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story, "perhaps so instructed," Neander suggests, cried out "Ambrose for bishop." This apparently accidental nomination was taken up by a general acclamation of the whole assembly, and both parties joined in the spontaneous and unanimous election.

The surprised and reluctant magistrate tried in vain to evade an office for which he had no special preparation, and to which he felt no divine call. He was but a catechumen, not yet having received baptism. He is said to have adopted some singular devices, such as the assumption of unusual eruelty in his magistracy, the introduction of lewd women into his house, to create imputations against his chastity, and flight from the city by night, only to find that he had lost his way and was back at another gate in the morning, in order to divert from himself the popular feeling, and to escape the office. Valentinian, the emperor, threw his weight into the scale, and Ambrose consented. The 30th of November was long observed in the Church of Milan as the day of his baptism. A week after, on the 7th of December, he was ordained. It was a singular election, and to us, at this distant time, and trained in the usages of the primitive church of the New Testament, seems almost incredible. The church had travelled far from its original simplicity and unworldliness when it could even allow, much more invite, a civilian, the first civil officer of the country, unbaptized, perhaps unconverted, certainly untaught and untried in any religious function, to step into the highest ecclesiastical post, and surrender itself to his keeping. The event justified the choice; but there were no assurances beforehand, as far as we can see, that it might not have quite another issue. It was committing to accident, it was entrusting to uncertain hands, it was even offering to worldly power, an office most sacred, and which, theoretically at least, required the previous interposition of the Holy Ghost. But it illustrates the freedom, the unrestrained mingling of lay with clerical power, the influence of the people, and even of popular impulses, in the most important ecclesiastical elections, even at so late a period. Above all, it shows that at the end of the fourth century, as was the case long after, the bishop of Rome had no voice in episcopal appointments, and that the See of Milan was as independent as that of Rome itself. There is the voice of the people, the clergy, the emperor, but not the whisper of a pope.

Though elected by both parties, he at once declared against Arianism by demanding baptism of an orthodox bishop. He renounced the pomps of his civil state, and assumed an austere simplicity of living. He gave his own estates to the church, and to the poor. And he devoted the wealth of the church, he even sold the

consecrated plate, for the redemption of captives. He said, as if the spirit of humanity were superior to any ecclesiastical zeal, "The church possesses gold not to treasure up, but to distribute it for the welfare and happiness of men. The blood of redemption which has gleamed in those golden cups has sanctified them, not for the service alone, but for the redemption of man." He at once commenced theological studies, and placed himself under the tuition of Simplician, who became his successor in the archbishopric. But he never made any mark in theology. Dean Milman remarks, "The most curious fact relating to Ambrose is the extraordinary contrast between his vigorous, practical and statesmanlike character as a man, as well as that of such among his writings as may be called public and popular, and the mystic subtlety which fills most of his theological works."1 But without early theological training his imagination flew to allegory as the easiest interpretation of Scripture. His judgment was exhausted in the discipline of the church, while his fancy took free flight in the realm of theology, stimulated without doubt by his fondness for the writings of Origen.

It was in the midst of the conflict of Christianity with expiring Paganism, and of orthodoxy with waning and retreating Arianism, that Ambrose undertook the administration of the church in this metropolis of the Western empire. Paganism had long been doomed, for it was morally undermined, and the faith in it, satisfaction in it, had gone beyond restoration. But still it had a political existence. It had its memories dear to Roman pride, its structures, its ceremonials, its priesthood. It stood by sufferance at least. The emperor still held the dignity and wore the robes of supreme pontiff, although he was a Christian. As a matter of course he was chief of the religion as well as of the state. But he had ceased to reside at Rome. He was a stranger to the influences and associations which inspired the Roman aristocracy with regret, if not reverence, for the declining faith and its ancient glories. But Gratian soon showed that he had come under the control of a more masculine mind than his own, and which would give Paganism no quarter. He was but a youth, good without strength, easy and irresolute. The Senate sent to him a deputation for the purpose of investing him with the dignities of the pontificate. But he spurned the idolatrous honor. If Rome was shocked by such an ominous assault on its venerable religion, it saw with alarm and indignation the statue and altar of Victory, which had stood in the Senate house and presided over its deliberations from the earliest times and through the periods of 1 History of Christianity, III, 159, note.

conquest and glory, where senators took their oaths, and a daily libation was offered as a prelude to their public proceedings, now cast out by imperial decree. Four times the Senate by deputations to the imperial court solicited its restoration. The first, Gratian refused even to receive. The second made its appeal to his successor, Valentinian, and it is here that Ambrose appears openly to share in the conflict. Symmachus was a person of the highest character and dignity. He was a senator of great learning and wealth, and with the honor of being pontiff and augur, he joined the civic offices of proconsul of Africa, and prefect of Rome. To him was entrusted the preparation of a petition to the emperor. It was drawn with the skill of a master of rhetoric. The conscious weakness of a failing cause betrays itself in the apologetic tone, in the elaborate caution against giving offence, in the spirit of conciliation and entreaty so much in contrast with the temper of the religion which a century before was smiting Christianity with the bloody hand of Diocletian. He pleads for a religion which has stood the trial and received the sanction of ages; which may be allowed to stand for the good it has done; and which, in the uncertainties of human inquiry and the diversities of human belief, has the advantage of custom and of past blessing on its side. He brings Rome, the once mighty, irresistible Rome, to speak in such tones as these:

Most excellent princes, fathers of your country, respect my years, and permit me still to practise the religion of my ancestors, in which I have grown old. Grant me but the liberty of living according to my ancient usage. This religion has subdued the world to my dominion; these rites repelled Hannibal from my walls, the Gauls from the capitol. Have I lived thus long to be rebuked in my old age for my religion? It is too late; it would be discreditable to amend in my old age. I entreat but peace for the gods of Rome, the tutelary divinities of our country.

