Mary

and that the only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, for our salvation, came down to earth by the good pleasure of the Father and the working together of the Holy Spirit, conceived without seed in the womb of the holy Virgin and Mother of God, Mary, through the Holy Spirit, and born of her without corruption, and becoming a perfect man;

likewise embracing in the same sense the images of his undefiled Mother and of all the saints.

Therefore the Maker himself of all creation and the Creator of our race became man for our sake, and coming to earth from a holy Virgin dwelt among men;

" It knew that the sex of Mary, and thereafter of the Church, would profit him.

" But by saying "his womb," it remains that he showed someone of his race, of whose womb the flesh of Christ would be the fruit, which flowered from the womb of Mary.

In short, even the Jews, when at any time they dare to lie in order to cast us down — as though the Scripture contained not "a virgin," but "a young woman," who should conceive and bear — are refuted from this very point, that nothing could seem a sign which is an everyday matter, namely the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman.

but these men, thrusting all this aside, drag knowledge to a single meaning, the contemplation of the very substance of God.

And what need was there of the holy Virgin, if the God-bearing flesh was not to be assumed from the lump of Adam?

By "sword" he means the testing word, the discerner of thoughts, which pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts.

And since the virgin from whom Christ was to be born ought to draw her lineage from the seed of David, as we noted above, the prophet plainly says in what follows:

Since no man at all was conscious of the birth of Christ in the conceiving, when the virgin Mary was found pregnant by the word of God, and because his life would be taken from the earth.

« Arise, take the child and his mother and go off with them to Miṣr » (1).

for some say that, after giving birth, when examined by the midwife, she was found a virgin.

You would be just as safe as that wise mother was, who said "Mary, just go up to the nursery, and see what Baby's doing, AND TELL HIM NOT TO DO IT!

perhaps not to be believed of the Father, although written — whom these men bring down into the womb of Mary, and set in the tribunal of Pilate, and shut up in the tomb of Joseph.

Mary glorifies the Lord — Christ had moved within.

— since every degree of the race is reckoned from the last to the principal, so that now they may know that the flesh of Christ adheres not only to Mary, but also to David through Mary, and to Jesse through David.

Whithersoever you twist the saying, either it is of Mary's flesh that which is of the seed of David, or it is of David's seed that which is of Mary's flesh.

" We acknowledge, then, the contradictable sign — the conception and delivery of the virgin Mary, of which those Academics say, "She bore and bore not, a virgin and no virgin" — as though, even if it were to be so said, it would not better befit us to say it.

For the Virgin conceived in her womb not figuratively, and bore Emmanuel, "God with us," Jesus, not obliquely;

that this Word, called his Son, was variously seen in the name of God by the patriarchs, was always heard in the prophets, at last was brought down, by the Spirit and power of God the Father, into the virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, born of her, came forth as Jesus Christ;

Did anything lie hid from John, most beloved of the Lord, reclining on his bosom, to whom alone the Lord pointed out Judas the betrayer beforehand, whom he commended in his own place as a son to Mary?