Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part III: Of the Imposition of Hands. Types of the Deluge and the Dove.

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Chapter VIII.—Of the Imposition of Hands. Types of the Deluge and the Dove.

In the next place the hand is laid on us, invoking and inviting the Holy Spirit through benediction. 8598 Shall it be granted possible for human ingenuity to summon a spirit into water, and, by the application of hands from above, to animate their union into one body 8599 with another spirit of so clear sound; 8600 and shall it not be possible for God, in the case of His own organ, 8601 to produce, by means of “holy hands,” 8602 a sublime spiritual modulation? But this, as well as the former, is derived from the old sacramental rite in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, born of Joseph, Ephrem 8603 and Manasses; with his hands laid on them and interchanged, and indeed so transversely slanted one over the other, that, by delineating Christ, they even portended the future benediction into Christ. 8604 Then, p. 673 over our cleansed and blessed bodies willingly descends from the Father that Holiest Spirit. Over the waters of baptism, recognising as it were His primeval seat, 8605 He reposes: (He who) glided down on the Lord “in the shape of a dove,” 8606 in order that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be declared by means of the creature (the emblem) of simplicity and innocence, because even in her bodily structure the dove is without literal 8607 gall. And accordingly He says, “Be ye simple as doves.” 8608 Even this is not without the supporting evidence 8609 of a preceding figure. For 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 8610 of celestial wrath, when she had been sent her way out of the ark, and had returned with the olive-branch, a sign which even among the nations is the fore-token of peace; 8611 so by the self-same law 8612 of heavenly effect, to earth—that is, to our flesh 8613 —as it emerges from the font, 8614 after its old sins flies the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens where is the Church, the typified ark. 8615 But the world returned unto sin; in which point baptism would ill be compared to the deluge. And so it is destined to fire; just as the man too is, who after baptism renews his sins: 8616 so that this also ought to be accepted as a sign for our admonition.