And yet the dogma of the Immaculate Con ception was at least implicitly contained in Holy Writ, and explicitly taught by the Fathers of the Church. To show such content is beyond the range of this brief article. Only the out line of the argument may be indicated.
1. Gen. iii, 14-15, the curse of the serpent may be thus translated from the Hebrew: Since this thou haat done, Accursed art thou Beyond all beasts and brutes of the wild. All the days of thy life.
On thy belly shalt thou crawl, Biting the duet.
Enmity shall I set Between thee and the woman. Between thy offspring And her offspring.
They shall smite thy head, Thou shalt smite their heel.
In its literal meaning, this curse includes the victory of the woman and her offspring over Satan and his offspring. The woman is Eve; her offspring are all the just,— the phys ical Christ and the Mystic Christ, or the Church. In its typical meaning, the curse in cludes the complete victory of Mary over Satan. For Eve is the type of Mary. And yet such complete victory would not have been, had Mary ever been tainted with sin,—even with original sin.
2. Luke i, 28: Hail. full of grace. the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among wpmen.
These words of Gabriel's greeting mean such fulness of grace, such intimate union with God, such blessedness beyond all women, as to pre clude all taint of sin, even of original sin.
3. The Fathers, who follow such an inter pretation of these two passages of Scripture and defend the freedom of Mary from all sin, may be found in any of the works of our bibliography.
4. A fourth reason for the definition of the Immaculate Conception, given by the bull "Ineffabilis Deus? is the fitness of the privilege unto the Mother of God. The eternal decree of God the Father to save the human race by the merits and satisfactions of the Word incar nate included the choice of a mother to the God-man; and it was most fitting that this mother should be embellished with a super abundance of grace, and that naught of sin should ever tarnish her soul.
Bibliography.— Passaglia, C., 'De immacu lato Deiparm sernper Virginis Conceptu) (1854); Ullathorne, 'The Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God' (1904); Terrien, 'L'Inunacu lee Conception' (1904); Le Bachelet, tionnaire Apologetique de la Foi Catholique,' v, "Mariolatne? (1917) ; Kosters, die unbefieckt Empfangene) (1905); Mir y Noguera, 'La Immaculada Concepcion' (1905).