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| Chapter XIX.—A comparison is instituted between the disobedient and sinning Eve and the Virgin Mary, her patroness. Various and discordant heresies are mentioned.
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Chapter XIX.—A comparison is
instituted between the disobedient and sinning Eve and the Virgin Mary, her
patroness. Various and discordant heresies are mentioned.
1. That the Lord
then was manifestly coming to His own things, and was sustaining them by
means of that creation which is supported by Himself, and was making a
recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with
a tree, through the obedience which was [exhibited by Himself when He
hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away
with, by which that virgin Eve, who was already espoused to a man, was
unhappily misled,—was happily announced, through means of the
truth [spoken] by the angel to the Virgin Mary, who was [also espoused]
to a man.4616
| 4616 The text is
here most uncertain and obscure. | For just as the former was
led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she
had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic
communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain
(portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did
disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order
that the Virgin Mary might become the patroness4617
| 4617 [This word patroness is ambiguous.
The Latin may stand for Gr. ἀντίληψις,
—a person called in to help, or to take hold of the other end of a
burden. The argument implies that Mary was thus the counterpart or
balance of Eve.] | (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And
thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin,
so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced
in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way the sin
of the first created man (protoplasti) receives amendment by the
correction of the First-begotten, and the coming of the serpent is
conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by
which we had been fast bound to death.
2. The heretics
being all unlearned and ignorant of God’s arrangements, and not
acquainted with that dispensation by which He took upon Him human nature
(inscii ejus quæ est secundum hominem dispensationis), inasmuch
as they blind themselves with regard to the truth, do in fact speak
against their own salvation. Some of them introduce another Father
besides the Creator; some, again, say that the world and its substance
was made by certain angels; certain others [maintain] that it was widely
separated by Horos4618
| 4618 The
text reads “porro,” which makes no sense; so that Harvey
looks upon it as a corruption of the reading “per Horum.”
| from him whom they represent as being the Father—that it
sprang forth (floruisse) of itself, and from itself was born.
Then, again, others [of them assert] that it obtained substance in those
things which are contained by the Father, from defect and ignorance;
others still, despise the advent of the Lord manifest [to the senses],
for they do not admit His incarnation; while others, ignoring the
arrangement [that He should be born] of a virgin, maintain that He was
begotten by Joseph. And still further, some affirm that neither their
soul nor their body can receive eternal life, but merely the inner man.
Moreover, they will have it that this [inner man] is that which is the
understanding (sensum) in them, and which they decree as being the
only thing to ascend to “the perfect.” Others [maintain], as
I have said in the first book, that while the soul is saved, their body
does not participate in the salvation which comes from God; in which
[book] I have also set forward the hypotheses of all these men, and in
the second have pointed out their weakness and inconsistency.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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