totaliter fomite subtracto"). About the festival of the Conception, he says that the Roman Church does not observe it herself, yet it tolerates the custom of other churches : " Unde talis celebritas non est totaliter repro- banda." Such is the testimony of the most eminent mediiBval divines, to which we need not add names of less weight. It is not to be wondered at that, in the face of the difficulties to be encountered by tlie modern defenders of the immaculate conception, cardinal Per- rone, " the general rector of the Koman College," and " the prince of contemporary theologians," is led to ar- gue that if these scholastic divines had reasoned correct- ly from what they conceded about the birth of the Vir- gin, they would have made her conception immaculate ; also, that wliat they teach can all be best explained in harmony with the doctrine; or, if not so, that they taught what they did as private teachers ; as also tliat they were ignorant of antiquity ; and again, that their views on original sin were such as allowed them to speak as they did ; in fine, that they did not have any guidance from an infallible decision in what they utter- ed ; and that while they were wrangling in the schools, the dogma was making its way among the people. AU this goes to show that the mediaeval testimomj is against it ; that, as far as the Middle Ages are concerned, only isolated opinions are for the doctrine, and the weight of authority is against it. The only distinct argumenta- tive attempt which Perrone makes to parry the force of their authority and arguments is the assertion that these doctors of the schools, when they speak of the concep- tion of Mary, have reference to what he calls the first, or active conception, and not to the passive, or the infusion of the soul into the seed. But this explanation is irrel- evant, for two reasons ; one is, that many of these doc- tors do not make this distinction, and, of course, tliey in- clude both parts of the conception in their statement. They make the distinction between " conception" and " sanctirtcation," and say that all that precedes sanctiti- cation belongs to the " conception," and is infected with original sin ; this, of course, includes the " passive" con- ception. Another reason that invalidates this mode of explanation is, that some of these doctors do make the very distinction in question, and yet maintain that the whole conception, both active and passive, was in origi- nal sin. Tlius Alexander of Hales says that " the Vir- gin after her nativity, and after the infusion of the soul into the body, was sanctified ;" Bonaventura asserts that the infusion of grace may have been soon after the infu- sion of the soul, and Aquinas declares expressly that the cleansing can only be from original sin ; that the fault of original sin can only be in a rational creature, and, there- fore, t\\^t before the infusion of the rational soul the Vir- gin was not sanctified. In fact, this mode of meeting the difliculty can only be carried through by supposing that the medieval divines believed that original sin could exist in the mere fleshly material derived from pa- rents, an opinion widely abhorrent to tlieir well-known views. "We may therefore well say that the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary, the mother of Christ, is a " novelty in theology," for the historical rec- ords of antiquity are silent ; in the jMiddle Ages the great authorities are divided ; and in modern times, as our historical sketch has shown, there have been per- petual contests and divisions. Twenty years ago hard- ly a single name of eminence among the Koman Catlio- lics of Germany would have pronounced in its favor. Spain, it is true, continued her devotions, but France was inditferent, until the Ultramontane party began to gain power, and to look about for the means of arousing popular feeling in behalf of the papacy.
There remains for us now only to consider the doc- trine as opposed to the doctrine of original sin. The very necessity for a miraculous conception in the case of him who was to be without sin [see Inx'ARXATion] is in itself a proof that every person conceived in a nat- ural manner must be conceived in sin [see Nature, Hu- man], and the Bible is too express and unmistakable