Chapter VII: The Way in Which Original Sin is Propagated.
CHAPTER VII: ON THE WAY IN WHICH ORIGINAL SIN IS PROPAGATED
Original sin is propagated by carnal generation.
§ 98. Now that the subject of original sin has been explained, the way in which this evil is propagated must be noted. But we maintain that this original stain is propagated into all the descendants of Adam through carnal generation because: (I) We are born “flesh of flesh” (John 3:6), we are “conceived in sin” (Ps. 51:5), and we are “shaped in the womb from an unclean seed” (Job 14:4). Therefore sins and uncleanness are propagated through carnal generation.
(II) “We are by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Therefore by being born we contract something by which we are guilty of the wrath of God and of divine judgment.
(III) As all people come from Adam, so also in the same way sin passes through Adam into them. Yet all people come from Adam by way of carnal generation. Therefore sin passes into all people by carnal generation.
(IV) “Adam begot a son after his own image” (Gen. 5:[3]). Therefore by begetting he propagated his own image, corrupted by sin, into his son and all his descendants.
If only Eve had sinned, whether she would have propagated original sin into her descendants.
§ 99. Here certain questions must be explained. (I) The Scholastics ask: If Eve alone had sinned, and Adam had remained in innocence, would the sin of Eve have been passed on to her descendants? Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 81, art. 5) denies this. He says: “Original sin is passed into children by the parent to the extent that he moves toward begetting children. The active principle in begetting comes from the father, while the mother supplies the material.” Bellarmine (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 4, ch. 13): “All are agreed that sin, properly so called, would not have been passed over into her descendants if Eve alone had sinned. Yet they disagree in this: that some think the need to die and the other troubles which mortality brings with it would have passed on to her children from the sin of Eve alone. On the contrary, others argue that neither sin nor the need to die would have a place in the children of Adam from the sin of Eve.”1
We respond. (1) This is a fruitless and vain question, for if Eve alone had sinned, Adam undoubtedly would not have “known” her [Gen. 4:1].
(2) If the opposite were true, surely sin would have been propagated into their children. For though the mother may not be the active principle of generation, nevertheless she supplies the material which, on the basis of the hypothesis, was stained and contaminated by sin and which Eve would have communicated to the fetus. Thus from an unclean seed an unclean fetus would have been conceived and born.
(3) When the apostle says that sin entered into the world through one man, he is not excluding Eve, because Adam alone did not represent the human race but also Eve, and both parents came together for generation. Moreover, one man is named because spouses “are not two but one flesh” (Gen. 2[:24]; Matt. 19[:5]).
(4) It is absurd to claim that from the sin of Eve only mortality but not sin itself would have been propagated into her children, because “death is the wages of sin” [Rom. 6:23], nor did death enter the world, nor could it have entered, but by the gate of sin [cf. Rom. 5:12].
Whether the sins of the nearest parents pass down into their children.
§ 100. (II) The question arises: Do the sins of the nearest parents pass into their children? Lombard (Sent., 2, dist. 33, sect. 5) answers no, and the rest of the Scholastics follow him, as does also Bellarmine (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 4, ch. 18). With Augustine (Enchirid., ch. 46) we say:
Infants are also bound by the sins of their parents, not only of the first humans but also of their own parents from whom they themselves were born. Nor is this improbably stated. Indeed, there is a divine sentence: “I shall visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons unto the third and fourth generation” [Exod. 20:5]. This surely binds them before they begin to belong to the new covenant by regeneration.
Nor is the objection of Bellarmine valid, that “Augustine and the rest of the fathers are perhaps not speaking about the contagion of guilt [culpae ] but about the communication of punishment.” For:
(1) He shows through the word of doubting [“perhaps”] that he does not attribute much weight to this solution.
(2) The words of Augustine are clear and lucid, for he is connecting the sins of the first parents with those of the nearest parents. But the sin of the first parents is propagated not only by way of punishment but also by way of guilt.
(3) The reason added proves the same thing. For if God wishes to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, surely those very sins of the parents are being communicated to the children, otherwise God would be punishing in the children something of which they were not truly participants, contrary to the words of Ezek. 18:20. Nor would it be possible to give a reason why God would punish to the third and fourth generations only the sins of those who hate Him, if He were not to punish that singular tendency to sin communicated to children by their nearest parents.
(4) The testimony of experience supports this. For just as people afflicted with stone produce [children] afflicted with stone, so from lustful and greedy parents are born children who, more than other people, are prone to lust or greed. Nevertheless, following the moderation of Augustine, we assert that this is said “not improbably,” nor do we do battle for this as an article of faith.
The less significant arguments of the Scholastics and of Bellarmine answering no to the question are these: (1) Biel writes (Sent., 2, dist. 33, q. 1, art. 3): “For sin to be transferred to an offspring, a lack of righteousness and an obligation to have [righteousness] is required, that is, that the child be a person who is obligated to have righteousness in the parent, something which happens if the parent has received righteousness for himself and for his child.”
We respond. We owe God not only complete original righteousness but also the total absence of sins, for that is how we were created at the beginning.
(2) Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 81, art. 2): “Man begets something which is of the same species as himself but is not a second self. Therefore those things which directly pertain to the individual, such as personal actions and the things which pertain to such actions, are not passed on from parents to children.”
We respond. Certainly not the habits themselves but yet the seeds of the habits, certainly not the personal actions but the beginnings of the actions are passed into the child. Indeed, begetting results in something that is the same in species, but not the same in number. Nevertheless who will deny that, in terms of the shape of their bodies and the tendency of their minds, children come closer to their parents than to all other people?
(3) Bellarmine (loc. cit.): “The apostle says that all have become sinners by the sin of one man, and thus he compares Adam and Christ in that the former alone destroyed his entire posterity and the latter alone recreated all His posterity [Rom. 5:12ff.].”
We respond. That comparison is established with regard to original sin, which, it is obvious, comes from one man and adheres to all. But it cannot necessarily be concluded from this that the sins of the nearest parents will by no means be passed over into their children.
(4) “Experience teaches that often men who are quite evil produce men who are quite good, such as Hezekiah, Josiah, and others born of the worst parents, who themselves were very good and, in fact, outstanding.”
We respond. The propagation of original sin passes into all people and is constant, but the mercy of God quite often establishes bounds and limits on the propagation of the other sins.
Whether the embryo which is not yet ensouled is infected with sin.
§ 101. (III) The question arises: Does an embryo which is not yet ensouled possess true and proper sin?2 Bellarmine (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 5, ch. 16) calls this “an incredible paradox and the madness of an Illyrian3 or Manichaean,” because Chemnitz has affirmed this (in Exam. Concil. Trid.).
But let him ponder: (1) The emphasis of the words of Scripture, Job. 14:4: “Who will give a clean from an unclean seed?” (for this is how the Vulgate translation reads). Therefore the very seed from which the fetus is formed is unclean and stained with sin.
But let him ponder: (1) The emphasis of the words of Scripture, Job. 14:4: “Who will give a clean from an unclean seed?” (for this is how the Vulgate translation reads). Therefore the very seed from which the fetus is formed is unclean and stained with sin. Ps. 51:[5]: “I was begotten (
) in iniquities, and in sin did my mother conceive me (
).” Lest anyone think that we were first infected only at the time when our mothers delivered us, he should listen to the prophet asserting that his mother warmed him in sins; that is, in the first heat of conception the poison of sin along with the actual heat was poured into him. Nor would it be absurd to assign to this what is said in Job 15:16: “A man drinks iniquity like water.” For the word “drink” here (
) considering the nature of the circumstances, can be referred to the nourishing of an infant in the womb through the umbilical cord. As soon as the fetus draws nourishment from its mother, it immediately also drinks in sin.
(2) The words of the fathers. Ambrose (Apol. David, ch. 11): “Before we are born, we are stained with the infection. Before we have used the light, we have received the injury of origin. We are conceived in iniquities, etc. David justly deplored tearfully within himself the filth of nature, which stain begins in a man before his life began.” Ibid.: “Nor were the days of his maternal conception without sin, because we are conceived in the sin of our parents.”
