9.  This Holy Ghost came down when the Lord was baptized, that the dignity of Him who was baptized might not be hidden; as John says, But He which sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost John i. 33..  But see what saith the Gospel; the heavens were opened; they were opened because of the dignity of Him who descended; for, lo, he says, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and lighting upon Him Matt. iii. 16.:  that is, with voluntary motion in His descent.  For it was fit, as some have interpreted, that the primacy and first-fruits τὰς ἀπαρχὰς καὶ τὰ πρωτεῖα.  The order is inverted in the translation.  Cf. Hermas, Sim. viii. 7 ἔχοντες ζῆλόν τινα ἐν ἀλλήλοις περὶ πρωτείων. of the Holy Spirit promised to the baptized should be conferred upon the manhood of the Saviour, who is the giver of such grace.  But perhaps He came down in the form of a dove, as some say, to exhibit a figure of that dove who is pure and innocent and undefiled, and also helps the prayers for the children she has begotten, and for forgiveness of sins The Benedictine Editor adds the two last words τύπον παραδηλοῦν from mss. Roe. Casaub. as necessary to the construction, and adds the following note.  “The text thus emended is capable of two senses.  The first, that the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove, a pure and harmless bird, to shew that He is Himself as it were a mystic dove in His simplicity and love of children, for whose new birth and remission of sins at Baptism He unites His prayers with Christ’s, as Cyril teaches in Cat. xvi. 20:  and that Christ was for the like cause mystically foreshown in Canticles as having eyes like a dove’s.  The other sense is, that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove on Christ’s Humanity in order to shew this to be as it were a dove in innocence, holiness, love of children, and concurrence with the Holy Spirit in their regeneration.…Either sense is admissible, and maintained by many of the Fathers:  but I prefer the former.”  This interpretation is confirmed by Tertullian (de Baptismo, c. viii.), who says that the Holy Spirit glided down on the Lord “in the shape of a dove” in order that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be declared by means of a creature of simplicity and innocence.”; even as it was emblematically foretold that Christ should be thus manifested in the appearance of His eyes; for in the Canticles she cries concerning the Bridegroom, and says, Thine eyes are as doves by the rivers of water Cant. v. 12.  ἐπὶ πληρώματα ὑδάτων (Sept.).  The usual meaning of ὀφθαλμοφανῶς is “manifestly to the eyes,” Esther viii. 13..