4. IGNATIUS in a passage already quoted (Ad Eph. vii. p. 13 and 16) speaks of Christ both in his divine and human nature as Son of God and man, and he mentions the name of Mary, but it is without any adjunct or observation whatever, "both of Mary and of God." In another place he speaks of her virgin state, and the fruit of her womb; and of her having borne our God Jesus the Christ; but he adds no { 290} more; not even calling her "The blessed," or "The Virgin." In the interpolated Epistle to the Ephesians, the former passage adds "the Virgin" after "Mary," but nothing more.
5. In the Epistle of POLYCARP we find an admonition to virgins (Page 186), how they ought to walk with a spotless and chaste conscience, but there is no allusion to the Virgin Mary.
JUSTIN MARTYR. In this writer I do not find any passage so much in point as the following, in which we discover no epithet expressive of honour, or dignity, or exaltation, though it refers to Mary in her capacity of the Virgin mother of our Lord:--"He therefore calls Himself the Son of Man, either from his birth of a virgin, who was of the race of David, and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, or because Abraham himself was the father of those persons enumerated, from whom Mary drew her origin." [Trypho, § 100. p. 195.] And a little below he adds, "For Eve being a virgin and incorrupt, having received the word from the serpent, brought forth transgression and death; but Mary the Virgin having received faith and joy (on the angel Gabriel announcing to her the glad tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her, and the power of the Highest overshadow her) answered, Be it unto me according to thy word. And of her was born He of whom we have shown that so many Scriptures have been spoken; He by whom God destroys the serpent, and angels and men resembling [the serpent]; but works a rescue from death for such as repent of evil and believe in Him." One more passage will suffice, "And according to the command of God, Joseph, taking Him with Mary, went into Egypt." [Trypho, § 102. p. 196.] { 291}
Among those "Questions" to which we have referred under the head of Justin Martyr's works, but which are confessedly of a much less remote date, probably of the fifth century, an inquiry is made, How could Christ be free from blame, who so often set at nought his parent? The answer is, that He did not set her at nought; that He honoured her in deed, and would not have hurt her by his words;--but then the respondent adds, that Christ chiefly honoured Mary in that view of her maternal character, under which all who heard the word of God and kept it, were his brothers and sisters and mother; and that she surpassed all women in virtue. [Qu. 136. p. 500.]