Bernard (Sermon 4 in nativ., col. 43): “I was stained and defiled in my very origin and roots; my conception was unclean,” etc.
Anselm writes (De conc. virg., ch. 7): “People have been conceived in original sin before the infusion of the soul.”
(3) In fact, Bellarmine should acknowledge his own words, for he writes (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 4, ch. 4, cols. 266, 267): “If God alone can cleanse a man conceived from an unclean seed, it follows that the same man has been unclean from conception,” etc. Column 267:
David says that he was wretched from his very conception [Ps. 51:5]. The word cholaletti4 refers to the formation of the body, which God causes after parents have had intercourse, and the words 
, “behold in sins,” properly mean true sin. The word 
, “she warmed,”5 refers to that time when the mother fosters and keeps warm by fostering the already warm and ensouled fetus in the womb. But it is certain that no sin of the parents intervenes either when the conceived child is formed or when it is nourished in the womb when it has already been formed.
Bellarmine contradicts himself with these statements. For if a human is unclean from his very conception, if the fetus is subject to sin even at the time when its body is being formed, surely an embryo which is not yet ensouled does have true sin. [Bellarmine again,] (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., ch. 16, col. 327):
All the children of Adam are said to be conceived in sin as soon as the fetus begins to exist in its mother’s womb, though unformed and soulless. For though sin cannot properly exist except in a rational soul, and though the fetus begins to be shaped a long time before ensoulment, nevertheless because a human does then really begin to exist with regard to one part (for which reason children are said in 2 Macc. 7[:27] to gestate for nine months in the wombs of their mothers), and because that part takes its origin from a corrupted nature and can correctly be said to be defective, and because it is in debt for this from the very force of its generation so that, as soon as it has become the possessor of a rational soul, a human being thus exists as a sinner and a child of divine wrath [Eph. 2:3], thus people are not unjustly said to be begotten in iniquity right from the first. St. Anselm explains this with many words in his book De conceptu virginali et peccato originali (ch. 7). In regard to this first conception, he explains it from Ps. [51:5]: “For behold, I was conceived in iniquities.”
Those are the words of Bellarmine.
Original sin did not enter the world by imitation.
§ 102. From this theorem concerning the propagation of original sin through carnal generation we deduce four corollaries. Let this be the first: Sin was introduced into the world through Adam not only by imitation, as Pelagius once intended and in this way corrupted the words of the apostle in Rom. 5:12. We have said more about this subject earlier [§§ 62–63].
The human nature of Christ was not conceived in sin.
§ 103. The second corollary (which itself is also worthy of observation) is: The human nature of Christ was not conceived in sin, nor was it stained with this filth, for “the Word of God was made flesh not by a man’s seed but by a mystical breathing, and the fruit of the womb blossomed.”6 “The Holy Spirit came upon Mary” (Luke 1:35); that is, an extraordinary and heavenly action beyond the common course of nature worked in her so that the virgin conceived a fetus beyond the [usual] course of things and without a man’s seed. It also cleansed the mass from which the flesh of Christ was shaped, and kept it apart from sin (Heb. 7:26). As Luther says (commentary on Genesis 38): “He wiped away the poison of sin and purged away its leaven so that what was born from her was holy (Luke 1:35), and the Messiah was the Holy of Holies (Dan. 9:24) and was, according to His human nature, like us in every respect except for sin alone (Heb. 4:15).”7 Christ was conceived without the concupiscence of a father’s flesh and without harm to the integrity of His mother, because such a birth befit the future Savior of all people, who was also to have in Himself the substance of the human nature and was not to know the defilements of the human flesh.
§ 104. Augustine writes about this subject (Letter 157 ad Optat.):
Regardless of the way the origin of souls occurs, whether they are propagated from the one [soul] (of the first man) or from no other, nonetheless it is unlawful to doubt that the soul of the Mediator drew no sin from Adam. For if no [soul] is propagated from another when all are bound by the propagated flesh of sin, how much less should it be believed that a soul could have come from the propagation of a sinful woman, the flesh of which [soul] came from a virgin who conceived not out of lust but out of faith, so that He might be in the likeness of the sinful flesh but not in the flesh of sin. But if the other [souls] are held subject to the sin of the soul of the first sinful woman because they have been propagated from her, surely she to whom her only Son joined Himself in harmony either did not contract sin from her, or He absolutely was not taken from her. For neither is it impossible for Him who forgave our sins to take a soul for Himself without sin, nor is it impossible for Him who created a new soul for the flesh which He made out of the ground without a parent to have created a new [soul] for the flesh which He took from the woman without a man’s seed.
Damascenus (Orth. fid., bk. 3, ch. 2):
After the consent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit came upon her, cleansing her, and offering her the receptive and generative virtue of the divinity of the Word. Then the wisdom and power of the Most High God, which subsists in itself, overshadowed her. The Son of God, consubstantial with the Father, as a divine seed, also formed for Himself from her chaste and utterly pure blood a flesh animated with a rational and intellectual soul, the firstfruits of our form not by way of insemination but by way of a creative work through the Holy Spirit, etc.
Even the children of the reborn are born subject to original sin.
§ 105. Let the third corollary be: Even the children of the faithful and the reborn bring this original defilement with them into the world.
Zwingli claims (De baptismo): “There is nothing in the children of believers before Baptism which can properly be called sin.”
Calvin (Instit., bk. 4, ch. 15, sect. 22): “The children of believers are not baptized that they who had previously been strangers to the church might then for the first time become the children of God.” Chapter 16, sect. 24: “Isaac” (and other children of the faithful) “was born from him who was accepted into the fellowship of the covenant with a hereditary right according to the formula of the promise, for he was already held in the covenant in his mother’s womb.” And later: “Those babies who take their origin from Christians are received by God into the inheritance of the covenant as soon as they are born.” Again (De rat. eccles. reform., p. 454) he asserts that “a holy offspring is born of believers.”
Beza (Resp. 2 ad colloq. Momp., p. 102): “Those who are saints by grace produce saints from the same grace, being included by faith in the power of the covenant.” Ibid.: “This is the faith of their parents, alien to them in such a way that [the parents’] own [faith] operates for their elect infants by birth for the sealing of the covenant in Baptism; otherwise they ought not be admitted [to Baptism].” Page 103: “As a result of this, they are born as members of Christ.” On p. 118 he declares that “they are born holy.” On p. 129 he affirms that “by being born of devout parents, the right of eternal life has been acquired for them from the form of the covenant.”
[Peter] Martyr [Vermigli] writes (on Genesis 17): “Infants born of the faithful belong to God before Baptism. If they did not have a father or mother united with God, perhaps they have some of their ancestors who were, and thus they are members of the church and consequently saints purely out of the mercy of God, though they may not have true faith in Christ.”
Innocent Gentilletus (Apol. pro Christ. Gallis, ch. 6, no. 2): “As we believe, it is especially by reason of their congruity that children born of parents who belong to the household of God’s house are, as it were, themselves home-born slaves.”
Candidus (in his Notis, note 4, p. 11) asserts that “Christians are born of Christians, as Jews are born of Jews and Turks of Turks.”
Proof from Scripture.
§ 106. But we silence this error of theirs with the following foundations of Scripture: (I) There are general declarations of the Holy Spirit which testify that the descendants of Adam born through carnal generation, propagated from it, are liable to original sin, and yet nowhere are the children of the faithful excepted. John 3:6: “Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh.” Rom. 5:12: “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death passed into all men, in whom all have sinned.”
(II) The same thing that is said in general about all children is stated in particular about the children of the faithful. David was born of circumcised and devout parents, and yet he confesses, Ps. 51:[5], that he “was conceived in iniquities.” The apostle Paul declares clearly about himself and other reborn people, Eph. 2:3: “We were by nature the children of wrath, as were also the rest.” Adam, already reborn and renewed through the Holy Spirit, nonetheless begot a son according to his own image, corrupted with sin, Gen. 5:3.
