# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 The Newest Papist Council, etc.

...has come from the Father's bosom. And therefore the gospel guards us against this, in that it reports that the Lord Himself said: 'Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.' So that not many might believe the holy Virgin had some greater privilege, He called her a woman — prophesying, as it were, what would happen among the sects and heretics on earth, so that not many, admiring the saint too much, might fall into this heresy and its madness. For the whole affair is a mockery, and — if I may say so — an old wives' tale, this whole heretical undertaking. But what Scripture has reported any such thing? Which of the prophets ever commanded that a man, or even a woman, be worshiped? She is indeed an excellent vessel, but still a woman, and in nothing transformed from her nature... If He does not will that the angels [be worshiped], how much less that she be worshiped who was born of Anna, who was given by Joachim to Anna, who through prayer and every kind of zeal for godliness was, according to the promise, given to her father and mother, and who was born in no other way than belongs to human nature, but, like everyone else, of man and woman... From heaven came God, the Word, and took flesh from the holy Virgin, but not so that the Virgin be worshiped, nor so that this made her God, nor that sacrifice be offered in her name, nor that, after so many centuries, women be made priests and offerers. It did not please God that this happen in Salome, nor that it happen in Mary. He did not grant her to administer baptism, nor to bless the disciples; He did not command her to rule on earth. Let such women be corrected by Jeremiah and not lead the world astray, and not say: We honor the Queen of Heaven (Jer. 44:17ff.)." (Lib. 3, Against Heresies, vol. 2, heresy 79, p. 447.)

Far from it, then, that the testimonies against idolatrous veneration and against the immaculate conception of Mary should have fallen silent as soon as the papacy arose and developed within the Christian Church — the matter stands rather thus: that in the first six centuries the point was only ever touched upon by the fathers in passing and in a few words, since in those times it was self-evident that Mary was to be praised as blessed precisely because she — though conceived and born a sinner — had been counted worthy to become the Mother of the Son of God; whereas later, when, with the rise of the papacy and its idolatrous abominations, voices for the immaculate conception grew loud, the most earnest struggle against it soon arose, and the most respected teachers of the Church refuted this error at length and thoroughly.

From this period down to the age of the scholastics, two testimonies may suffice to mark the still-prevailing conviction concerning the holy Virgin. Thus, first, John of Damas-