§ 81. THE WORSHIP OF MABF. MAEIOLOGY. 419
ver&al sinfulness of the race, but no other. He taught trie sinless birth and life of Mary, but n.it her immaculate conciiption. He no doubt assumed, as afterward Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas, a sanctijicatio in utero^ like that of Jeremiah (Jer. i. 5) and John tlie Baptist (Luke i. 15), whereby, as those two men were fitted for their prophetic office, she in a still higher degree was sanctified by a special operation of tlie Holy Ghost before her birth, and prepared to be a pure receptacle for the divine Logos. Tlie reasoning of Augustine backward from the holiness of Christ to the holiness of His mother was an important turn, wliich was afterward pursued to further results. The same reasoning leads as easily to the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary, thougli also, just as well, to a sinless mother of Mary herself, and thus upward to the beginning of the race, to another Eve who never fell. Augustine's opponent, Pelagius, with his monastic, ascetic idea of holiness and his superficial doctrine of sin, remarkably outstripped him on this point, ascribing to 'Kbxj perfect sinlessness. But, it should be remembered, that his denial of original sin to all men, and his excepting of simdry saints of the Old Testament besides Mary, such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Melchizedek, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, from actual sin,' so that irdvre'i in Eom. v. 12, in his view, means only a majority, weaken the honor he thus appears to confer upon the mother of the Lord. The Augustinian view long continued to prevail ; but at last Pelagius won the victory on this point in the Koman church."
Notwithstanding this exalted representation of Mary, there
homo, ii. 16, where he says of Christ that he assumed sinless manhood "de massa peccatrice, id est de humano genere, quod totiim infectum errat peccato," and of Mary : " Virgo ipsa, unde assumptus est, est in iniquitatibus coucepta, et in peccatia concepit earn mater ejus, et cum originali peccato nata est, quoniam et ipsa in Adam peccavit, in quo omnes peccaverunt." Jerome taught the universal sinfulness with« out any exception, Adv. Pelag. ii. 4.
* See Augustine, De nat. et grat. cap. 36.
" The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was, for the first time after Pelagius, plainly brought forward in 1140 at Lyons, but was opposed by Bernard of Clairvaux (Ep. 174), and thence continued an avowed issue between the Franciscans and Dominicans, till it gained tl e victory in the papaZ bull of 1854»
4:20 THIRD PKRIOD. A.D. 311-590.
appear no clear traces of a proper worship of Mary, as distinct from the worship of saints in general, until the Nestorian controversy of 430. This dispute formed an important turningpoint not only in Cliristology, but in Mariology also. The leading interest in it was, without doubt, tlie connection of the virgin with the mystery of tlie incarnation. The perfect union of the divine and human natures seemed to demand that Mary might be called in some sense the mother of God, ^eor 6Ko<;y Deipara J for that which was bom of her was not merely the man Jesus, but the God-Man Jesus Christ.' The church, however, did, of course, not intend by that to assert that she was the mother of the uncreated divine essence — for this would be palpably absurd and blasphemous — nor that she herself was divine, but only that she was the human point of entrance or the mysterious channel for the eternal divine Logos. Athanasius and the Alexandrian church teachers of the Nicene age, who pressed the unity of the divine and the human in Christ to the verge of monophysitism, had already used this expression frequently and without scruple," and Gregory ISTazianzen even declares every one impious who denies its validity.' Nestorius, on the contrary, and the Antiochian school, who v/cre more devoted to the distinction of the two natures in Christ,
' The expression ShotSko^ does not occur in the Scriptures, and is at best easily misunderstood. The nearest to it is the expression of Elizabeth: 'H /U7)ttj/> tow Kvpiov fiov, Luke i. 43, and the words of the angel Gabriel: Tb ynvd^jLUfvov [iK aov, de te, al. in (e, is not sufficiently attested, and is a later explanatory addition] ^7101' KA7)37)<r€Toi ui'by ©foC, Luke i. 35. But with what right the distinguished Roman Catholic professor Reithmayr, in the Catholic Encyclop. above quoted, voL vi. p. 844, puts into the mouth of Elizabeth the expression, " mother of God my Lord," I cannot see ; for there is no such variation in the reading of Luke i. 43.
^ The earliest witnesses for deoroKus are Origcn (according to Socrates, II.E. vli. 32), Euscbius (Vita Const, iii. 43), (^yril of Jeru.s. (Catcch. x. 146), Athanasius (Orat iii. c. Arian. c. 14, 33), Didymus (De Tririit. i. 31, 94; ii 4, 133), and Gregory Naz. (Orat. li. 738). But it should be remembered that Hesychius, presbyter in Jerusalem (f 343) calls David, as an ancestor of Christ, dtoiraTCDp (Photius, Cod. 275), and that in many apocrypha James is called aSeAc/xideor (Gieseler, i. iL 134). It is also worthy of note that Augustine (f 130), with all his reverence for Mary, never calla her mater Dei or Deipara ; on the contrary, he seems to guard against it, Tract, viii. in Ev. Joann. c. 9. " Secundum quod Deus erat [Christus] matrem non habebat."
* Orat. IL 738: tins ov ^toiiKOv tV Mopfav {ino\ufji^dffi, X'''P'' ^'''' '''^^ ^*^ rrrrot.