Chapter IV.
To those who contend that the Spirit because He is
called the Finger is less than the Father, St. Ambrose replies that
this would also tend to the lessening of the Son, Who is called the
Right Hand. That these names are to be referred only to the
Unity, for which reason Moses proclaimed that the whole Trinity worked
in the passage of the Red Sea. And, indeed, it is no wonder that
the operation of the Spirit found place there, where there was a figure
of baptism, since the Scripture teaches that the Three Persons equally
sanctify and are operative in that sacrament.
17. if any one
is still entangled in carnal doubts, and hesitates because of bodily
figures, let him consider that he cannot think rightly of the Son who
can think wrongly of the Spirit. For if some think that the
Spirit is a certain small portion of God, because He is called the
Finger of God, the same persons must certainly maintain that a small
portion only is in the Son of God, because He is called the Right Hand
of God.
18. But the Son is called both the Right Hand and
the Power of God; if, then, we consider our words, there can be no
perfection without power; let them therefore take care lest they think
that which it is impious to say, namely, that the Father being but half
perfect in His own Substance received perfection through the Son, and
let them cease to deny that the Son is co-eternal with the
Father. For when did the Power of God not exist? But if
they think that at any time the Power of God existed not, they will say
that at some time Perfection existed not in God the Father, to Whom
they think that Power was at some time wanting.
19. But, as I said, these things are written
that we may refer them to the Unity of the Godhead, and believe that
which the Apostle said, that the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily
in Christ, which dwells
also in the Father, and dwells in the Holy Spirit; and that, as there
is a unity of the Godhead, so also is there a unity of
operation.
20. And this may also be gathered from the
Song of Moses, for he, after leading the people of the Jews through the
sea, acknowledged the operation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, saying: “Thy Right Hand, O Lord, is glorious in
power, Thy Right Hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the
enemy.” Here you
have his confession of the Son and of the Father, Whose Right Hand He
is. And farther on, not to pass by the Holy Spirit, He
added: “Thou didst send Thy Spirit and the sea covered
them, and the water was divided by the Spirit of Thine
anger.” By which is
signified the unity of the Godhead, not an inequality of the
Trinity.
21. You see, then, that the Holy Spirit also
co-operated with the Father and the Son, so that just as if the waves
were congealed in the midst of the sea, a wall as it were of water rose
up for the passage of the Jews, and then, poured back again by the
Spirit, overwhelmed the people of the Egyptians. And many think
that from the same origin the pillar of cloud went before the people of
the Jews by day, and the pillar of fire by
night, that the grace of the Spirit might
protect His people.
22. Now that this operation of God, which
the whole world rightly wonders at, did not take place without the work
of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle also declared when he said that the
truth of a spiritual mystery was prefigured in it, for we read as
follows: “For our fathers were all under the cloud, and all
passed through the sea, and were all baptized in Moses in the cloud and
in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink
the same spiritual drink.”
23. For how without the operation of the
Holy Spirit could there be the type of a sacrament, the whole truth of
which is in the Spirit? As the Apostle also set forth, saying: “But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.”
24. You see, then, that the Father works in the
Son, and that the Son works in the Spirit. And therefore do not
doubt that, according to the order of Scripture, there was in the
figure that which the Truth Himself declared to be in the truth. For who can deny His operation in the Font, in which we feel His operation and grace?