(III) Baptism is the first approach to the church and to the grace of God and is “the washing of regeneration and of renewal” [Titus 3:5], as we shall teach in its own place [On Holy Baptism (Commonplace XXIII), §§ 101–15, 118–27]. Yet the children of the faithful are also in need of Baptism. Therefore surely before Baptism they were not yet members of the church nor reborn.
(IV) In John 1:12–13 it is clearly shown that the children of the devout become children of God not by being born but by being reborn: “As many as received Christ, to them He gave the power to become the children of God, who believed in His name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of a man, but of God.”
(V) Circumcision in the Old Testament is constituted the same as is Baptism in the New (Col. 2:11). Yet it was only through circumcision that the children of the Israelites were taken into the covenant and grace of God; otherwise they were subject to the threat of God, Gen. 17:14: “Any male who has the foreskin, who did not circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, shall be cut off from his people.” Therefore the children of Christians also are only taken into the covenant of grace through Baptism.
And from the fathers.
§ 107. The ancients teach the same thing when they acknowledge Baptism as the ordinary means of regeneration and salvation; when they declare that all people are born subject to sin; when they respond to the Pelagians, who urge the condition of reborn parents, by saying that carnal generation happens according to the flesh and not according to grace; etc.
Tertullian (Apologet., at the end of ch. 17) says, “Christians are made, not born,” something which Jerome (Ad Laetam.) and Cyprian (bk. 3, Letter 8 ad Fidum) repeat.
Augustine (De pecc. merit. et remiss., bk. 3, ch. 9) writes: “The children of the faithful also contract the infection of the ancient death by their first birth.” He asks (Sermon 14 de verb. apost.): “What response do you make as to why a Christian is not born from Christians except that it is not birth but rebirth which makes Christians?” He explains this with two comparisons: the wild olive from the seed of the olive and the grain with chaff produced from the cleansed grain. These he repeats in De nupt. et concup. (bk. 1, chs. 18ff.), Adv. Julian. (bk. 6, chs. 2ff.), De civit. Dei (bk. 16, ch. 27), and in many other places throughout his writings.
Bede (commentary on Luke 1): “In distinction to our holiness, Jesus is uniquely said to have been born holy. To be sure, though we are made saints, nonetheless we are not born so, because we are bound by the very condition of our corruptible nature, so that we rightly lament, each one of us, with the prophets and say, ‘Behold, I was conceived in iniquities’ [Ps. 51:5].”
Anselm (on 1 Corinthians 7): “Nor are infants born of righteous and holy people, absolved of the guilt of original sin, unless they have been baptized in Christ.”8
The same assertion remains constant for all the rest. Fulbert says it very beautifully:
We know, and know truly, that we have been corrupted by the first birth, cleansed by the second; made captive by the first birth, freed by the second; made earthly by the first birth, heavenly by the second birth; fleshly by the defect of the first birth, spiritual by the benefit of the second birth; children of wrath through the former, children of grace by the latter.
Here I shall cite what Aretius writes (part 1, Problem. 7, f. 88): “The sin that passes into the nature is constituted differently than the benefit, because it is obtained by prayer and is completely unearned. It is not strange for natural things to be propagated naturally, but as the forgiveness of sins is not a matter of nature but of divine grace, so also the gift of divine grace remains in the parents and does not become hereditary.”
The counterargument of Calvin.
§ 108. They argue to the contrary that the propagation of original sin into the children of believers is not denied by them but that it is taught by them that only the children of the faithful belong to the covenant of grace even before Baptism.
We respond. (1) If by being born of reborn parents the children of believers become partakers of divine grace and eternal salvation, surely by being born they will no longer be the children of wrath [Eph. 2:3], for these things directly conflict with each other. Generation from devout parents is the vehicle for divine wrath; therefore it is not the vehicle of grace.
(2) If the children of believers are born holy from holy parents, then surely they are not born susceptible to sin, for these also directly conflict with each other.
(3) Nor is the evasion concerning the sanctity of the covenant valid. Indeed, the approach to Baptism lies open for the children of Christians, and through Baptism they are grafted into the divine covenant and are made into the children of God. Yet they are not born already included in that covenant; that is, they are not grafted into this covenant through the fleshly birth itself, but through the spiritual rebirth in Baptism. They have a right to the thing [jus ad rem] (on account of the divine promises), but they do not have a right in the thing [jus in re] (on account of the fleshly birth subject to sin).
The arguments of the other side. First, Genesis 17[:7]: “I shall be the God of your seed.”
§ 109. These are the more important false foundations. (I) In Gen. 17:7, God promises that He will be “the God of our seed.”
We respond. This is a promise which requires application, and the means of the application was the sacrament of circumcision itself. Verses 9–10: “You shall preserve My covenant; every male among you shall be circumcised.” But if someone wanted to receive this promise absolutely [without means], he would be resisting Him who threatens cutting off for those who cause this covenant of God to be vain through their contempt for circumcision (v. 14).
Here we should place the passage from Acts 2 where that promise of the covenant is explained very beautifully. The apostle Peter warns the Israelites in v. 38 to repent and be baptized, and he adds the reason in v. 39: “For the promise is for you and for your children.” Imagine that the descendants of Abraham were actually in the covenant of grace even before circumcision in the Old Testament and before Baptism in the New—then there would be no sense in the words of the apostle. Therefore the matter comes down to this: God concedes this special prerogative to the descendants of Abraham; the entrance to the covenant of grace lies open to them clearly and ordinarily through the sacrament of circumcision. This divine promise requires faith on our part, and the sacraments are the means for stirring up and increasing [this faith]. When the condition fails, the conditional promise ceases. And thus the apostle declares, Rom. 9:6 and Gal. 3:7: “Not all who are of Israel are Israelites, but those only are the children of Abraham who are of faith.”
Second, 1 Corinthians 7[:14]: “Your children are holy.”
(II) 1 Cor. 7:14: “Your children are holy.
We respond. The sanctity meant is not spiritual and internal (because the apostle states that through marriage to a believer the other unbeliever is sanctified, which cannot be said in reference to internal and spiritual sanctification), but ecclesiastical. Children born of a union of a believing and an unbelieving person are holy; that is, they are considered as born in the church in such a way that access to Baptism lies open to them. Thus Tertullian writes: “They are holy; that is, they are destined for holiness.”
Jerome: “They are candidates for the Christian faith and are established in the privilege of gaining holiness.”
Augustine (De peccat. merit. et remiss., bk. 2, ch. 25):
The apostle has stated what sort of holiness it is which is in the children of the faithful. It does not at all pertain to the question of Baptism and original sin or its remission. For he also says in the very same passage that unbelieving spouses are sanctified in the believing spouses. I do not think that anyone understands this so unfaithfully as though there were something in these words whereby he thinks that an unchristian husband should not be baptized because his wife is a Christian, and that he has obtained forgiveness of sins and is destined to enter into the kingdom of heaven because he is said to have been sanctified in his wife.
Third, [that] infants who die without Baptism are not damned.
(III) “Unless the children of the faithful are defined as holy and in the grace of God before Baptism, it will follow that those who die without Baptism are subject to eternal death.”
We respond. The extraordinary must be distinguished from the common rule. We shall show in its own place in the treatise On Baptism [Commonplace XXIII, §§ 168, 213–19, 235–45] that extraordinarily and in a case of necessity God receives into grace infants who have been offered to Him through the prayers of their parents and of the church, even those infants who die without Baptism. In the same place we shall also see about the remaining arguments of our adversaries.
Was blessed Mary subject to original sin?
