Anf-01 viii.iv.xcviii Pg 0
Anf-03 iv.ix.x Pg 48
It is Ps. xxii. in our Bibles, xxi. in LXX.
“They dug,” He says, “my hands and feet”1352 1352
Anf-03 v.vii.xx Pg 12
Ps. xxii. 9.
Here is the first point. “Thou art my hope from my mother’s breasts; upon Thee have I been cast from the womb.”7221 7221
Anf-03 v.vii.xx Pg 13
Vers. 9, 10.
Here is another point. “Thou art my God from my mother’s belly.”7222 7222
Anf-01 viii.iv.xcviii Pg 0
Anf-03 iv.ix.x Pg 48
It is Ps. xxii. in our Bibles, xxi. in LXX.
“They dug,” He says, “my hands and feet”1352 1352
Anf-03 v.vii.xx Pg 13
Vers. 9, 10.
Here is another point. “Thou art my God from my mother’s belly.”7222 7222
Anf-03 v.vii.xx Pg 14
Ver. 10.
Here is a third point. Now let us carefully attend to the sense of these passages. “Thou didst draw me,” He says, “out of the womb.” Now what is it which is drawn, if it be not that which adheres, that which is firmly fastened to anything from which it is drawn in order to be sundered? If He clove not to the womb, how could He have been drawn from it? If He who clove thereto was drawn from it, how could He have adhered to it, if it were not that, all the while He was in the womb, He was tied to it, as to His origin,7223 7223 i.e. of His flesh.
by the umbilical cord, which communicated growth to Him from the matrix? Even when one strange matter amalgamates with another, it becomes so entirely incorporated7224 7224 Concarnatus et convisceratus: “united in flesh and internal structure.”
with that with which it amalgamates, that when it is drawn off from it, it carries with it some part of the body from which it is torn, as if in consequence of the severance of the union and growth which the constituent pieces had communicated to each other. But what were His “mother’s breasts” which He mentions? No doubt they were those which He sucked. Midwives, and doctors, and naturalists, can tell us, from the nature of women’s breasts, whether they usually flow at any other time than when the womb is affected with pregnancy, when the veins convey therefrom the blood of the lower parts7225 7225 Sentinam illam inferni sanguinis.
to the mamilla, and in the act of transference convert the secretion into the nutritious7226 7226 Lactiorem.
substance of milk. Whence it comes to pass that during the period of lactation the monthly issues are suspended. But if the Word was made flesh of Himself without any communication with a womb, no mother’s womb operating upon Him with its usual function and support, how could the lacteal fountain have been conveyed (from the womb) to the breasts, since (the womb) can only effect the change by actual possession of the proper substance? But it could not possibly have had blood for transformation into milk, unless it possessed the causes of blood also, that is to say, the severance (by birth)7227 7227 Avulsionem.
of its own flesh from the mother’s womb. Now it is easy to see what was the novelty of Christ’s being born of a virgin. It was simply this, that (He was born) of a virgin in the real manner which we have indicated, in order that our regeneration might have virginal purity,—spiritually cleansed from all pollutions through Christ, who was Himself a virgin, even in the flesh, in that He was born of a virgin’s flesh.
