ted above) we read: "Whosoever brings forth mere flesh,
ceases to be a virgin. But since she gave birth to the Word made
flesh, God safeguarded her virginity so as to manifest His Word, by
which Word He thus manifested Himself: for neither does our word,
when brought forth, corrupt the mind; nor does God, the substantial
Word, deigning to be born, destroy virginity."

Secondly, this is fitting as regards the effect of Christ's
Incarnation: since He came for this purpose, that He might take away
our corruption. Wherefore it is unfitting that in His Birth He should
corrupt His Mother's virginity. Thus Augustine says in a sermon on
the Nativity of Our Lord: "It was not right that He who came to heal
corruption, should by His advent violate integrity."

Thirdly, it was fitting that He Who commanded us to honor our father
and mother should not in His Birth lessen the honor due to His Mother.

Reply Obj. 1: Ambrose says this in expounding the evangelist's
quotation from the Law: "Every male opening the womb shall be called
holy to the Lord." This, says Bede, "is said in regard to the wonted
manner of birth; not that we are to believe that our Lord in coming
forth violated the abode of her sacred womb, which His entrance
therein had hallowed." Wherefore the opening here spoken of does not
imply the unlocking of the enclosure of virginal purity; but the mere
coming forth of the infant from the maternal womb.

Reply Obj. 2: Christ wished so to show the reality of His body, as to
manifest His Godhead at the same time. For this reason He mingled
wondrous with lowly things. Wherefore, to show that His body was
real, He was born of a woman. But in order to manifest His Godhead,
He was born of a virgin, for "such a Birth befits a God," as Ambrose
says in the Christmas hymn.

Reply Obj. 3: Some have held that Christ, in His Birth, assumed the
gift of "subtlety," when He came forth from the closed womb of a
virgin; and that He assumed the gift of "agility" when with dry feet
He walked on the sea. But this is not consistent with what has been
decided above (Q. 14). For these gifts of a glorified body result
from an overflow of the soul's glory on to the body, as we shall
explain further on, in treating of glorified bodies (Suppl., Q. 82):
and it has been said above (Q. 13, A. 3, ad 1; Q. 16, A. 1, ad 2)
that before His Passion Christ "allowed His flesh to do and to suffer
what was proper to it" (Damascene, De Fide Orth. iii): nor w