# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Latest Popish Council, Etc.                21

...conception without holiness had preceded, that the one conceived should be sanctified, so that a holy birth then followed? Or did the earlier thing (the conception) borrow holiness from the later thing (the birth)? That holiness, if it had already occurred at the conception, could indeed pass forward onto the birth that followed; but to pass backward onto the conception that had already gone before, it could by no means do. Whence, then, the holiness of the conception? Or shall one say that sanctification had preceded her, by virtue of which she was already conceived in holiness, and that thereby the conception too was holy, just as she is said to have been sanctified already in the womb, so that a holy birth followed? But she could not be holy sooner than she was. Yet she did not exist at all before she was conceived. . . . Or did the Holy Spirit have fellowship with sin (that of her parents)? Or else how was sin not present, when the desire of sin was not lacking? Someone would then have to say that she was conceived of the Holy Spirit and not of a man. But that is something hitherto unheard of. Finally, I read (in the Holy Scripture) that the Holy Spirit came into her — not that he came together with her — since the angel says: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you." And if it is permitted to say what the Church believes (and she believes the truth), then I say that the Glorious One was conceived of the Holy Spirit, but was not herself likewise so conceived; I say that the Virgin gave birth, but was not herself likewise born of a virgin. Where else would the Mother of the Lord's distinction lie — on account of which one believes that she rejoices both over the gift of the one born and over the unstained purity of the flesh — if one also granted her mother something equally great? This is not to honor the Virgin, but to diminish her honor. It remains, then, that one should believe she received the sanctification after the conception, already existing in the womb — a sanctification which made the birth, sin being excluded, holy, but not likewise the conception. Therefore, although it has been granted to some, or to a few, children of men to be born in holiness, it has nevertheless not been granted them to be conceived so as well, so that the distinction of a holy conception might be reserved precisely for the One who sanctifies all, and who, coming alone without sin, effected the cleansing of sins. The Lord Jesus is therefore alone conceived of the Holy Spirit, because he alone was holy before his conception. Him excepted, what one man humbly and truthfully confesses of himself, when he says, "In sin was I conceived, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:7), applied otherwise to all who were born of Adam. How, then, can a conception be declared holy which does not proceed from the Holy Spirit — not to say, which proceeds from sin — or be kept as a feast, when it is not holy at all? Gladly will the Glorious One forgo this honor, by which either sin seems to be honored, or a false holiness seems to be introduced." (Ep. 174. Opp. Paris. f. 1567–69.) Thus far, then, we see almost all the Scholastics go, in that they... to the Virgin Mary