# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Newest Papist Council, etc.                    17

...doubted at the death of the Lord, yet in such a way that she was made firm again through the honor and power of the resurrection, because all, in a certain consternation at the Lord's death, doubted, yet did not remain in their doubt... for in this a man is judged by that to which he is more inclined. The Revelation of John confirms this, for it says: "to the doubters [the fainthearted] and unbelievers, whose part shall be in the pool that burns with fire and brimstone." Therefore, if one does not remain in doubt, he is saved from death — that is, he escapes death, because to doubt concerning God or concerning Christ is death; and by ceasing to doubt, he escapes death." (Quaestiones ex Novo Testamento, ch. 73.)

The same: "Mary is more blessed in that she grasped Christ in faith than in that she conceived Christ's flesh." (De Sancta Virginitate, ch. 3.)

Ambrose (died 397): "Christ indeed is the one who surpasses all others, because He alone is the one whom the nets of sins did not ensnare. All were caught in the nets — indeed we are still in the nets — because no one is without sin, except the one Jesus alone, whom, since He knew no sin, the Father made to be sin for us. For He handed Him over to the cords, delivered Him to the nets, by sending Him not in the sin in which all men were, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, in order to condemn sin in the flesh through sin (Rom. 8:3). The flesh was sin, insofar as it was condemned by the inherited curse." (On Psalm 118, Sermon 6.)

Gregory of Nyssa (d. 396): "He (Christ), then, is the one who, by a new and special manner of generation, alone and only among all the myriads was thus born, and is rightly called both white and ruddy on account of His flesh and blood — the Chosen One out of the many thousands, on account of the immaculate and sinless nature of His birth, which differs from the birth of all the rest." (Homily 13 on the Song of Songs.)

Athanasius (d. 373): "Christ rebuked His mother" (John 2:3–4). (Contra Arianos, oration 4.)

Chrysostom (d. 407): "He (Christ) reproached her (Mary) because she asked at the wrong time." (Indeed, Chrysostom calls Mary's request an aponoia — that is, a "recklessness," an "impudence" — which we, to be sure, do not endorse, but which clearly shows how little, in Chrysostom's day, anyone thought of making Mary into a sinless being.) (Homily 45 on Matthew.)

Epiphanius (d. 403) writes against the heretical Collyridians, who practiced all manner of idolatry with Mary: "The body of Mary was indeed holy, but not God. She was indeed a virgin and honored, but not given to us for worship; rather, she herself was a worshiper of Him who was born of her according to the flesh, but out of heaven