arose as to the appointment of a successor to Auxentius. The consular came down to the church to keep the peace and was addressing the people in his character as a civil magistrate, when a cry (which tradition asserts to have been that of a child) was heard, "Ambrose for bishop!" In a moment it struck the whole multitude as a solution in which both parties might acquiesce without the sense of defeat, and a unanimous shout arose, "We will have Ambrose for bishop!" It was a singular choice, even for those rougher and more tumultuous times, for Ambrose was not yet so much as baptized. But he was an earnest Christian in his belief, and had only been kept from seeking baptism by a religious awe, of which there were then many examples. Such an one naturally shrank from being made bishop. With undoubted sincerity, he resisted this popular nomination. He was, he says, raptus a tribunalibus ad sacerdotium de Officiis, i. 4). He was baptized, passed summarily through the intermediate ecclesiastical stages, and on the eighth day was consecrated bp. of Milan. This was in the year 374 (a year after the death of Athanasius, and before the death of Valentinian I.), Ambrose being thirty-four years of age. The vox populi was never more thoroughly justified. The foundation of his excellence was laid in a singular and unsullied purity of character. In the see of Milan Ambrose had found precisely his place, and he laboured indefatigably as its bishop for twenty-three years till his death.
One of his first cares after his ordination was to divest himself of the charge of private property. As a member of a wealthy family he appears to have possessed both money and lands. What he did not give away to the poor or the church or reserve as an income for his sister, he placed entirely under the management of a dearly loved brother named Satyrus. He was thus free to devote his whole energies to the work of his calling. His writings enable us to follow him in both his ordinary and his extraordinary occupations. He was wont to "celebrate the sacrifice" every day (Ep. xx. 15). Every Lord's Day he preached in the Basilica. His extant works consist mainly of addresses and expositions which had been first spoken in the church and were afterwards revised for publication. They bear traces of this mode of composition in their simplicity and naturalness, and also in their popular character and undigested form. Ambrose had to begin, as he ingenuously declares, to learn and to teach at the same time (de Officiis, lib. i. cap. i. 4.). In doctrine he followed reverently what was of best repute in the church in his time, carefully guarding his own and his people's orthodoxy from all heresy, and urging, but with wholesome, if not always consistent, qualifications, the ascetic religious perfection which the best Christians were then pursuing. The sacred books, for which he had a profound reverence, were to him—what pastoral and didactic theology has always tended to make them—verbal materials for edification, which was to be extracted from them by any and every kind of interpretation to which their letter could be subjected. His writings, therefore, or sermons, are chiefly of interest with reference to the history and character of their author; but they are lively and ingenuous, full of good practical advice, and interspersed with gnomic sentences of much felicity.
One of the secrets of Ambrose's influence over the people was his admission of them into all his interests and cares. He had nothing private from the congregation in the Basilica. The sister Marcellina and the brothers Satyrus and Ambrose (this was the order of their ages) were united together by a remarkable affection. The three loved one another too devotedly to think of marrying. Marcellina became early a consecrated virgin, but continued to feel the keenest and tenderest concern in her brothers' lives. When Ambrose became a bishop, Satyrus appears to have given up an important appointment in order to come and live with his brother and take every secular care off his hands. These domestic virtues of Marcellina and Satyrus we learn from sermons of Ambrose. His discourses on virginity became famous, and attracted virgins from distant parts to receive consecration at his hands. These discourses, in the third year after his ordination, he digested into three books, de Virginibus, which were addressed in their new form to his sister, and which contain, besides much praise of Marcellina, the address made to her at her consecration by the bp. of Rome. A year or two later occurred the death of Satyrus, in the flower of his age. In the depth of his grief Ambrose pronounced a funeral discourse upon his brother (de Excessu Satyri), which was followed seven days after by a sermon upon the hope of a future life (de Fide Res.).
The bp. of Milan, exercising the authority of a patriarchate, and presiding over a city which was frequently the residence of the emperor, was a great dignitary. But we cannot fail to recognize the high reputation which Ambrose had won for himself personally and in a surprisingly short period, when we observe the deference paid to him by the emperors of his time. He was certainly fortunate in the sovereigns with whom he had to do. The youths Gratian and Valentinian II., and the great Theodosius, were singularly virtuous and religious princes. Gratian was a boy of sixteen when the death of his father placed him on the throne, and in the year 377, the third of Ambrose's episcopate, he was two years older. In that year he was preparing to go to the assistance of his uncle Valens against the barbarian invaders by whom he was hard pressed; and desiring to be fortified against the arguments of the Arians whom Valens was favouring at Constantinople, he wrote to Ambrose, and asked him to furnish him with a controversial treatise in support of the orthodox faith. Ambrose complied with the pious youth's request by writing two books de Fide. In the following year Gratian wrote a letter, preserved with those of Ambrose, in which he requests another copy of that work, together with an additional argument upon the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In this letter he calls Ambrose parens. Ambrose amplified his former treatise by adding three books to the two he had already composed. This work de Fide was reckoned an important defence of the
