 355. The Arian Synod of Milan banishes Liberius, Bishop of Rome, Dionysius of Milan, and Lucifer of Cagliari, Third exile of Athanasius. Auxentius Bishop of Milan, 356. St. Hilary of Poictiers banished by Constantine, 357. Liberius (according to Arian accounts) subscribes the Arian creed and returns to Rome. ( 2H ) 359' Synod of Ariminum, in which the Catholics are deceived into surrendering the term Consubstantial. Mace- donius deposed from Constantinople, and replaced by Eudoxius. 361. Julian succeeds Constantine. 362. Fourth exile of St. Athanasius. 363. Julian killed in Persia, and succeeded by Jovian. St. Athanasius restored. Felix II. Bishop of Rome. Com- mencement of Luciferian schism. 364. Death of Jovian. Valentinian I. and Valens Emperors. 366. Damasus Bishop of Rome. 373. Death of St. Athanasius. Defeat of Firmus the Moor. 374. St. Ambrose, while holding the office of Consular of Liguria, is elected Bishop of Milan, baptized, and consecrated. St. Martin Bishop of Tours. 375. Death of Valentinian I. Gratian and Valentinian II. become Emperors. 376. Embassy of Ulfilas to Valens. 378. Battle of Adrianople : defeat and death of Valens. Death of St. Basil and of Ephraem Syrus. St. Gregory Nazianzen appointed Bishop of Constantinople. 379. Theodosius becomes Emperor : defeats the Goths. Death of Satyrus, brother of St. Ambrose. 380. Baptism of Theodosius. Priscillian condemned at the Council of Saragossa. 381. Council of Constantinople. Synod of Aquileia, and condemnation of Palladius and Secundianus. Law of Theodosius against the Arians. St. Gregoiy Nazianzen confirmed in the Bishopric of Constantinople : resigns, and Nectarius is appointed. 382. Synod at Rome. 383. Murder of Gratian : first embassy of St. Ambrose to Maximus. 384. St. Ambrose's dispute with Symmachus. St. Augustine comes to Milan. Siricius Bishop of Rome. Priscil- lian put to death. 385. Conversion of St. Augustine. St. Ambrose defends the Churches against Justina and the Arians. ( 2-5 ) 386. Consecration of a new basilica at Milan. Death of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. 3S7, Baptism of St. Augustine. St. Ambrose's second em- bassy to Maximus. Flight of Justina and Valentinian. 388. Death of Justina. Defeat and death of Maximus. The riot at Antioch. St. Chrysostom's homily "On the Statues." 3S9. Theodosius and Valentinian at Milan. Condemnation of Jovinian. 390. Massacre at Thessalonica. Excommunication and peni- tence of Theodosius. 392. Murder of Valentinian II. Eugenius emperor. St. Ambrose retires to Florence. 394. Battle of the Frigidus : defeat and death of Eugenius and Arbogastes. 395. Death of Theodosius : Arcadius and Honorius emperors. Marriage of Arcadius and Eudoxia. St. Augustine Bishop of Hippo. The Huns invade the East. Death of Rufinus. 396. Message to St. Ambrose from Fritigil, Queen of the Marcomanni. Alaric the Goth escapes from Stilicho. 397. Death of St. Ambrose, on Easter Eve, April 4. He is succeeded by Simplician. 398. St. Chrysostom Bishop of Constantinople. Gildo the Moor, defeated by his own brother Mascezel, commits suicide. 399. Anastasius I. Bishop of Rome. Marriage of Honorius to Maria, daughter of Stilicho. WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, LONDON, W.C. ^7 f otietn for |lron!o(ing Cljrislian "linotoleigc. NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS. Fcap. Zvo.^ Cloth boards^ ^ricc zs. Gd. each. BUDDHISM. Beinf]^ a Sketcli of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha. By T. W. Rhys Davids, of the Middle Temple. AVitli Map. CORAN (THE) : its Composition and Teaching, and the Testi- mony it hears to the Holy Scriptures. Ly Sir William Muir, K.C.S.I., LL.D. HINDUISM. By MoNiER Williams, M.A., D.C.L., cS:c. With Map. ISLAM AND ITS FOUNDER. r.y J. W. II, Stoijart, B.A., Principal, La Martinicre College, Lucknow. With Map. THE HEATHEN WORLD AND ST. PAUL Fcap. S:'^., Cloth boards, price 2s. each, zuiih Map. ST. PAUL IN DAMASCUS AND ARABLA.. By the Rev. George Rawlinson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury, Camden rrofessor of Ancient History, Oxfurd. ST. PAUL IN GREECE. By tlie Rev. G. S. Davies, M.A., Charterhouse, God aim in:;. ST. PAUL AT ROME. By the Very Rev. Charles Merivale, D.D., D.C.L., Dean of Lly. ST. PAUL IN ASIA MINOR, AND AT THE SYRIAN ANTIOCH. By the Rev. E. II. PLUMrTRE, D.D., Prebendary ot Si. Paul's, Vicar of Bickley, Kent, and Professor u New Testament Exegesis in King's College, London. RECENT PUBLICATIONS. *. d. Afkica Unveiled. By the Rev. H. Rowley. With Map, and Eight full-page Illustrations on toned paper. Crown 8vo Cloth Boards 5 Bible Places ; or, the Topography of the Holy Land : a Succinct Account of all the Places, Rivers, and Mountains of the Land of Israel mentioned in the Bible, so far as they have been identified. Together with their Modem Names'and Historical References. By the Rev. Canon Tristram. A new and revised Edition, Crow7i %vo., -with Map, nnmerotis IVood-cuts Cloth Boards 4 China : The Land and the People of. A short Account of the Geography, History', Religion, Social Life, Arts, Industries, and Government of China and its People. By J. Thomson, Esq., F.R.G.S., Author of " Illustrations of China and its People," &;c. With Map, and Twelve full-page Illustrations on toned paper. Crown 8vo Cloth Boards 5 Christians under the Crescent in Asia. By the Rev. E. L. Cutts, B.A., Hon. D.D. University of the South, U.S., Author of "Turning Points of Church History," &c. With numerous Illustrations. Post 8vo Cloth Boards 5 India : The History of, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By L. J. Trotter, Author of " Studies in Biography." Post Svo. With a Map and 23 Engravings Cloth Boards 10 Israel : The Land of. A Journal of Travels in Palestine, undertaken with Special Reference to its Physical Character. Third Edition, revised. By the Rev. Canon Tristram. With numerous Illustrations Cloth Boards 10 Jerusalem : The Siege of. By the Rev. R. S. CopLESTON, Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, Oxford. Post Svo. With an Illustration and Plan of the Temple Limp Cloth i Jewish Nation : A History of the. From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By E. H. Palmer, Esq., M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, and Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, Author of " The Desert of the Exodus," &.C. &c. Crown Svo. With Map and numerous Illustrations Cloth Boards 5 RECENT PUBLICATIONS— (r^«//«u/