although He was
God, and being made man He remained that which He was, God. He
assumed a body like our own, differing in this respect only, that
it was born of a Virgin and of the Holy Spirit."*

--
* De Principiis, Lib. I., Pref., 4. "Species vero eorum quae per
praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur, istae sunt, Primo,
quod unus Deus est . . . tum deinde quia Jesus Christus ipse qui
venit, ante omnem creaturam natus ex Patre est. Qui cum in omnium
conditione Patri ministrasset (per ipsum enim omnia facta sunt);
novissimis temporibus se ipsum exinaniens, homo fictus incarnatus
est, cum Deus esset, et homo, factus mansit quod erat, Deus.
Corpus assumsit nostro corpori simile, eo solo differens,
quod natum ex Virgine et Spiritu Sancto est."
--

In his Treatise against Celsus he exclaims: "Who has not heard of
the Virgin-Birth of Jesus, of the Crucified, of His Resurrection
of which so many are convinced, and the announcement of the
judgment to come?"+

--
+ Contr. Celsum, i. 7. "Tini gar lanthanei he ek parthenou
gennesis Iesus kai ho estauromenos kai he papa pollois
pepistreumene anastasis autou, kai he katangellomene krisis."
--

Think for a moment what all this agreement--this consensus of
tradition implies. The testimony of these writers clearly shows
that in the early part of the second century, and reaching back
to its very beginning, the Virgin-Birth formed part of the tradition
or doctrinal creed of the Church, and that this tradition was
believed to be traced back to the Apostles. It has a place in the
earliest forms of the Creed: it is insisted upon by the earliest
Apologists. It is not merely in one Church or two Churches, in one
district or in two, that this tradition is found. It is everywhere.
In East and West alike. It is so in Rome and in Gaul (by the
testimony of Irenaeus). It is in Greece (by the testimony of
Aristides). It is in Africa (by the testimony of Tertullian);
in Alexandria (by the testimony of Clement and Origen); in Asia
(by the testimony of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ignatius); in
Palestine and Syria (by the testimony of Ignatius and Justin
Martyr). Irenaeus, if any one, should know what the Apostles
taught, for before he came to Rome he had been the pupil of
Polycarp in Asia, who had himself sat at the feet of St. John.
"Everything that we know," says Mr. Rendel Harris, "of the
Dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees
with the belief that at that perio