§ 110. Let the fourth corollary be: Mary was not excepted by a special privilege such that she was not subject to this original sin. A serious controversy arose over this matter around the year of Christ 1370 between the monks of the Order of Preachers [the Dominicans] and of the Minors or Franciscans. The former asserted that blessed Mary, like other people, was conceived in original sin, but the latter denied it completely. For the enormous deceits of the Preachers in miracles fabricated and invented to confirm their opinion, see Wolf (Cent. 16, year 1507, p. 10, from the Chron. Helvetic. of Stumpffius).
The Franciscans (who have Scotus, Sent., 2, dist. 3, and Thomas of Strasbourg, Sent., 2, dist. 4, preceding them) are followed today by the Jesuits, for Costerus (Christ. instit., bk. 5) writes to Mary: “You have never had a stain of sin, of either that which was propagated by the first parents of the human race or of that which was committed by some fault of yours, even a very insignificant one or easily worthy of pardon. I say, you have done nothing by thought, word, or deed which is not in every way most pleasing to God.”
Suarez (In Thom., p. 3, q. 27, art. 3) writes: “This is the special privilege of the blessed Virgin: she was immune from sin in her first conception.”
Salmeron (commentary on Romans 5, at the beginning of disp. 51) is unashamed to write: “Against the multitude of learned men” (who deny the privilege of the immaculate conception of blessed Mary), “we set forth another crowd, that one nail may be driven out by another, and we also set forth the consensus of almost the entire church and the harmonious opinion of every university, especially of that which is chief, Paris,” etc.
The disagreements of the Papists on this question.
§ 111. But not all the Papists claim the immaculate conception of Mary (as will become clear later [§ 115]), nor do those who claim it free the blessed Virgin from original sin in one and the same way. There are some who think: “The blessed Virgin did not even sin in Adam potentially”; and they add: “The rule of not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was indeed given to the first parent for himself and for all his descendants, but the Virgin Mary was excepted. As a consequence, while she was in the loins of Adam, she did taste the forbidden fruit, but she did not sin because the prohibition did not pertain to her.” (Bellarmine, ch. 16, col. 328, says this opinion is “not quite safe, because the Virgin herself was also redeemed by the blood of Christ.”) But some say:
(by which she began to exist as an unformed and unsouled fetus in the womb)
was similar to the conception of others, but the soul of Mary at the first instant of its creation and its infusion was without the stain of original sin, so that her person as it actually existed never possessed sin. In this respect, Mary differs from the rest of the saints who are freed from original sin by the grace of God and the merit of the Passion of Christ, because they are commonly freed after birth, a few others before birth but after ensoulment, but only Mary at the very instant of ensoulment.
(Bellarmine supports this opinion in the aforementioned place.)
But in Legenda sanctorum [of Jacobus de Voragine] it is said, “Mary was conceived not from conjugal intercourse but from the kiss of Joachim which fixed in his wife, Anna.” And Galatinus (De arc. cath. verit., bk. 7) reports “the matter of the Virgin Mary was produced at the beginning and was placed in and preserved in the body of Adam, which he afterward passed on to Seth, then to Enosh, then by the law of succession to the rest [of those descendants] until at last to St. Joachim; from this” (matter) “the Virgin Mary was formed.”
From this it would follow that even the first conception (as Bellarmine calls it) of blessed Mary was immune from every stain of sin. Biel (Sent., 3, dist. 3, q. 1, conclusion 3) claims: “Blessed Mary was sanctified in the womb after her ensoulment, before she was born into the light of this world,” from which it would follow that Mary was not free from original sin at the very instant of ensoulment (which Bellarmine wants), but after ensoulment before birth. However, Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 27, art. 1) says that this “is concluded only rationally, and nothing in the canon of Scripture is taught about this subject.”
Some claim: “The kindling [of sin] in the blessed Virgin was completely removed and wiped away.” In regard to this idea, Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 27, art. 3) claims: “This seems to be related to the dignity of the mother but actually removes some of the dignity of Christ.” But others think: “Through the fullness of grace, the kindling [of sin] was so weakened that she could not incline to sin.” Finally, there are some who think: “The idea of the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin is an article of faith” (for instance, Clichtovaeus and all who follow the Council of Basel). However, others claim that the idea “is at least pious and probable but is not a matter of faith” (such as Bellarmine and others).
Is the immaculate conception of the blessed Mary an article of faith for the Papists?
§ 112. As far as we are concerned, our business will be with Bellarmine. He first says (De amiss. gratiae et stat. peccati, bk. 4, ch. 15): “Among Catholics, the fact that the blessed Virgin was conceived without sin is not considered as a certain and investigated matter and as something to be held by the Catholic faith.” And thus he gravely accuses Bugenhagen (commentary on Jeremiah 44) for having written: “Among Catholics” (Papists) “this is considered as an article of faith.” [Bellarmine continues:] “The Council of Basel indeed does define this, but not as an article of faith, nor was the council approved by the apostolic see.”
We respond. Biel (Sent., 3, dist. 3, q. 1, art. 2) will be able to instruct us correctly in regard to this matter:
The church has ordered that the Festival of the Conception be celebrated universally. But the authority of the church is greater than the authority of any saint, at least after the canonical writers. It was determined in the Council of Basel and was published in writing in session 36 of the seventeenth day of September, 1439, in these words: “The doctrine declaring that the glorious Virgin Mary, the mother of God, was, because of a singular prevenient and operative grace of a divine gift, never actually subject to original sin but was always immune to original sin and actual fault and was always holy and immaculate: we define that this doctrine, [which is] pious and in harmony with the worship of the church, the catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture, must be held and embraced by all Catholics as approved. Henceforth it is not permitted to preach or teach to the contrary.” This is from the original document.
(These are the words of Biel from whom we conclude: Anything defined as in harmony with the worship of the church, the catholic faith, right reason, and Holy Scripture, and as something to be accepted by all in such a way that no one is permitted to teach the contrary, is defined as something that must be considered an article of faith. Yet the council defines the immaculate conception of Mary in this way.)
Biel goes on and orders people to notice: “Pope Sixtus IV has repeatedly approved the history published at his instigation regarding this festival, in which is expressly contained that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin. He also has repeatedly approved that generous indulgences be lavished on all who are present in the churches on the Festival of the Conception publicly singing, speaking, or [simply] present.” See the same constitution of Sixtus, [Ius canonicum,] c. Cum praeexcelsa, Extra., De reliquiis et vener. sanctorum.
Moreover, some of the Papists themselves claim that a council is above the pope. Against them the counterargument that the Council of Basel was not approved by the Roman pope would not hold. In regard to this matter, see the history of this council as published by Aeneas Sylvius.
Clichtovaeus (commentary on Damascenus’s De orth. fid., bk. 3, ch. 2, p. 168): “That at her conception the most holy Virgin was contaminated by the infection of primeval fault contracted from the beginning is contrary not only to the determination of the Catholic Church and to the piety of faith but also to the sacred writings and Scriptures.”
Surius (Comm. rerum gestar., p. 20) reports that “at the Academy of Mainz none of the professors of theology are promoted without taking an oath that they affirm a belief in the immaculate conception of the Virgin.”
Salmeron (commentary on Romans 5, disp. 51, § Deinde) writes: “At the Academy of Paris no one is considered worthy of the title Master in Theology who has not first bound himself by a religious oath to protect and do battle for this privilege of the Virgin.”
Canisius (De virgine Deipara, bk. 1, ch. 7) testifies that the same thing was customary at the Academy in Spain. So what is so strange about the fact that Bugenhagen declared that this opinion must be considered as an article of faith in the Roman Church?
It is proved from Scripture that blessed Mary was subject to original sin.
§ 113. In the second place, Bellarmine writes: “The opinion concerning the immaculate conception of the Virgin is neither heretical nor erroneous, because it is contrary to neither the Word of God nor the declaration of the church.”
We respond. On the contrary, Scripture, the ancient doctors, some of the Scholastics, and therefore some of the Papists themselves testify that blessed Mary was conceived in sin.
