the official religion of the Roman Empire, illustrate the dangers faced by influential church leaders in a society now committed to the Christian faith. Close analysis of Ambrose’s statements about the cross reveals the seeds of certain textual explanations and theological arguments that would later be employed in defending definite atonement in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. For example, Ambrose employs the “double jeopardy” argument so often associated with seventeenth-century Puritans