Chapter 22

§ 1.

Wherefore they also fail exceedingly, who say that He received nothing of the Virgin, desiring to cast out the inheritance of the Flesh,¹ and to reject that similitude. For if the one had his formation and substance of the earth, and by the hand and workmanship of God, but the other not by the hand and workmanship of God: of course He kept not the likeness of man, made though² He were after his image and similitude: and it will seem an incongruous piece of work, having nought wherein He may display His Wisdom. And it comes to this, whether one say that He appeared but in shew as man, not being man; or that He was made a Man, taking to Him nothing from mankind. For if He received not from man the substance of flesh, He was neither made Man, nor the Son of Man: and if He was not made the same that we were, He did no great thing in that He suffered and endured. Now, that we consist of a body received of the earth, and of a soul receiving breath from God, every person whatever will confess. This therefore the Word of God was made, gathering up the work of His own Hands into Himself: and therefore He confesseth Himself the Son of Man, and blesseth the meek, that they shall inherit the Earth.³ And the Apostle Paul too in the Epistle to the Galatians saith expressly, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.⁴ And again in that to the Romans he says,⁵ Concerning His Son Who was made indeed of the seed of David according to the flesh, Who is foreordained the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Sanctification by the Resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

§ 2.

Yea, superfluous also were His coming down into Mary. For why did He at all descend unto her, if He were not to receive anything of her? And again, had He taken nothing from Mary, He would not have been capable of those refreshments derived from the earth, whereby the earthborn body is nourished; neither when He had fasted 40 days, like Moses and Elias, would He have hungered, the body craving its proper food; nor would John,⁶ His disciple, writing of Him, have said, But Jesus, wearied with His journey, sat down; nor would David before have cried concerning Him,⁷ They have added also to the pain of My wounds⁸; nor would He have wept over Lazarus; nor have sweated great drops of blood;⁹ nor have said, My soul is exceeding sorrowful; nor, when His side was pierced, would there have come forth blood and water. For all these are signs of the flesh which He took of the earth; which He gathered into Himself, saving His own handywork.

§ 3.

For this cause Luke points out that the genealogy,¹⁰ which extends from our Lord’s Birth unto Adam, has 72 generations, conjoining the end to the beginning, and implying, that it is He Who in Himself gathered up all nations, dispersed as they were even from Adam, and all languages and the race of men together with Adam himself. Whence also by Paul the same Adam is called the figure of Him which is to come:¹¹ as though the Word, Who framed all things, had formed beforehand with a view to Himself that Economy of Mankind, which was to centre in the Son of God; God forming first of all the natural¹² man, to the end that he might be saved by the spiritual. For whereas He Who saves existed before, there must needs be something made that should be saved, lest He that saveth prove a superfluous thing.

§ 4.

And in agreement herewith the Virgin Mary also is found obedient,¹³ where she saith, Behold Thine Handmaid, O Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word.¹⁴ But Eve is found disobedient. For she did not obey, being yet a virgin. As she, having indeed a husband, i.e., Adam, yet being still a virgin (for they were both naked in Paradise,¹⁵ and were not ashamed, because, having been a short while created, they had no knowledge of the procreation of children; for they were first to grow up and thereupon afterwards to be multiplied) as Eve I say proving disobedient became the cause of death both to herself and to all mankind; so also Mary having a husband fore-appointed, and nevertheless a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to all mankind the cause of salvation. And therefore the Law calls her which was espoused to a man, though still a virgin, the wife of him who had espoused her, pointing to the reaction¹⁶ which should come round from Mary to Eve; since in no other way can that which is knotted be undone, but by the bending the loops of the knot in a reverse order: that the first tie may be undone by the second, the second again disengage the first. And it ensues that one has to undo the first loop by means of the second tie, and that the second tie comes in place to be first undone.

And on this account the Lord said,¹⁷ The last indeed shall be first, and the first last, and the Prophet too implies this very same,¹⁸ where he saith, Instead of thy Fathers are born to thee children. For our Lord being born, the First-born of the Dead, and receiving the old Fathers into His Bosom, regenerated them to the Life of God: becoming Himself the beginning of those that live, because Adam became the beginning of the dying.

Wherefore also Luke beginning from the Lord the first step in That Descent brought it back to Adam; to signify that not He was regenerated by them, but they by Him to the Gospel of life. And so too the knot of Eve’s disobedience received its solution by the obedience of Mary. For what the Virgin Eve bound by unbelief, that the Virgin Mary loosed by faith.