From Scripture we produce the following arguments. (1) “Where the law does not distinguish, we also ought not distinguish,” say the lawyers. In like manner, where Scripture does not distinguish, we also ought not distinguish. But Scripture declares in general that all who are propagated by carnal generation from Adam are guilty of original sin. Rom. 5:12: “Sin entered through one man, and death spread to all men, in whom all sinned.” John 3:6: “Whatever is born of flesh is flesh.” Rom. 3:23: “All have sinned.” Bellarmine responds coldly that probable reasons are given for the special privilege of Mary. We shall see later what sort these are [§§ 116–20]. Special privileges are derived from clear and express words when they restrict a general rule.
(2) Scripture assigns this privilege to Christ alone: that He “is separated from the sinners” (Heb. 7:26), that the conception of Christ alone is pure, holy, and unstained. Blessed Mary must not be admitted into the fellowship of this dignity apart from Scripture.
(3) Mary was not without actual sins; therefore she was not without original sin, since the source of actual sins is original sin. The antecedent is clear because “she continued with the apostles in prayer” (Acts 1:14), undoubtedly in that prayer which contains a petition for the remission of sins as prescribed by Christ (Luke 11:[4]). Who will believe that Mary omitted that section? The fact that she guarded Christ with the care which was proper (Luke 2:43) is not faulted by Christ; yet in those matters which did not pertain to maternal care, she wanted to give Him orders (John 2:4; Luke 2:49). But far be it from us to say that Christ’s rebuke was unjust! In Luke 8[:20] she agrees with His stepbrothers,9 who believe that Christ should be closed up for a time and thus removed from teaching. Chrysostom (on Matthew, homily 12): “To her He attributes importunity, ambition, and vainglory.” In his commentary on Psalm 13 he writes: “The sword of doubt pierced her soul at the time of His suffering.” In his commentary on John 2: “He attributes to her an affection for human glory and ambition.” Similar statements to these are found in Origen (on Luke, homily 17), Augustine (Quaest. V. et N., quaest. 73), Theophylact (on Luke 2), etc.
(4) According to Luke 8:20–21, Mary had her blessedness from her hearing and keeping of the Word, and for this reason in her song she declares with grateful heart that God is her Savior [Luke 1:47]. She was more blessed for having faith than for conceiving the flesh of Christ, etc.
(5) Mary was subject to calamities and to death, which are the punishments for sin; therefore she was also subject to original sin. The logic is obvious, because either her calamities and death were an atonement for our sins or the consequence of her own sins.
If anyone should wish to counter with the assumption of Mary into heaven, he should listen to Sixtus Senensis (Biblioth., bk. 2, title Mariae transitus): “Nothing of this sort is found among the Latin fathers” (says Augustine), and “this is an apocryphal dogma” (says Jerome). Bede also refutes this story as contradictory to the evangelist.
From the fathers.
§ 114. Here we should place the statements of the fathers in which they declare that Christ alone was conceived without sin, in which they claim that all people propagated by carnal generation from Adam are guilty of original sin, in which they attribute actual sins to Mary, and in which they bear witness that the Holy Spirit wiped away the stain of sin from those drops of blood from which the body of Christ was formed in Mary.
Lest there be a necessity of quoting here the many statements from the fathers, note the confession of our adversaries. Biel (Sent., 3, dist. 3, q. 1, art. 2) testifies:
The following offer their assent to the opinion that Mary, at the instant of her ensoulment, was not preserved from the contagion of original sin: Augustine (De fide ad Petrum, ch. 23; Contra Julian., bk. 2, ch. 36; toward the end of De perfect. justitiae; around the middle of De natura et gratia; on Genesis, bk. 10, ch. 14), Ambrose (on Luke), Leo (Sermon de nat. Dom.), Damascenus, Anselm (De concept. virg., bk. 2; Cur Deus homo, ch. 16), Bernard (Letter ad canon. Lugdunens.), etc.
Canus (Loc. theol., bk. 7, ch. 1, no. 1) writes: “On the basis of this passage” (Rom. 5[:12]: “in whom all have sinned”), “all the saints have declared with one voice that the blessed Virgin was conceived in original sin: Chrysostom, Eusebius, Remigius, Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, Bede, Anselm, Erardus Martyr, St. Anthony, Dr. Bonaventure,” etc.
Suarez (In Thom., part 3, q. 27, art. 1) writes: “The ancient fathers have said few things about this privilege of the blessed Virgin, both because the Holy Spirit instructs the church gradually and also because those men were destined to explain other more serious mysteries.”
Salmeron (commentary on Romans 5, disp. 51, § Deinde) writes: “Some bring out two hundred fathers; others, such as Bandellus, almost three hundred; and Cajetan, fifteen—and those he says are irrefutable.” (To this argument Salmeron responds: “in order to set a multitude of ancient doctors against a multitude of more recent doctors.”) Therefore there will be no need to list the statements of the fathers, since they freely grant to us their agreement.
From the Scholastics and Papists.
§ 115. In fact, even some of the Scholastics and Papists themselves add their weight to our opinion. Lombard (Sent., 3, dist. 3, letter A) writes: “One can truly say and believe according to the witness of the saints that the very flesh of the Word was at first subject to sin, just like the rest of the flesh of the Virgin, but was cleansed by the operation of the Holy Spirit so that, immune from every contagion, it was united with the Word.”
The gloss on [Ius canonicum,] c. pronuntiandum (3. De consecr., dist. 3, on the word Nativitas): “The Festival of the Conception of Mary is not to be celebrated, because she was conceived in sins just like the rest of the saints, with the sole exception of the person of Christ.” Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Capreolus (on Sent., 3, dist. 3), Alexander of Hales (part 3, q. 9), Gregory of Rimini (Sent., 2, dist. 30, q. 2), Cajetan (Comm. Thom.), and Dominicus Bannes (Sent., 2, q. 1, art. 10) follow the opinion of Lombard. Add to these the Dominican monks who are the adversaries of the Franciscans in this article.
Arguments in favor of the immaculate conception of blessed Mary: From Scripture.
§ 116. In the third place, Bellarmine tries to show that their belief that the blessed Virgin was immune from all sin by a unique privilege of God is not rash but devout and correct because probable and suitable reasons can be given from Scripture, from the fathers, from the consensus of the church, and from reason.
(I) “Adam is a figure of Christ (1 Corinthians 15). He was created out of the earth which God had not yet cursed. Therefore the second Adam was also formed by the Holy Spirit out of a virgin who was free of every curse and sin, and it is perhaps for this reason that she was greeted by the angel as blessed among women [cf. Luke 1:28, 42].”
We respond. Strong arguments are not taken from figures unless Scripture itself reveals the application. In Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul compares Christ with Adam, but he does not mention this application. If there still is a desire to compare Adam and Christ in this point (as Tertullian does in his book De carne Christi), it is enough that that mass from which the flesh of Christ comes was not subject to sin and its curse, namely, through a special operation of the Holy Spirit as He “came upon” her; and to this alone the immaculate conception of the Son of God in the womb of the blessed Mary should be attributed as accepted. There is no need for doubtful guesses as to why Mary is said to be blessed among women, because Elizabeth adds the clear explanation of her own words in Luke 1:42: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” where the conjunction “and” [καί] is placed “causally in place of the word ‘for’ [γάρ],” according to the interpretation of Theophylact. Therefore Mary is blessed because she has conceived that blessed fruit of her womb in whom alone all people are blessed, has given Him birth, and has believed in Him. For the physical conception of Christ itself would have been of no profit to her salvation had not the spiritual conception been there. Thus Elizabeth adds: “Blessed are you who have believed” [Luke 1:45]. Augustine (De s. virg., ch. 3): “Mary was more blessed for having faith than for conceiving the flesh of Christ.” Motherly nearness would have been of no profit to Mary, if she had not borne Christ more happily in her heart than in her flesh.
Thus in Luke 11:27–28 Christ clearly refutes this conjecture of Bellarmine. For when a woman cried out from the common crowd: “Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts that You sucked,” Christ answered her: “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and” (by conceiving faith in their heart from the hearing of it) “keep it.”
