Page:History of Heresies (Liguori).djvu/114

106 by St. Ambrose, in Milan. In the end he was exiled by the Emperor Theodosius, and afterwards by Honorius, to Boas, a maritime town of Dalmatia, and died there in misery, in the year 412. He taught many errors: First, that marriage and virginity were equally meritorious; secondly, that those once baptized can sin no more; thirdly, that those who fast and those who eat have equal merit, if they praise God; fourthly, that all have an equal reward in heaven; fifthly, that all sins are equal; sixthly, that the Blessed Virgin was not a virgin after giving birth to our Lord. This last error was followed by Hinckmar, Wickliffe, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Molineus, and Basnage, but has been ably refuted by St. Jerome, and condemned in a Synod by St. Ambrose. Petavius says, that all the Fathers unanimously profess the belief in the virginity of the Blessed Virgin, as fixed by a decree of the Catholic faith. St. Gregory says, that, as Jesus Christ entered into the house, where the apostles were assembled, with the doors shut, in the same manner, at his nativity, he left the inviolated cloister of Mary. The letter of Theodotus of Ancira was approved of by the General Council of Ephesus, in which, speaking of the Blessed Virgin, he says: the birth of Jesus Christ makes her a mother without injury to her virginity. The third canon of the Lateran Council, celebrated in the year 649, under Martin I., says: that he should be condemned, who does not confess that the Mother of God was always a virgin. A similar declaration was made in the Council of Trullus, in 692, and in the eleventh Council of Toledo, in 675. He was also condemned by St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Isidore Pelusiot, St. Proclus, St. John Chrysostom, St. John Damascenus, St. Augustin, St. Ambrose, St. Siricus Pope (who excommunicated him and his followers, in a synod held in Rome), St. Peter Chrysologus, St. Hilary, St. Prosper, St. Fulgentius, St. Eucherius, St. Paulinus, St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Peter Damian, and many others; and any one who wishes to see the opinions expressed by the Fathers, has only to look to Petavius's Theology. The text of Ezechiel: "This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened," (Ezechiel, xliv. 2), is generally understood to refer to the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God, and St. Leo, Pope Hormisdas, Pelagius I., and the Council of Chalcedon, in the discourse addressed to the Emperor Marcion, all understood it thus.

3. Let us now hear what Basnage, and the heretics who hold the contrary opinion, have to say. Their first argument is founded on that text of Isaias: "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son" (Isaias, vii. 14), which St. Matthew, speaking of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, quotes (Matthew, i. 13). Basnage then argues on this text: The prophet says, that Mary con-