# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22                    The Latest Popish Council, Etc.

...to ascribe to her an immaculate birth, although they may not yet be willing to grant that same one an immaculate conception.

Peter Lombard (d. 1164): "It can, indeed, be said and believed on the testimony of the saints that even the flesh of the (personal, eternal) Word was previously subject to sin, like the rest of Mary's flesh, but that it was cleansed by the working of the Holy Spirit, so that it was united with the Word free from all stain." (3. Sent. dist. 3. lit. A.)

Bonaventure (d. 1274): "We must hold, as indeed is the common opinion, that the sanctification of the Virgin took place after the incurring of original sin." (In lib. 3. dist. 3. Pars 1. art. 1. q. 2.)

Among the chief opponents of the doctrine of the immaculate conception is none other than Thomas Aquinas himself, avowedly the greatest theologian of the Roman church. Of him it is said, among other things, in the Institutum of the Jesuits: "Our doctors shall follow the teaching of St. Thomas in scholastic theology, and henceforth only those shall be promoted to the theological chairs who are well disposed toward St. Thomas; those, on the other hand, who are little taken with this author, or are even disinclined toward him, are to be refused the office of teaching. Our men shall throughout hold St. Thomas as their proper teacher, and shall be bound to follow him in scholastic theology. Since the Constitutions urge that the teaching of a single writer be chosen within the Society, one cannot at this time find the teaching of anyone that would be more thorough and more reliable than his, so that St. Thomas is not without reason held by all to be the prince among the theologians." (Instit. I. fol. 553, 560.) Yet this "prince among the theologians," Thomas, writes as follows: "Of the sanctification of the blessed Mary — namely, that she was sanctified in the womb — nothing is reported in the canonical Scriptures, which likewise make no mention of her birth. . . . A sanctification of the blessed Virgin prior to her animation cannot be understood [to be meant] there, for a twofold reason. First, because the sanctification of which we speak is nothing other than a cleansing from original sin; but a guilt cannot be blotted out except through a grace of which only a rational creature can be the subject. And therefore the blessed Virgin was not sanctified before the infusion of the rational soul. Second, because, since only a rational creature can incur guilt, before the infusion of the rational soul the conceived fruit is not subject to any guilt. And thus, in whatever way the blessed Virgin might have been sanctified prior to her animation, she would never have been stained with the guilt of original sin, and so she would have needed no redemption and no salvation through Christ. But this is absurd, because [in that case] Christ would not be the Savior of all men.—