The objection has been made, that the words of St. John, “The Spirit is God,” are to be referred to God the Father; since Christ afterwards declares that God is to be worshipped in Spirit and in truth. The answer is, first, that by the word Spirit is sometimes meant spiritual grace; next, it is shown that, if they insist that the Person of the Holy Spirit is signified by the words “in Spirit,” and therefore deny that adoration is due to Him, the argument tells equally against the Son; and since numberless passages prove that He is to be worshipped, we understand from this that the same rule is to be laid down as regards the Spirit. Why are we commanded to fall down before His footstool? Because by this is signified the Lord’s Body, and as the Spirit was the Maker of this, it follows that He is to be worshipped, and yet it does not accordingly follow that Mary is to be worshipped. Therefore the worship of the Spirit is not done away with, but His union with the Father is expressed, when it is said that the Father is to be worshipped in Spirit, and this point is supported by similar expressions.

69. But perhaps reference may be made to the fact that in a later passage of the same book, the Lord again said that God is Spirit, but spoke of God the Father. For you have this passage in the Gospel: “The hour now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for such also doth the Father seek. God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth.”¹³²⁰

1320 S. John iv. 23, 24.

70. To which point I will briefly answer that Spirit is often put for the grace of the Spirit, as the Apostle also said: “For the Spirit Himself intercedeth for us with groanings which cannot be uttered;”¹³²¹

1321 Rom. viii. 26.

1322 Wisd. i. 4.

1323 1 Cor. xii. 3.

1324 1 Cor. xii. 4.

71. Now this cannot pertain to the fulness, nor to the dividing of the Spirit; for neither does the mind of man grasp His fulness, nor is He divided into any portions of Himself; but He pours into [the soul] the gift of spiritual grace, in which God is worshipped as He is also worshipped in truth, for no one worships Him except he who drinks in the truth of His Godhead with pious affection. And he certainly does not apprehend Christ as it were personally, nor the Holy Spirit personally.

72. Or if you think that this is said as it were personally of Christ and of the Spirit, then God is worshipped in truth in like manner as He is worshipped in Spirit. There is therefore either a like subjection, which God forbid that you should believe, and the Son is not worshipped; or, which is true, there is a like grace of Unity, and the Spirit is worshipped.

73. Let us then here draw our inferences and put an end to the impious questionings of the Arians. For if they say that the Spirit is therefore not to be worshipped because God is worshipped in Spirit, let them then say that the Truth is not to be worshipped, because God is worshipped in truth. For although there be many truths, since it is written: “Truths are minished from the sons of men;”¹³²⁵

1325 Ps. xii. [xi.] 1.

1326 S. John xiv. 6.

74. But they are refuted by the acts of the pious, and by the course of the Scriptures. For Mary worshipped Christ, and therefore is appointed to be the messenger of the Resurrection to the apostles,¹³²⁷

1327 S. John xx. 17, 18.

1328 Rom. v. 20.

75. And the apostles worshipped; and therefore they who bore the testimony of the faith received authority as to the faith. And the angels worshipped, of whom it is written: “And let all His angels worship Him.”¹³²⁹

1329 Heb. i. 6.

76. But they worship not only His Godhead but also His Footstool, as it is written: “And worship His footstool, for it is holy.”¹³³⁰

1330 Ps. xcix. [xcviii.] 5.

1331 S. Matt. xxviii. 17.

77. Therefore if it do not at all detract from Christ, that God is worshipped in Christ, for Christ too is worshipped;¹³³²

1332 St. Ambrose here argues against Apollinarianism, who separated the two natures in Christ and taught that He should not be adored except in His Godhead, giving to the orthodox the nickname of ἀνθρωπολάτραι. The Apollinarians held that Christ was Θεὸς σαρκοφόρος, as Nestorians made Him ἄνθρωπος Θεοφόρος, instead of the proper Θεάνθρωπος. Apollinaris said Christ is οὔτε ἄνθρωπος ἅπλος, οὔτε Θεὸς, ἀλλὰ Θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπου μίξις. He denied the complete human nature of our Lord, saying that the Logos supplied the place of the anima rationalis. This stunted humanity could not be accepted by the Church, as it would involve a merely partial redemption. Christ must be a perfect man, in order to be a perfect Redeemer. The heresy was opposed by St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and others, condemned in synods at Alexandria 362, Rome 373 and probably 382, Antioch 378 or 379, and decisively at Constantinople in the second œcumenical council. See Dict. Chr. Biog.; Blunt, Dict. of Sects, etc.; Hefele on Council of Constantinople; St. Gregory of Nazianzus’ Letters on the Apollinarian controversy in this series, p. 437 ff.

