This work is a polemical treatise against the Novatians, a schismatic church which refused communion with Christians who lapsed during the persecutions. The work is also edited in SChr 179.

BEDE, in his COMMENTARIUS IN EPISTOLAS SEPTEM CATHOLICAS, cites the sentence "Omnes homines sub peccato nascimur, quorum ipse ortus in vitio est," which he might have taken directly from De paenitentia (cf. Hurst, CCSL 121.327), or (as Laistner 1935 p 247 suggests, referring to De Abraham by oversight) from an intermediate source. The sentence was cited several times, with attribution to Ambrose, by Augustine against the Pelagian Julianus (e.g., Contra Iulianum II.iii.5, PL 44.675.10-11).

For the Oxford manuscript, a florilegium of works by Ambrose, see Webber 1992 (p 147).