of Andover for Oct. 1864. § 8]. THE WORSHIP OF MAKY, MARIOLOGY. 4]Jf predicate of Mary. After the foiirtli century it was taken not merely in a moral sense, but in the physical also, as meaning that Mary conceived and produced tlie Lord clmiso vtero.^ This, of course, recpiired the supposition of a miracle, like the passage of the risen Jesns through the closed doors. Mary, therefore, in the Catholic view, stands entirely alone in the his- tory of the world in this respect, as in others : that she was a married virgin, a wife never touched by her husband." Ei^iphanius, in his seventy-eightli Heresy, combats the ad- vocates of the opposite view in Arabia toward the end of the fourth century (367), as heretics under the title of Antidiko- nnarianites^ opposers of the dignity of Mary, i. e., of her per- petual vii-ginity. But, on the other hand, he condemns, in the seventy-ninth Heresy, the contemporaneous sect of the Collyridians in Arabia, a set of fanatical women, who, as priestesses, rendered divine worship to Mary, and, perhaps in imitation of the worship of Ceres, offered little cakes [koKKv- ' Tertullian (De came Christi, c. 23 : Virgo quantum a viro ; non virgo quantum apariu), Clement of Alex. (Strom, vii. p. 889), and even Epiphanius (Hser. Ixxviii. § 19, where it is said of Christ: OZtSs icnw a.\-r]^!Ls ayoiycDV fiijTpav txrirpos), were still of another opinion on this point. Ambrose of Milan is the first, within my knowledge, to propound this miraculous view (Epist. 42 ad Siricimn). He ap- peals to Ezek. xliv. 1-3, taking the east gate of the temple, which must remain closed because Jehovah passed through it, to refer typically to Mary. " Quse est hsec porta, nisi Maria? Ideo clausa, quia virgo. Porta igitur Maria, per quam Christus intravit in hunc mundum." De inst. Virg. c. 8 (Op. ii. 262). So Ambrose also in his hymn, " A soHs ortus cardine," and Jerome, Adv. Pelag. 1. ii. 4. The resurrection of Jesus from the closed tomb and the entrance of the risen Jesus through the closed doors, also, was often used as an analogy. The fathers assimie that the stone which sealed the Saviour's tomb, was not rolled away till after the resurrec- tion, and they draw a parallel between the sealed tomb from which He rose to ever- lasting life, and the closed gate of the Virgin's womb from which He was bom to earthly life. Jerome, CommcM. in Matth. xxvii. 60: "Potest novum sepulchram Marise virginalem utenmi demonstrare." Gregory the Great : " Ut ex clauso Virginis utero natus, sic ex clauso sepulehro resurrexit in quo nemo conditus fuerat, et post- quam resurrexisset, se per clausas fores in conspectum apostolorum induxit." Sub- sequently the catholic view, consistently, removed every other incident of an ordinary birth, such as pain and the flow of blood. While Jerome still would have Jesus iiorn imder all "naturae contumeliis," John Damascenus says (De orth. fide, iv. 14):