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On the Sacraments

St Ambrose of Milan, tr. Thompson, 1919

Book 6, The Sacraments Show the Operation of the Trinity and the Equality of the Three…

Therefore thou hast been taught about¹ the sacraments, thou hast learnt all things most fully, because thou hast been baptized in the name of the Trinity. In all that we have done the mystery of the Trinity has been preserved. Everywhere Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one operation, one sanctification, though certain things seem to be as it were special.²

How? It is God who anointed thee, and the Lord signed thee, and put the Holy Spirit in thy heart.³ Thou hast therefore received the Holy Spirit in thy heart. Hear another truth, that as the Holy Spirit is in the heart, so also is Christ in the heart. How? Thou hast Christ saying this to his Church in the Song of Songs: Set me as a seal in thy heart, as a seal upon thy arms.⁴,

Therefore God anointed thee, Christ signed thee. How? Because thou wast signed with the image of the cross itself unto his passion, thou receivedst a seal unto his likeness, that thou mayest rise unto his image, and live after His pattern, who was crucified to sin and liveth to God.⁵ And thy old man plunged into the font was crucified to sin, but rose again unto God.⁶

Then thou hast elsewhere a special work that, while God called thee, in baptism thou art as it were specially crucified with Christ.⁷ Then (as an instance of special operation) when thou receivest the spiritual seal, note that there is a distinction of persons, but that the whole mystery of the Trinity is bound up together.

Then what said the Apostle to thee, as was read the day before yesterday? Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord. There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.⁸ All, says he, God worketh. These words, too, were read of the Spirit of God: one and the same Spirit dividing to each as He wills.⁹ Hearken to the Scripture saying that the Spirit divides according to His own will, not in obedience to others. So then the Spirit divides to you grace as He wills, not as He is bidden, and chiefly so because He is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ. And hold fast this, that He is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit the Paraclete.

The Arians think that they derogate from the Holy Spirit, if they speak of Him as the Spirit the Paraclete. What does Paraclete mean but consoler? As though we did not read of the Father that He himself is the God of consolation.¹⁰ Thou seest then that they think that an attribute, which pious affection proclaims, as showing the power of the eternal Father, must be derogatory to the Holy Spirit.

Notes

accepistis de. Another rendering is “thou hast received of” the sacraments. But the more natural phrase in that case would have been accepistis sacramenta.
i. e. to the different Persons of the Trinity.
2 Cor. i. 21, 22.
Cant. viii. 6. Cf. de Myst. vii. 41, 42 for this and the following section.
Rom. vi. 10.
Rom. vi. 6.
Cf. Gal. ii. 19.
1 Cor. xii. 4-6. Some MSS. read mysteriorum for ministeriorum. But the latter, which is an Old Latin reading, is found in the quotations of the passage by most of the Latin Fathers.
1 Cor. xii. 11.
2 Cor. i. 3.