t 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, Sec. 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, Sec. 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.]

IRENAEUS. To the confused passage relied upon by Bellarmin, in which
Irenaeus is supposed to represent Mary as the advocate of Eve, we have
already fully referred (page 120 of this work). In that passage there is
no allusion to any honour paid, or to be paid to her, nor to any
invocation of her. In every passage to which my attention has been
drawn, Irenaeus speaks of the mother of