Augustine (on John, tract. 10): “My mother, whom you have called blessed, is blessed because she has kept the Word of God and not because the Word was made flesh in her and dwelt among us, but because she kept the very Word of God through which she was made and which was made flesh in her.”
(II) “Eve was a type of Mary, but Eve was formed at first without sin. Therefore Mary is even the life of all living things spiritually.”
We respond. Tertullian, Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and others of the ancients compare Mary and Eve not in this point but in this: that the Virgin Mary, by applying faith to the words of the angel, conceived and bore Christ the Savior just as Eve, still a virgin, by believing the deceitful promises of Satan, became the cause of sin for Adam, through whom sin and death entered all his descendants. Obviously the immaculate conception of Mary must first be proved from the literal meaning of Scripture before allegories can be constructed upon it.
(III) Song 2[:2]: “As a lily among brambles, so is My beloved among the daughters of men.” And: “You are all beautiful, My beloved, and there is no blemish in you” [Song 4:7]. Song 4[:12]: “A locked garden is My sister, My bride, a garden locked, a fountain sealed.” [They say:] “Many of the ancient fathers explain this as a reference to the blessed Virgin, and the church commands that readings be recited from Song of Songs on the festivals of the blessed Virgin.”
We respond. The entire Song of Songs speaks about Christ and the church, as Bellarmine himself confesses, and cannot be assigned to Mary except by being forced and twisted. Moreover, the apostle clearly assigns the passage “You are all beautiful” to the church and not to Mary (Eph. 5:27). There is no strong line of deduction for this argument: “Mary is very beautiful, and there is no blemish in her; therefore she does not have original sin.” For what was pleasing to God was by grace, not by nature. In Eph. 5:27 the entire church is said to be “holy and without blemish, not having spot nor wrinkle.” In 1 Thess. 5:23 all the saints are said to be “wholly [sanctified] and blameless.” On account of this, shall all of them be considered exempt from the contagion of original sin? No, but in this life they are stainless in the manner of imputation, incipiently; in eternal life they will be so in the manner of consummation.
From the fathers.
§ 117. But Bellarmine also attempts to beg the approval of the fathers, something which may indeed appear strange to anyone because the Papist writers witness clearly that here they lacked the assent of the ancients, and because the very fathers whom Bellarmine produces expressly wrote the contrary in other places.
(1) Ambrose (commentary on the last verse of Psalm 118): “Take me up not from Sarah but from Mary, as an uncorrupted virgin, a virgin free of every stain of sin by grace.”
We respond. He is speaking about the uncorrupted virginity of Mary and not about her total purity from sin, for he writes in the verses immediately preceding: “Take me up in the flesh which fell in Adam,” something which Bellarmine has omitted. In the same place Ambrose says, “God alone is without sin.” He writes about the circumcision (bk. 2, on Luke 1): “He alone of all who are born of woman is holy in all things, the Lord Jesus, who by the uniqueness of His immaculate birth did not feel the contagions of earthly corruption.”
(2) Jerome (on Psalm 77) writes: “The cloud” (Mary) “was not in darkness but was always in light.”
We respond. All the devout are children of light, nor do they walk in works of darkness but in the light [cf. Eph. 5:8; 1 Thess. 5:5]. Yet they are not free from original sin.
(3) Augustine (De nat. grat., ch. 36): “The holy Virgin Mary is excepted. Concerning her I wish to raise absolutely no question when it comes to sins, for the sake of the Lord’s honor. For since we know what great grace was given to her to overcome sin in every respect, it is clear that no sin could hold her who was worthy to conceive and bear Him.”
We respond. Here the matter concerns actual sins, and Augustine is saying clearly that grace was given to Mary to overcome sin. But if Mary had been conceived without sin, there would have been no need for the grace of overcoming sin to have been conferred upon her. Thus whenever Augustine speaks in general about original sin, he excepts Christ alone. He writes (De fide ad Petrum, ch. 23): “Hold this very firmly, and by no means doubt that every person who is conceived by the intercourse of man and woman is born with original sin, is given to impiety, and is subject to death—and for this reason he is born a child of wrath by nature.” De nupt. et conc. (bk. 1, ch. 12): “There alone” (in the conception of Christ) “was there no nuptial intercourse, because He who was to be without sin and was sent not in sinful flesh but in the likeness of sinful flesh could not be made in the sinful flesh without that concupiscence of the flesh which comes from sin, without which He wished to be born, that He might teach us that every person who is born of intercourse is sinful flesh, because He alone who was not born from this was not sinful flesh.” Contra Julian. (bk. 5, ch. 9): “But if the flesh of Christ is without doubt not the flesh of sin but is similar to the flesh of sin, what remains for us to understand except that with this exception all the rest of human flesh is of sin? From this it appears that the concupiscence, through which Christ did not wish to be conceived, caused the spreading of evil in the human race because the body of Mary, though He came from it, did not pass over into His body because she did not conceive from it,” etc. De Genes. ad lit. (bk. 10, ch. 18):
What is more undefiled than the womb of the Virgin whose flesh, though it came from the propagation of sin, nevertheless did not conceive from the progeny of sin, so that even in the womb of Mary the body of Christ did not serve the law which, when placed in the members of the body of death, fights against the law of the mind, etc.? In the same manner, though the body of Christ was taken from the flesh of the woman which had been conceived from that progeny of the flesh, nevertheless, because it was not conceived in her in the way that she had been conceived, neither was it the very flesh of sin, but the likeness of the flesh of sin.
De perfect. justit.: “Whoever thinks that some person or some people exist or have existed in this life who did not need the forgiveness of sins, with the exception of the one Mediator of God and men, he is contrary to the Scripture, which says, ‘Through one man sin entered into the world’ [Rom. 5:12].”
(4) Cyprian (Sermon de nativ.): “Mary, differing much from the rest [of humanity], shared in the nature [of humanity] and not in [its] fault.”
We respond. The author of those sermons is not Cyprian, as Bellarmine himself, Pammelius, and Sixtus Senensis confess (Biblioth., bk. 4). Moreover, a little previously the author of those sermons writes: “By the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit the original fire was extinguished in Mary as she conceived Christ.” Therefore, with these words, he removes Mary from the company of other women not in respect to all fault but in respect to the fault of corrupted virginity. The same Cyprian (in Expositio symbol., which nevertheless is more correctly attributed to Rufinus) writes regarding the conception of Christ: “The Holy Spirit is present, that He who has been conceived and born may be sanctified.”
(5) Damascenus (Orat. 1 in nat. virg.): “Nature dared not precede grace” (in Mary).
We respond. In Orth. fid. (bk. 3, ch. 2) he writes clearly: “The Holy Spirit came upon her” (Mary), “cleansing her [καθαῖρoν αὐτὴν],” which the Latin translator has rendered not quite accurately as “instructing her” [instruens ipsam ], though the Greek word speaks of cleansing.
(6) Anselm (De concept. virg., ch. 18): “It was fitting that that Virgin rely on a purity greater than which no one under God [Himself] can understand.” In his commentary on 2 Corinthians 5: “All are dead in their sins with absolutely no one excepted, aside from the mother of God, whether the sins be original or even added voluntarily.”
We respond. The same man (Cur Deus homo, bk. 2, ch. 16) writes clearly: “That Virgin from whom Christ was assumed was conceived in iniquities. And in sin did her mother conceive her. She was also born in original sin, because she, too, sinned in Adam, in whom all have sinned.”
As far as concerns the testimonies of the rest [of the fathers] which Bellarmine cites—namely, of Idiota, Peter Damian, Bruno, etc.—we are not very worried, and certainly not in reference to the decree of the popes or of the Council of Basel.
From lines of reasoning.
§ 118. Let us hear the lines of reasoning which Bellarmine produces. “It is certain that God could have preserved Mary from original sin.”
