11. Let none suppose me to be misguided, in
that I made at first a threefold division, each part containing four,
and afterwards a fourfold division, each part containing three
terms. The beauty of a good thing pleases the more, if it be
shown under various aspects. For those are good things, whereof
the texture of the priestly robe was the token, that is to say, either
the Law, or the Church, which latter hath made two garments for her
spouse, as it is written Proverbs
xxxi. 21 (22). St.
Ambrose appears to follow the LXX., whose rendering of the passage is
different from the Vulgate, with which our English versions
agree. With what follows in the text, cf. Ex.
xxviii. 33, 34, also Ex. xxviii. 5, 6.—the one of
action, the other of spirit, weaving together the threads of faith and
works. Thus, in one place, as we read, she makes a groundwork of
gold, and afterwards weaves thereon blue, and purple, with scarlet, and
white. Again, [as we read] elsewhere, she first makes little
flowerets of blue and other colours, and attaches gold, and there is
made a single priestly robe, to the end that adornments of diverse
grace and beauty, made up of the same bright colours, may gain fresh
glory by diversity of arrangement.