1333 Phil. iii. 3.

1334 Deut. vi. 13.

78. But lest any one should perchance seem to elude the instance we have adduced, let us consider in what manner that which the prophet says, “Worship His Footstool,” appears to refer to the mystery of the divine Incarnation, for we must not estimate the footstool from the custom of men. For neither has God a body, neither is He other than beyond measure, that we should think a footstool was laid down as a support for His feet. And we read that nothing besides God is to be worshipped, for it is written: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” How, then, should the prophet, brought up under the Law, and instructed in the Law, give a precept against the Law? The question, then, is not unimportant, and so let us more diligently consider what the footstool is. For we read elsewhere: “The heaven is My throne, and the earth the footstool of My feet.”¹³³⁵

1335 Isa. lxvi. 1.

79. Let us, however, see whether the prophet does not say that that earth is to be worshipped which the Lord Jesus took upon Him in assuming flesh. And so, by footstool is understood earth, but by the earth the Flesh of Christ, which we this day also adore¹³³⁶

1336 There can be no doubt that St. Ambrose held what is known as the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and is here asserting the custom of his day, viz., that Christ was worshipped as indivisibly God and Man in that Sacrament. Similar expressions are to be found in other Fathers, and in St. Ambrose elsewhere; e.g. De Fide, V. 10; De Mysteriis, §§ 52–54, 58. Bishop Andrewes, formerly of Winchester (ob. a.d. 1626), refers to St. Ambrose as follows: “Nos vero et in Mysteriis Carnem Christi adoramus cum Ambrosio, et non id, sed eum qui super altare colitur. Nec Carnem manducamus quin adoremus prius cum Augustino.…El Sacramentum tamen nulli adoremus.” Resp. ad Bellarmin, p. 195.

1337 S. Luke i. 35.

80. And let no one divert this to the Virgin Mary; Mary was the temple of God, not the God of the temple. And therefore He alone is to be worshipped Who was working in His temple.

81. It makes, then, nothing against our argument that God is worshipped in Spirit, for the Spirit also is worshipped. Although if we consider the words themselves, what else ought we to understand in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but the unity of the same power. For what is “must worship in Spirit and in truth”? If, however, you do not refer this to the grace of the Spirit, nor the true faith of conscience; but, as we said, personally (if indeed this word person is fit to express the Divine Majesty), you must take it of Christ and of the Spirit.

82. What means, then, the Father is worshipped in Christ, except that the Father is in Christ, and the Father speaks in Christ, and the Father abides in Christ. Not, indeed, as a body in a body, for God is not a body; nor as a confused mixture [confusus in confuso], but as the true in the true, God in God, Light in Light; as the eternal Father in the co-eternal Son. So not an ingrafting of a body is meant, but unity of power. Therefore, by unity of power, Christ is jointly worshipped in the Father when God the Father is worshipped in Christ. In like manner, then, by unity of the same power the Spirit is jointly worshipped in God, when God is worshipped in the Spirit.

83. Let us investigate the force of that word and expression more diligently, and deduce its proper meaning from other passages. “Thou hast,” it is said, “made them all in wisdom.”¹³³⁸

1338 Ps. civ. [ciii.] 24.

1339 S. John i. 3.

1340 Ps. xxxiii. [xxxii.] 6.

84. Paul, too, says: “For in Him were all things created in the heavens and in the earth, visible and invisible.”¹³⁴¹

1341 Col. i. 16.

1342 1 Cor. viii. 6.

1343 Col. i. 16.

1344 Bk. II. 8, 9.

85. Learn also that the Father was with Him, and He with the Father, when all things were being made. Wisdom says: “When He was preparing the heavens I was with Him, when He was making the fountains of waters.”¹³⁴⁵

1345 Prov. viii. 27.

1346 Gen. i. 26.

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