We respond. Surely that could have happened, but it must be proved that it actually did happen. Therefore this is how Bellarmine tries to prove that God wanted this: (1) “A mother’s honor as much as her shame overflows to her child.”
We respond. Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 27, art. 3) writes: “Having the kindling removed completely from the mother is something that seems to relate to her dignity, but yet, in some way, it takes away from the dignity of Christ.”
Bernard (Letter 174 ad Lugdun.): “I say that glorious Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit but was not [herself] conceived in this way. I say that a virgin gave birth, but not that she also was born of a virgin. Otherwise where will be the prerogative of the mother of the Lord by which she is believed uniquely to exult both in the gift of a child and in the integrity of her flesh, if you attribute just as much to her mother?”
Thus when Scripture uniquely and specifically attributes a conception by the Holy Spirit without sin to Christ, surely it approaches an insult to Christ to attribute to Mary the same thing, apart from Scripture. Beust (Homil. Domin. in die concept., p. 666) is correct: “It does not verge on an insult to the Virgin Mary or to the Lord that she was conceived in original sin, because no one can deny that Christ, who was without sin, nevertheless came from sinners in regard to His [human] nature (Rom. 1:3).”
(2) “The mother of Christ had a unique affinity and conjunction with Christ, but what covenant does Christ have with Belial?”
We respond. Rom. 1:3: “Christ was born of His fathers according to the flesh.” Shall we claim that they, too, were free of original sin? The covenant about which the apostle is speaking is defined as a consensus and conformity with the devil in false doctrines and in a zeal to sin. Far be it from us to attribute this to Mary!
(3) “The Son of God, who is wisdom itself, dwelt in Mary in unique fashion; but wisdom will not enter a malevolent soul, nor will it dwell in a body which is subject to sin (Wisdom 1[:4]).”
We respond. It is one thing to have a malevolent soul and a body subject to sin, which is the description of reigning sin, but it is another thing to resist the desires of sin through the Holy Spirit while being defiled by sin naturally. All the saints confess that they have sin (1 John 1:10), and yet their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19).
(4) “What is said in Song [4:7], ‘You are altogether beautiful,’ ought to be fulfilled in the Virgin.”
We respond. On the contrary, this is fulfilled not only in the Virgin, but it is also fulfilled every day in the entire church and will be fulfilled perfectly in eternal life. Yet who will say that the church is free of all sin?
(5) “Mary surpasses all the angels and the first parents themselves, who were sanctified at the first moment of creation.”
We respond. She excels them not in the condition or integrity of her nature but because she is the mother of God [θεoτόκoς] by the singular grace of God; otherwise, in the same way, it could be inferred that Mary was not of a corporeal but of an angelic nature.
(6) “The revelations of Brigitta prove this very thing.”
We respond: “To the Law and to the testimony!” (Isa. 8:20). Luke [16]:29: “We have Moses and the prophets.” Gerson used to say, “Every revelation which the Law does not prove with the Gospel is suspect.” If the revelations of Brigitta are proved to Bellarmine, let him acknowledge that “the pope is a murderer of souls, the scatterer and destroyer of the sheep of Christ, that he is more abominable than the Jews, more savage than Judas, more unjust than Pilate, worse and lower than Lucifer himself, that his aides will burn in unquenchable sulfurous fire, that Rome is a field wild with weeds,” etc. For all these things occur in Brigitta’s Revelationes.
Objections to our arguments.
§ 119. In the fourth place, Bellarmine (ch. 16, cols. 327ff.) tries to weaken the force of our arguments. (1) “Scripture says that Christ did not know sin, that He was innocent and undefiled,” etc., “yet it does not add that this befits Christ alone and, on the contrary, even attributes similar things to others, if we pay attention to the words as they sound.”
We respond. According to Heb. 7:26, Christ is “separated from sins.” Therefore He Himself alone is without sin. Scripture declares in general about all people that no one is innocent before God: “There is no man who does not sin; if we say that we have no sin, we are liars,” etc. [1 Kings 8:46; 1 John 1:10]. Therefore the privilege of being completely sinless belongs to Christ alone.
(2) [Bellarmine:] “Christ alone was immune to original sin by the power of His generation, for He alone was conceived not of the seed of man but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary lacks the original blemish by the privilege of divine grace.”
We respond. That privilege is being asserted without Scripture, and thus the general declarations of Scripture cannot and should not be limited by it.
(3) “Mary sinned and died in Adam; that is, she became susceptible so that, whenever she began to exist actually, sin would truly exist within her. But she was preceded by the grace of God so that, as soon as she began to exist, she was righteous. By nature she was a child of wrath, but by grace she has always been a daughter of mercy.”
We respond. These things stand in need of confirmation, not merely assertion. If Mary was not subject to original sin at any time, how was she ever a child of wrath by nature and through carnal generation?
(4) [Bellarmine:]
Mary was subject to sin at three times: first, as long as she was in the loins of Adam and of the rest of her parents; second, when she was conceived in the womb of her mother before ensoulment; and, finally, at the first instant of the union of soul and body. For though she was justified at the same instant of time, nevertheless because one is subject to the order of nature before one is subject to accidents, that person [Mary] was thus, by the order of nature, apart from her own causes before either sin or righteousness adhered in her.
We respond. In regard to the first time, she was subject to sin not in actuality but only potentially, not in herself but only in her father. In regard to the second time, she existed in only one part of herself, namely, in the body (according to the hypothesis of Bellarmine), which is not properly subject to sin (according to the hypothesis of the same Bellarmine, for he calls it a dreadful paradox that an embryo not yet ensouled is said by Chemnitz to be subject to sin).10 In regard to the third time, the mere thought of our mind or surely only its potential was subject to sin. For at the very first instant of ensoulment (according to Bellarmine), she was free from every stain of sin and was never at any time actually subject to it. Therefore when Bellarmine asserts that Mary nonetheless was subject to sin, though he supports her immaculate conception, it is mere evasion and frothing at the mouth.
(5) Augustine (De nat. et grat., ch. 36) says, “Grace to overcome sin in every respect was given to Mary.” Bellarmine explains this as follows: “Through the grace infused in her at her creation she overcame original sin; that is, she completely cut off its approach to her and escaped the stains of every actual sin.”
We respond. In as many places as possible, Augustine confirms that all the descendants of Adam propagated from him by carnal generation are subject to original sin; he never makes an exception for Mary. Here he is speaking about actual sins, as the entire context of that chapter proves, and he argues that the grace to overcome these in every respect was probably given to her. Therefore he surely presupposes that sin also dwelt in her, for there is no victory without a foe and a battle. The interpretation of Bellarmine is foreign to the aim and words of Augustine, for how can it be said that Mary overcame sin if she was never attacked by it, being preserved from it at the very instant of her ensoulment?
(6) Bellarmine explains the statements of Augustine, Ambrose, and others—in which they testify that all people, with the exception of Christ alone, were subject to original sin—in this way: “Christ alone did not contract original sin by way of His generation; but Mary, on the basis of a privilege of grace.”
We respond. Nowhere do they mention this limitation and privilege.
(7) The statement of Augustine (from the book De perfect. justit.) that remission of sins is necessary for all people, the one Mediator excepted, is twisted by Bellarmine in this way: “Mary was forgiven the sins not into which she fell but into which she could have fallen, just as someone is said to have been freed from sickness who was preserved from it.”
We respond. Augustine adds clearly that the remission of sins is necessary for everyone without exception, because the apostle declares that sin entered the world through one man [Rom. 5:12]. But sin not only could have entered the world but actually did enter it. Therefore the remission of sins was also necessary for all, not the sins which they could have had but which they actually do have. As for the fact that the Mediator of God and man is necessary to all, the possibility of having sin does not suffice (for otherwise the first parents would have needed Christ the Mediator before the fall) but [only] the actuality of having sin.
