Noah In The Ark

Omnibus igitur qui extra arcam fuerunt, interemptis, derelictus est Noe solus in arca cum iis qui cum ipso erant. Non indiget interpretatione sermo simplicior. Concurrit intellectus cum littera. Altior autem et interior significatio demonstrat justum virum, amatoremque sapientiae, tamquam arborem fructuosam, internecatis quae escam ejus solebant arrodere, comam obumbrare, coarctare processus ramorum, velut exsortem irrationabilium passionum solum remansisse cum suis. Sui autem sunt purae animi disceptationes, quae virtuti adhaereant. Et bene addidit in arca remansisse, quasi vix credibile amputatis corporalibus passionibus videretur eum adhuc versari in corpore: quo licet jam terrenis careret contagiis, incorruptam licet, corporis tamen adhuc substantiam reservabat: et velut incorporeus in corpore, superferebatur diluvio, non absorbebatur; corpus quidem gerens quasi in arcae positus interno, sed qui corpus ipsum, insuperabilis passionibus, quasi incorporeus, in medio tantorum motuum gubernaret. Sanctus Ambrosius Mediolanensis, De Noe et Arca, Caput XV Source: Migne PL 14.386d-387b

Therefore with all those who were outside the ark destroyed, Noah alone remained on the ark with those who were with him. 1 This passage is not without a simple interpretation. The understanding runs along with the letter. But there is a higher and more profound meaning that speaks of the righteous man, and the lover of wisdom, as a fruitful tree, whose fruit those destroyed were accustomed to gnaw, and to overshadow the leaves, and to break off the growing branches, he who alone exempt from irrationial passions remained with his own. For they are pure judges of the soul, who adhere to virtue. And well it is added that he remained in the ark, since it is scarcely credible that having been cut off from the corporeal passions he would seem yet tossed about in the body, he who now should be free of worldly infections, and incorrupt, though he was yet set in the substance of the body. So as something incorporeal dwelling in a body he was carried about on the flood, and did not sink, placed within the ark as borne by a body, but he as something incorporeal steered that body with its insuperable passions in the midst of great waves. Saint Ambrose, On Noah and the Ark, Chap 15 1 Gen. 7.23