'■ Since this birth was not preceded by any [carnal] pleasure, it could also have been followed by no pangs." Here, too, a passage of prophecy must serve as a proof: Is. Ixvi. 7 : " Before she travailed, she brought forth," &c. * Augustine (De s. virg. c. 6) : " Sola Maria et spiritu et corpore mater et virgo." TOL. II. — 27 4rJ8 THIRD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590. ptSes:) to her ; he cla.ims adoration for God and Christ alone. Jerome wrote, about 383, with indignation and bitterness against Helvidius and Jovinian, who, citing Scripture pas- sages and earlier church teachers, like Tertullian, maintained that Mary bore children to Joseph after the birth of Christ. He saw in this doctrine a desecration of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he even com])ares Helvidius to Erostratus, the destroyer of the temple at Ephesus.' The bishop Bonosus of Sardica was condemned for the same view by the Illyrican bishops, and the Roman bishop Siricius approved the sentence, A. D. 392. Augustine went a step farther. In an incidental remark against Pelagius, he agreed with him in excepting Mary, " propter honorem Domini," 'from actual (but not from origi- nal) sin.^ Tliis exception he is willing to make from the uni- ' Helvidius adduces the principal exegetical arguments for his view ; the pas- sages on the Lord's brothers, and especially Matt. i. 25, pressing the words iyivua-Ke and ewr. Jerome remarks, on the contrary, that the k?ioiving by no means neces- sarily denotes nuptial intercourse, and that iill does not always fix a limit ; e. g.. Matt, xxviii. 20 and 1 Cor. xv. 25. In like manner Helvidius laid stress on the ex- pression irpuTOTOKos, used of Christ, Matt. i. 25; Luke ii. V; to which Jerome rightly replies that, according to the law, every son who first opens the womb is called the first-born, Ex. xxxiv. 19, 20; Nmn. xviii. 15 ff., whether followed by other children or not. The " brothers of Jesus " he explains to be cousins, sons of Alpheus and the sister of the Virgin Mary, who hkewise was called Mary (as he wrongly infers from John xix. 25). The main argument of Jerome, however, is the ascetic one: the overvaluation of celibacy. Joseph was probably only " custos," not "maritus Maris" (cap. 19), and their marriage only nominal. He would not in- deed deny that there are pious souls among married women and widows, but they are such as have abstained or ceased from living in conjugal intercourse (cap. 21). Helvidius, conversely, ascribed equal moral dignity to the married and the single state. So Jovinian. Comp. § 43. ' De nat. et grat. contra Pelag. c. 36, §42: '■^ Excepta sanda virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem Domini nullam prorsus, cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo qjicestionem, . . . hac ergo virgine ezcepta, si omnes illos sanctos et sanctas [whom Pelagius takes for sinless] . . . congregare possemus et interrogare,