CHAPTER XV
must be to that seed which is inseminated with a sense of pleasure. Moreover, this conclusion is not opposed to our own argument which asserts that the seed taken from the Virgin is clean even though it be from the sinful mass.
CHAPTER XV
How the Sinful Mass Is Not Totally Sinful For blindness is not in every part of a man when he is called 'blind' (for it is only in his eyes, where there ought to be sight, and not in his hands or in his feet). In the same way, the deafness of a man who is called 'deaf' is only in his ears. Similarly, although the mass of the human race is called 'sinful,' sin is not in every part, but only in the will, which does not exist in the seed at the time of the conception of any man. Therefore, if we consider these things, we see that neither true nor apparent reasons contradict them. So we can now freely conclude that there is no reason, no truth, or no understand ing which allows us to assert that anything pertaining to the sin of the sin ful mass could or should have affected that man who was conceived from the Virgin alone. And this conclusion is true, even though He was assumed from that sinful mass; and it would still be true even if He had not been God.
CHAPTER XVI
Why John the Baptist and Others Who Were Also Conceived by Miracle Are Not As Such Free from Sin But someone may object that John the Baptist and certain other men were begotten from sterile parents and from parents in whom the reproductive nature was already dead because of old age; and they may pursue our line of argument and say that these men also ought to have been born without sin and its penalty because they too were conceived by a miracle. But such people should under stand that there is a different reason which shows that the virgin conception is necessarily free from all sin. For it is one thing for God to heal a
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