But the alert and resolute Ambrose would not allow the youthful emperor to be drawn into any concession by the eloquence of the Pagan apologist. He at once wrote an earnest letter of caution to Valentinian. He then drew up a formal reply to the argument of Symmachus. So great a Latinist as Heyne gives the palm of superiority to the prefect over the bishop. The apologist may be more dexterous, more elegant, more careful. The bishop is more careless, more impetuous, more confident, more fervid. He has to condemn, not to conciliate. He is to carry his point not by artifices of rhetoric, but by ardor of conviction. And so he carries the spirit of his action into his style. He is not a suppliant entreating. He is a priest

commissioned to instruct with divine authority. He warned the emperor not to be deceived by names, nor to be led astray by his political advisers. He says:

He who advises, and he who decrees such concessions, sacrifices to idols. We, bishops, could not quietly tolerate this. You might come to the church, but you would find there no priest, or a priest who would forbid your approach. The church will indignantly reject the gifts of him who has shared them with heathen temples. The altar of Christ. disdains your offerings, since you have erected an altar to idols; for your word, your hand, your signature, are your works. It is written, Ye cannot serve two masters.

He not only brandishes the terrors of priestly authority, he pours derision and contempt on the venerable traditions, the impotent gods of Rome.

Where were the gods, in all the defeats, some of them but recent, of the Pagan emperors? Was not the altar of Victory then standing? And who is this deity? Victory is a gift, not a power; she depends on the courage of the legions, not on the influence of the religion; a mighty deity that depends on the numbers of an army, or the doubtful issue of a battle!

The victory was with the ecclesiastic rather than the civilian, and the emperor did not yield. Twice again the Senate supplicated the emperor in vain. "The fair humanities of old religion" had not only, according to the expression of Coleridge, "vanished from the faith of reason." The ancient gods fell not only before the arguments of Ambrose; they could not stand before the conquering arms of Theodosius. The emperor of the East became the emperor of the West, and the trembling temple of Paganism went down at his coming. The senate at his instigation debated the claims of Jupiter and of Christ; and, without doubt under his inspiration, Jupiter was outvoted. The tenants leave a falling house; and according to Prudentius, six hundred Roman families at once deserted their ancestral religion, and passed to the Christian side. The Pagan

worship was no longer allowed support out of the public funds, and before Ambrose died the religion of Numa, which had lasted eleven hundred years, was but a vanishing shadow, and its priesthood, its flamens and vestals had been turned out to starve.

In the conflict of hostile creeds Ambrose had a formidable enemy to encounter, and the opportunity to assert his hierarchical prerogative in a bold and victorious style. The Empress Justina, the widow of the first and the mother of the second Valentinian, was an Arian,

and a determined one. During her son's minority she had great power in the government, and she used it to force Arianism into the church, and thus provoked the Archbishop of Milan to defiance and resistance. She had employed him indeed on a difficult and most important political service. After the murder of Gratian he had been despatched to Gaul to negotiate with Maximus, who had assumed the purple and was now menacing Italy with invasion. Either by his skill as an ambassador, or his authority as a prelate, he checked for a time the ambition of the invader, and secured the peace of Italy. But this service softened neither the purpose of the empress, nor the orthodoxy of the bishop. They were first brought into collision by what seems to have been a stretch of ecclesiastical zeal on the part of the resolute Ambrose. The bishopric of Sirmium in Illyria, which had been filled by an Arian, was vacant, and Justina, who was there, used her influence to secure the succession in the same party. But Ambrose, though it was beyond the limits of his diocese, appeared in the city, and in the face of the empress-mother brought about the election of an orthodox bishop. This was only premonitory of a closer and sharper conflict. On the approach of Easter, in the spring of 385, Justina, in the name of the emperor, demanded the use of one of the churches of Milan for the celebration of the Arian service. At first she asked for the Portian Basilica, now the Church of San Vittore al Corpo, without the walls. The next demand was for the new and larger Basilica, which Tillemont1 thinks was the church founded by Ambrose in 382, on the site of the present San Nazaro Maggiore. A contest began which was carried on through the Holy Week, and in which the inflexible firmness and courage of the bishop won the victory. He was summoned before the imperial council. An impetuous crowd followed him, alarmed for his safety, and dashed against the gates of the palace, till the affrighted ministers begged him to interpose for the protection of the emperor, and the peace of the city. The government attempted to take forcible possession of the Basilica, which only raised a tumult which the bishop was commanded to allay. He answered that he had not stirred up the people, and God only could still them. The soldiers entered the church where Ambrose was conducting the worship. But they fell on their knees, and assured him that they had come to pray, not to do violence. He went into the pulpit to preach on the book of Job. And as he spoke of the wife of the patriarch urging him to blaspheme the name of God, of Eve, of Jezebel, of Herodias, the application was not difficult to make. Again and again the council sent to him to give up

1 Histoire Ecc. X, 167.

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