IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 507 IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
Eome with higher honor and success.' The controver- sy of seven hundred years is brought to a final decision ; Kome is committed irrevocably to the worship of the 'Virgin mother of God, conceived without original sin.' ' Roma locuta est,' and doubt is now heresy. The work begun by the third general council at Ephesus in 431, proclaiming Mary ' the mother of God,' is declared to be consummated by the papal decree of Dec. 8, 1854, as- serting tlie privilege of her immaciUate conception on the authority of Peter's chair." For an account of the history of the dogma, and a full discussion of its theo- logical merits, see Smith, in Methodist Quarterhj Review, April, 1855. See also The Official Documents connected with the Definition of the Dof/ma of the Immucidate Con- ception (Lat. and Eng.), published with the approbation of the Abp. of Baltimore (Bait. 185G, 8vo). See Con-
CEPTIOX.
Theology of the Doctrine, — The tlieology of the doc- trine of the immaculate conception of Mary has been the subject of many distinguished writers in the Ro- man, Greek, and Protestant churches. The greatest difficulties which the advocates of the doctrine have to contend against are really the following three: Lit lacks the evident support of the Holy Scriptures. 2. It lacks the authority of the early Church, and may well be termed " a comparative novelty in theology." 3. It is directly and most distinctly opposed to the doctrine of original sin.
As to the first, the scriptural arguments advanced by the advocates, they are certainly very slight and unten- able, and have been virtually yielded by the best of the Eoman Catholic authorities, such as Perrone {De Im- mac. B.V. Marim conceptu, etc., p. 35 sq., 57 sq., 112 sq.). There are only two passages which the best and most learned of Eome have adduced. The first of these is Gen. iii, 15, the npuTivayytXiov of divine revelation : "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it (she) shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." " The ar- gumentation here is curious. The received Vulgate reading, not found, however, in all the copies, is ' ipsa,' she; while the Hebrew reads Nlln, he, or it; Jerome, too, reads ' ipse ;' Sixtus V's edition of the Septuagint reads avrog." The best Roman critics (see De Rossi's criticism in Pusey's Eirenicon, ii, 385) discard the read- ing as it stands in the received Vulgate. Perrone, however, contends that it is indifferent which read- ing is adopted, because, at any rate, Jlary coidd not have had the power to conquer the serpent except through Christ. But how does this prove the immac- ulate conception — give to the dogma "a firm founda- tion?" Simply for the reason that in these words a "special privilege is conferred upon ]Mary," and that special privilege could " only have been the immunity from original sin." But the privilege conferred is sole- ly, even on the author's own ground, that she should be in some way a means of subduing Satan, and that she was this as the mother of our Lord. To assert that, in order to be the mother of Christ, she must be free from original sin, is purely to beg the whole question. The " Letters Apostolic" of Pius IX upon the dogma sanc- tion infallibly the application of the clause " bruise thy head" to INIary, who, the pope says, " has crushed the serpent's head with her immaculate foot." Another pas- sage adduced, upon which Perrone lays less stress than on the one already cited, is the angelic salutation Luke i, 28, comp. 30, coupled with the words spoken by Eliz- abeth, Luke i, 42 : " Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee : blessed art thou among women . . . Fear not, Mary, for thou hast foimd favor with God . . . Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." They argue that the greeting
Xalpt, K(xapi-u)^ikvr], translated m the Vulgate by •
■ gratia plena, means fulness of grace in a sense
that necessitates exemption, from the very beginning of existence, from any possible taint of sin, and that the same meaning must necessarily be allowed to the ex-
pression " blessed art thou among women'" (comp. Lie- bermann, Instit. Thcol. ii, 833 ; Perrone, Prcelect. Theol. ii, G51). Roman Catholic writers assign, however, no reason why these words shoidd be so interpreted. " They arc, in fact, uncritically and iUogically forced into the service of the doctrine, and, as in the case of the ' Prot- evangelium' of the O. T., they offer no real support of it whatever." As for other passages of a mystical type which are used as a secondary evidence, they woidd be of value only as confirming and illustrating any in which the fact was directly and midoubtedly stated. Certain it is that in the gospels Mary is represented as she is, and not as an immaculate being ; that neither in the Acts nor in the Epistles, notwithstanding Paul's mi«ute description of Christ's scheme of salvation, is she mentioned at all. The great trouble, in short, with Roman Catholic theologians, is that they transfer the sayings of the prophets and of the apostles concerning Jesus Christ, and all the passages which point to one mediator between God and man, virtually to Mary, the mother of Christ, instead of assigning this position to Christ, the Son of God.