# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1855_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Latest Popish Council, Etc.                27

...had been freed from original sin — that these were generally freed after birth, a few others before birth but after animation, whereas Mary alone was freed from original sin at the very moment of animation. This is the opinion of Cardinal Bellarmine. 5. Others maintain that the freeing from original sin took place only after animation in the womb. Thus writes, namely, Biel, who is regarded as the last of the scholastics: "Mary was sanctified in the womb after her animation, before she came into the light of the world." (3. Sent. dist. 3. q. 1. conclus. 3.) 6. Others leave undecided what was determined under Nos. 4 and 5, and maintain only that Mary was already sanctified in the womb. Thus writes Ludolph of Saxony: "Mary was cleansed from original sin in the womb by a certain special privilege." (Vita Jesu Christi. 1510. P. II. c. 2.) 7. Some maintain that the tinder (of sin) was wholly extinguished in Mary; others, that this tinder was in her only so far weakened that she could not incline toward sin. Of the former view Thomas says that "this seems to belong to the dignity of the mother, but in fact takes something away from the dignity of Christ." (Summ. P. 3. q. 27. artic. 3.) 8. Some declare the doctrine of the immaculate conception to be something belonging to the faith; others deny that it contains an article of faith. Among the former is Biel, who writes as follows: "The Church has established that the feast of the Conception is to be kept universally. But the authority of the Church is greater than the authority of any saint,*) at least according to the canonical writers." At the Council of Basel it is determined and published in the best form, in the 86th session, in the following words: "We hereby determine that the doctrine that the Mother of God has always been free of all guilt, both original and actual, is — as a godly doctrine, agreeable to the worship of the Church, to the Catholic faith, to sound reason, and to Holy Scripture — henceforth to be approved, upheld, and accepted by all Catholics, and that no one shall henceforth be permitted to teach or preach the contrary." (3. Sent. dist. 8. q. 1. art. 2.) Of the same mind was also Pope Pius V, who in the year 1567, in a bull, publicly and solemnly condemned as heretical the following proposition of Baius (it is the 73rd): "No one is without original sin except Christ; therefore the blessed Virgin died on account of the sin inherited from Adam." — That others, on the other hand, do not wish this doctrine to be regarded as an article of faith, although they themselves accept it, is shown by a passage in the already-mentioned constitution, likewise of a pope, namely Sixtus IV, from the year 1483, which reads as follows: "For the same reason, with the same knowledge and authority, we subject to the same penalty and censure those who would presume to assert that those who hold the opposite opinion — namely, that the glorious Vir—

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*) Of what sort of people, then, must the papist church consist, according to this?