deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had in Mary a mother upon
352 ox FAITH AND THI<; CriEED. [chap. IV.
and leaving it * without detriment. This temporal disjiensation is in many ways craftily assailed by the heretics. But if any one shall have grasped the catholic faith, so as to believe that the entire nature of man was assumed by the Word of God, that is to say, body, soul, and spirit, he has sufficient defence against those parties. For surely, since that assumption was effected in behalf of our salvation, one must be on his guard lest, as he believes that there is something belonging to our nature which sustains no relation to that assumption, this something may fail also to sustain any relation to the salvation.^ And seeing that, with the exception of the form of the members, which has been imparted to the varieties of living objects with differences adapted to their different kinds, man is in nothing separated from the cattle but in [the possession of] a rational spirit (rationali spiritu), which is also named mind (mens), how is that faith sound, according to which the belief is maintained, that the Wisdom of God assumed that part of us which we hold in common with the cattle, while He did not assume that which is brightly illumined by the light of wisdom, and which is man's peculiar gift ?
9. Moreover, those parties^ also are to be abhorred who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had in Mary a mother upon earth ; while that dispensation has honoured both sexes, at once the male and the female, and has made it plain that not only that sex which He assumed pertains to God's care, but also that sex by which He did assume this other, in that He bore [the nature of] the man {virum gcrcndo), [and] in that He was born of the woman. Neither is there anything to compel us to a denial of the mother of the Lord, in the circumstance that this word was spoken by Him : " Woman, what have I to do with thee ? Mine hour is not yet come." * But He rather admonishes us to understand that, in respect of His being God, there was no mother for Him, tlie part of whose personal majesty {cvjiis vwjrsfatis iicrsonam) He was preparing
Des(rens. With less point, deferens has been suggested = bearing it, or
(IrlivcrinK it.
' Or it may = he should fail to have any relation to the salvation.
" Kcferring to the Alanicheans. * John IL 4.