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| Simeon's “Sign that Should Be Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics' Paradoxes Turned in Support of Catholic Truth.
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Chapter
XXIII.—Simeon’s “Sign that Should Be
Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True
Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics’ Paradoxes Turned in Support
of Catholic Truth.
We acknowledge, however, that the prophetic
declaration of Simeon is fulfilled, which he spoke over the
recently-born Saviour:7250
“Behold, this
child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel,
and for a sign that shall be spoken against.”7251
The sign (here meant) is that of the birth
of Christ, according to Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord Himself shall
give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a
son.”7252
We discover, then,
what the sign is which is to be spoken against—the conception and
the parturition of the Virgin Mary, concerning which these
sophists7253
| 7253 Academici isti:
“this school of theirs.” | say: “She a
virgin and yet not a virgin bare, and yet did not bear;” just as
if such language, if indeed it must be uttered, would not be more
suitable even for ourselves to use! For “she bare,” because
she produced offspring of her own flesh and “yet she did not
bear,” since she produced Him not from a husband’s seed;
she was “a virgin,” so far as (abstinence) from a husband
went, and “yet not a virgin,” as regards her bearing a
child. There is not, however, that parity of reasoning which the
heretics affect: in other words it does not follow that for the
reason “she did not bear,”7254
| 7254 i.e. “Because
she produced not her son from her husband’s seed.” |
she who was “not a virgin” was “yet a virgin,”
even because she became a mother without any fruit of her own womb. But
with us there is no equivocation, nothing twisted into a double
sense.7255
Light is light; and
darkness, darkness; yea is yea; and nay, nay; “whatsoever is more
than these cometh of evil.”7256
She who bare
(really) bare; and although she was a virgin when she conceived, she
was a wife7257
when she brought
forth her son. Now, as a wife, she was under the very law of
“opening the womb,”7258
| 7258 Nupsit ipsa patefacti
corporis lege. | wherein it was
quite immaterial whether the birth of the male was by virtue of a
husband’s co-operation or not;7259
| 7259 De vi masculi admissi
an emissi. | it was the
same sex7260
that opened her
womb. Indeed, hers is the womb on account of which it is written of
others also: “Every male that openeth the womb shall be called
holy to the Lord.”7261
For who is really
holy but the Son of God? Who properly opened the womb but He who opened
a closed one?7262
| 7262 Clausam: i.e. a
virgin’s. | But it is marriage
which opens the womb in all cases. The virgin’s womb,
therefore, was especially7263
opened, because it
was especially closed. Indeed7264
she ought
rather to be called not a virgin than a virgin, becoming a mother at a
leap, as it were, before she was a wife. And what must be said
more on this point? Since it was in this sense that the apostle
declared that the Son of God was born not of a virgin, but “of a
woman,” he in that statement recognised the condition of the
“opened womb” which ensues in marriage.7265
| 7265 Nuptialem
passionem. | We read in Ezekiel of “a
heifer7266
| 7266 Epiphanius
(Hær. xxx. 30) quotes from the apocryphal Ezekiel this
passage: Τέξεται ἡ
δάμαλις, καὶ
ἐροῦσιν—οὐ
τέτοκεν. So Clem. Alex.
Stromata, vii. Oehler. | which brought
forth, and still did not bring forth.” Now, see whether it was
not in view of your own future contentions about the womb of Mary, that
even then the Holy Ghost set His mark upon you in this passage;
otherwise7267
He would not,
contrary to His usual simplicity of style (in this prophet), have
uttered a sentence of such doubtful import, especially when
Isaiah says, “She shall conceive and bear a son.”7268
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