Patristic Quote for the Day

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 hearld which announced to the earth the assuagement of celestial wrath, when it had been sent its way out of the ark, and had returned with the olive-branch, a sign which even among the nations is a token of peace; so by the selfsame law of heavenly effect, to earth - that is, to our flesh - 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 the heavens, where is the church, the typified ark. - Tertullian, *On Baptism* (cited in *For All the Saints* vol. 2, p. 298)