And what is very remarkable, Ambrose had not even been baptized. He was a layman. There is no evidence that he was a Christian except in name. He had passed through no deep experience such as Augustine did, shortly after this. It was a more remarkable appointment than when Henry II. made his chancellor, Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. Why was Ambrose elevated to that great ecclesiastical post? What had he done for the Church? Did he feel the responsibility of his priestly office? Did he realize that he was raised in his social position, even in the eye of an emperor? Why did he not shrink from such an office, on the grounds of unfitness?
The fact is, as proved by his subsequent administration, he was the ablest man for that post to be found in Italy. He was really the most fitting man. If ever a man was called to be a priest, he was called. He had the confidence of both the emperor and the people. Such confidence can be based only on transcendent character. He was not selected because he was learned or eloquent, but because he had administrative ability; and because he was just and virtuous.
A great outward change in his life marked his elevation, as in Becket afterwards. As soon as he was baptized, he parted with his princely fortune and scattered it among the poor, like Cyprian and Chrysostom. This was in accordance with one of the great ideas of the early Church, almost impossible to resist. Charity unbounded, allied with poverty, was the great test of practical Christianity. It was afterwards lost sight of by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, and never was recognized by Protestantism at all, not even in theory. Thrift has been one of the watchwords of Protestantism for three hundred years. One of the boasts of Protestantism has been its superior material prosperity. Travellers have harped on the worldly thrift of Protestant countries. The Puritans, full of the Old Testament, like the Jews, rejoiced in an outward prosperity as one of the evidences of the favor of God. The Catholics accuse the Protestants, of not only giving birth to rationalism, in their desire to extend liberality of mind, but of fostering a material life in their ambition to be outwardly prosperous. I make no comment on this fact; I only state it, for everybody knows the accusation to be true, and most people rejoice in it. One of the chief arguments I used to hear for the observance of public worship was, that it would raise the value of property and improve the temporal condition of the worshippers,--so that temporal thrift was made to be indissolubly connected with public worship. "Go to church, and you will thrive in business. Become a Sabbath-school teacher, and you will gain social position." Such arguments logically grow out from linking the kingdom of heaven with success in life, and worldly prosperity with the outward performance of religious duties,--all of which may be true, and certainly marks Protestantism, but is somewhat different from the ideas of the Church eighteen hundred years ago. But those were unenlightened times, when men said, "How hardly shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of God."