§ 83. THE WOKSUIP OF MAEY. MARIOLOGY. 417
predicate of Mary. After the fourth century it was taken not merely in a moral sense, but in the physical also, as meaning that Mary conceived and produced the Lord clauso utero.' This, of course, required tlie supposition of a miracle, like the passage of the risen Jesus through the closed doors. Mary, therefore, in the Catholic view, stands entirely alone in the history of the world in this respect, as in others : that she was a married virgin, a wife never touched by her husband."
Epiphanius, in his seventy-eighth Heresy, combats the advocates of the opposite view in Arabia toward the end of the fourth century (367), as heretics under the title of Antidikomarianites, opposers of the dignity of Mary, i. e., of her perpetual virginity. But, on the other hand, he condemns, in tlie seventy -ninth Heresy, the contemporaneous sect of the Collyridians in Arabia, a set of fanatical women, who, as priestesses, rendered divine worship to Mary, and, perhaps in imitation of the worship of Ceres, offered little cakes {icoXku-
' TertuUian (De came Christ i, c. 23 : Virgo quantum a viro ; non virgo quantum I parhi), Clement of Alex. (Strom, vii. p. 889), and even Epiphanius (Hser. Ixxviii. § 19, where it is said of Christ: OStos fo-Tif dAij^-cus avoiyaiv fiijTpav (UijTpfir), were still of another opinion on this point. Ambrose of Milan is the first, within my knowledge, to propound this miraculous view (Epist. 42 ad Sirioium). He aj:>peals to Ezek. xliv. 1-3, taking the east gate of the temple, which must remain closed because Jehovah passed through it, to refer typically to Mary. " Quae eat haec porta, nisi Maria? Ideo clausa, quia virgo. Porta igitur Maria, per quani Christus intrarit in hunc mundum." De inst. Virg. c. 8 (Op. ii. 262). So Ambr03o also in his hymn, " A solis ortus cardine," and Jerome, Adv. Pelag. 1. ii. 4. The resurrection of Jesus from the closed tomb and the entrance of the risen Jesus throu^ the closed doors, also, was often used as an analogy. The fathers assume that the Btone which sealed the Saviour's tomb, was not rolled away till after the resurrec- Jon, and they draw a parallel between the sealed tomb from which He rose to everlasting life, and the closed gate of the Virgin's womb from which He was bom to earthly life. Jerome, CommcM. in Matth. xxvii. 60 : " Potest novum sepulchrum Marias virginalem uterum demonstrare." Gregory the Great : " Ut ex clauso Virginia utero natus, sic ex clauso sepulchro resurrexit in quo nemo condilus fuerat, et post, quam resurrexisset, se per clausas fores in conspectura apostolorum induxit." Subsequently the catholic view, consistently, removed every other incident of an ordinary birth, such as pain and the flow of blood. While Jerome still would have Jesua bom under all "naturae contumehis," John Damascenus says (De orth. fide, iv. 14): " Since this birth was not preceded by any [carnal] pleasure, it could also have been followed by no pangs." Here, too, a passage of prophecy must serve as a proof: la. Ixvi. 7: "Before she travailed, she brought forth," &c.
* Augustine (De s. virg. c. 6) : " Sola Muiia et spiritu et corporo mater et virga*'
il8 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
piSa) to lier ; lie claims adoration for God and Christ alone. Jerome wrote, about 383, with indignation and bitterness against Helvidius and Jovinian, who, citing Scripture passages and earlier church teachers, like Tcrtullian, maintained that Mary bore children to Joseph ai'ter the birth of Christ. He saw in this doctrine a desecration of the temple of the Holj Ghost, and he even com])ares Helvidius to Erostratus, the destroyer of the temple at Ephesus.' The bishop Bonosus of Sardica was condemned for the same view by the Illyrican bishops, and the Roman bishop Siricius approved the sentence, A. D. 892.
Augustine w^ent a step farther. In an incidental remark against Pelagius, he agreed with him in excepting Mary, " propter honorera Domini," from actual (but not from original) sin." This exception he is willing to make from the uni-
' Helvidius adduces the principal exegetical arguments for his view ; the passages on the Lord's brothers, and especially Matt. i. 25, pressing the words tylvwaKt and €019. Jerome remarks, on the contrary, tli.at the knowmg by no means ncces. sarily denotes nuptial intercourse, and that till does not always fix a limit; e. g., Matt, xxviii. 20 and 1 Cor. xv. 25. In like manner Helvidius laid stress on the expression irpuT oTOKOi, used of Christ, Matt. i. 25; Luke ii. T ; to which Jerome rightly replies that, according to the law, every son who first opens the womb is called tha ^'rst-born, Ex. xxxiv. 19, 20; Num. xviii. 15 ff., whether followed by other children or not. The " brothers of Jesus " he explains to be cousins, sons of Alpheus and the sister of the Virgin Mary, who likewise was called Mary (as he wrongly infers from John xix. 25). The main argument of Jerome, however, is the ascetic one: the overvaluation of celibacy. Joseph was probably only "custos," not "maritus Maria) '" (cap. 19), and their marriage only nominal. He would not indeed deny that there are pious souls among married women and widows, but they are such as have abstained or ceased from living hi conjugal intercour.se (cap. 21). Helvidius, conversely, ascribed equal moral dignity to llie married and the single State. So Jovinian. Comp. § 43.
' De nat. el grat contra Pelag. c. 8(5, § 42 : " Excrpta Rancta virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem Domini nullnm prorsux^ cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo mtcBS/ionem, . . . hac ergo virgine excepta, si omnes illos sanctos et sanctas [whom Pelagius takes for sinless] . . . congregare possemus et interrogare, utnim essent fline peccato, quid fuisse respansuros putaraus: utrum hoc quod iste [Pelagius] dicit, an quod Joannes apostolus " [1 John i. 8] ? In other places, however, Augustino eays, that the flesh of Mary came "de pcccati propagine" (De Gen. ad lit. x. c. 18), And that, in virtue of her descent from Adam, she was subject to death also as the consequence of sin (" Maria ex Adam mortua propter peccatum," Enarrat. in Ps. 84, ■"S, V6\. Tills was also the view of Anselm of Canterbury (f 1109), in his Cur Dcus