(8) Bellarmine tries to escape the clarity of Augustine’s declaration (Contra Julian., bk. 5, ch. 9) which asserts that “the flesh of all people, and thus of Mary herself, is the flesh of sin” with the usual distinction that “by virtue of her conception the blessed Virgin would have to have been corrupted by sin, had not the privilege of grace intervened.” Yet Augustine is not asking about potentiality but about actuality, and is asserting that the flesh of all people, with the exception of the flesh of Christ alone, is the flesh of sin, and he does not make an exception for Mary herself from this general statement.
(9) Bellarmine explains the words of Bernard (Letter 174 ad can. Lugd.) claiming that the conception of blessed Mary was subject to sin as referring to “the first moment of conception before the infusion of the soul,” and urges Bernard’s claim that “Mary was holy before she was born and that she was without every actual sin,” and also that “Bernard is himself subject to the Roman Church.”
We respond. At the time of Bernard a great deviation of doctrine had already occurred, yet in the same place he clearly disapproves of the Festival of the Conception of Mary and writes that people are observing it superstitiously.
The refutation of lies and calumnies.
§ 120. Finally, Bellarmine (ch. 17) refutes “the lies and calumnies” of Dr. Chemnitz (as he calls them).
(I) At first, they say, Chemnitz had said that at the time of Lombard “the opinion of the immaculate conception of the Virgin was still unknown.” Bellarmine says this is false, “because the fathers before Lombard, and especially Anselm (commentary on 1 Corinthians 5), taught the same thing.”
We respond. Bellarmine is twisting the words of the ancients into an alien and foreign meaning, something which some of the Jesuits themselves acknowledge, as we have seen earlier [§ 114]. The words of Lombard (Sent., 3, dist. [3,] letter A) are quite clear: “It can truly be said and ought to be believed that, according to the witness of the saints, the very flesh of the Word was at first subject to sin, just as was the rest of the flesh of the Virgin, but it was cleansed by the work of the Holy Spirit, so that, being immune to every contagion, it was united with the Word.”
(II) [Bellarmine claims that] Chemnitz “said that Lombard began his argument with a pretext taken from the words of Augustine, that in the conception of Christ the blessed Virgin had been freed from all sin and even from the kindling [of sin].” Bellarmine retorts: “Lombard was not the first; rather, it was Anselm (Cur Deus homo, bk. 2, ch. 16; De concept. virg., ch. 18) and, in fact, Augustine himself (De natura et gratia, ch. 36).”
We respond. Augustine does not attribute a complete absence of sin to the holy Virgin but a victory over sin, nor does he force anyone into assent. Rather, he responds moderately to the Pelagians (who had said that it was necessary for piety to confess that Mary was without sin) that, with the exception of the holy Virgin, “about whom, on account of the Lord’s honor, I want to have absolutely no question when sins are being discussed; for from this [the Lord’s honor] we know that more grace was given to her to overcome sin in every respect, to her who deserved to conceive and bear Him who clearly had no sin.” At the time of Anselm (who preceded Lombard by a whole century), Chemnitz does not deny that people celebrated the Festival of the Conception of Mary in some places, nor does he dissimulate, since he describes the origin of the festival from that man [Anselm].
(III) [Bellarmine claims that] Chemnitz had said, “Those who followed Lombard began to argue that even though Mary had first been conceived in original sin, she was later born in a sanctified womb without sin.” Bellarmine says that this is “an outrageous lie, because at the time of Bernard and Damian, who did not follow Lombard but were his same age or his elders, the birth of the holy Virgin was celebrated very frequently in the entire church.”
We respond. Bernard (Letter 174) indeed says that the church reckoned the very day of Mary’s birth as holy and celebrated it with the votive exultation of the whole world. This was not unknown to Chemnitz, who quotes this very letter of Bernard. When he attributes the opinion of the immaculate birth of Mary to those who followed Lombard, he is speaking about the various debates over this topic which developed and were stirred up with great contention in the schools after the days of Lombard.
(IV) [Bellarmine claims that] Chemnitz had said, “After the days of Lombard, the feast of the conception began to be established.” Bellarmine retorts in the same manner: “This is a very great lie, because Anselm and Bernard have mentioned that feast.”
We respond. But this was likewise not unknown to Chemnitz, because he describes the origin of the festival from Anselm. Rather, he speaks about the solemn and universal institution of this festival, finally confirmed by Sixtus IV in 1466. At the time of Bernard, this festival was beginning to be celebrated in some places, but more because of private superstition (as he himself attests) and not by public custom. For this reason, Bernard also disapproves of the celebration of this festival.
(V) [Bellarmine claims that] Chemnitz had said, “The Council of Trent has left it free to think that blessed Mary’s being conceived without original sin is outside of, beyond, or even contrary to the Word of God.” This and other things which follow in Chemnitz (namely, that the council wanted to be careful, lest the opinion which asserts that Mary was preserved from every contagion of original sin in her conception and ensoulment be condemned from Scripture, and lest the revelations and miracles by which they establish that opinion beyond and contrary to Scripture be repudiated—since the council wished to proclaim to the contrary that the Festival of the Conception should be kept religiously with papal indulgences, with respect to the reasons for which Sixtus originated it) are called by Bellarmine “a shameless calumny and lie, because the freedom to have an opinion about this matter was left by Pope Sixtus and the Council of Trent because they knew that neither opinion openly militated against the Word of God.”
We respond. We have shown earlier that the opinion regarding the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin is not supported by the firm and unshakable documentation of Scripture but is opposed to its general declarations regarding the propagation of sin. Therefore when the pope (whose thought the fathers of Trent follow) leaves freedom of opinion in this question open to all—and in fact instituted the celebration of this festival and granted generous indulgences to those who celebrated it because of revelations and miracles—are not the pope and the Tridentine fathers decreeing something beyond and contrary to Scripture?
What should be observed in the question about the immaculate conception of Mary.
§ 121. Before we finish this question about the conception of the blessed Virgin Mary, it should be pointed out that: (1) With this disquisition we wish to detract nothing from blessed Mary’s dignity which Scripture attributes to her, namely, that by all generations she should be called blessed and the mother of God [θεoτόκoς, Luke 1:42].
(2) If it is said along with Bernard (Letter 174) that Mary was sanctified in the womb before she was born (which Scripture attributes to Jeremiah and to John the Baptist, and which Bernard attributes also to David), nevertheless it does not at all follow from this that she was completely immune to every infection of original sin, for sanctification removes the guilt of sin and diminishes the kindling of sin but does not wipe it away completely.
(3) We devoutly believe that Mary was subject to none of the fires of illicit burning, but rather that in body and soul she kept a perpetual comeliness of virginity, and thus was a virgin in a perfect manner.
1 Read Evae instead of Adae. See Roberti Cardinalis Bellarmini Opera Omnia, ed. Zistus Riarius Sforza (Naples: Apud Josephum Giuliano, 1858), 4:169.
2 Here Gerhard’s intent is to show that original sin is contracted at conception. Elsewhere (On the Image of God in Man before the Fall, Commonplace XI, § 121) he states that the soul is propagated at the moment of conception, not later, as Bellarmine held. See below, § 119 (4), where Gerhard says that delayed ensoulment is not his own position, but is Bellarmine’s hypothesis. See also above, p. xiii.
3 That is, Matthias Flacius Illyricus.
4 I.e., 
, “I was shaped,” in Ps. 51:5 (Hebrew, v. 7).
5 Translated in most English Bibles as “conceived” (Ps. 51:5).
6 A quotation from the hymn Veni Redemptor Gentium by St. Ambrose. For an English version see LSB 332:2; TLH 95:2.
7 Cf. Lectures on Genesis (1535–45/1544–54), AE 7:13 (WA 44:311).
8 These words are quoted from Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione 3.12.21 (PL 44:199).
9 agnatorum. For Gerhard’s arguments for the perpetual virginity of Mary, see On Scripture (1625 Exegesis, Commonplace I), § 387; On the Church (Commonplace XXV), § 218 (4).
10 See above, § 101.