10. Of this dove, the dove of Noe, according
to some, was in part a figure Tertullian,
ibid. “Just as after the waters of the deluge, by
which the old iniquity was purged—after the baptism, so to say,
of the world—a dove was the herald which announced to the earth
the assuagement of celestial wrath,.…so to our flesh, as it
emerges from the font after its old sins, flies the dove of the Holy
Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent out from heaven where the
Church is, the typified ark.” Compare also Hippolytus,
The Holy Theophany, §§ 8, 9, a treatise with which
Cyril has much in common.. For as in
his time by means of wood and of water there came salvation to
themselves, and the beginning of a new generation, and the dove
returned to him towards evening with an olive branch; thus, say they,
the Holy Ghost also descended upon the true Noe, the Author of the
second birth, who draws together into one the wills of all nations, of
whom the various dispositions of the animals in the ark were a
figure:—Him at whose coming the spiritual wolves feed with the
lambs, in whose Church the calf, and the lion, and the ox, feed in the
same pasture, as we behold to this day the rulers of the world guided
and taught by Churchmen. The spiritual dove therefore, as some
interpret, came down at the season of His baptism, that He might shew
that it is He who by the wood of the Cross saves them who believe, He
who at eventide should grant salvation through His death.