of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief."* How could the belief in the Virgin-Birth have taken such undisputed possession of so many widely separated and independent Churches unless it had had Apostolic authority?+ What other explanation can be given for the fact?  There is as complete a consensus of tradition as could reasonably be asked for.  It is impossible to imagine that the doctrine of the Virgin-Birth can have been suddenly evolved in the early years of the second century.  The only adequate explanation is that it was a substantial part of the Apostolic tradition.  It may be worth while here to quote the words of so distinguished a scholar as Professor Zahn, of Erlangen.  “This [the Virgin-Birth] has been an element of the Creed as far as we can trace it back; and if Ignatius can be taken as a witness of a Baptismal Creed springing from early Apostolic times, certainly in that Creed the name of the Virgin Mary already had its place ....  We may further assert that during the first four centuries of the Church, no teacher and no religious community which can be considered with any appearance of right as an heir of original Christianity, had any other notion of the beginning of the [human] life of Jesus of Nazareth ....  The theory of an original Christianity without the belief in Jesus the Son of God, born of the Virgin, is a fiction."#

—­ * See Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1891), vol. i.  No.  I, p. 25. + “Ecquid verisimile est, ut tot ac tantae [ecclesiae] in unam fidem erraverint?”—­Tertullian, De Praescript, cap. xxviii. # “Dies aber ist ein Element des Symbolum gewesen, so weit wir dasselbe zuruckverfolgen konnen; und wenn Ignatius als Zeuge fur ein noch ateres, aus fruher apostolischer Zeit stammendes Taufbekenntnis gelten darf, so hat auch in diesem bereits der Name der Jungfrau Maria seine Stelle gehabt . . .  Man darf ferner behauften, dass wathrend der ersten vier Jahrhunderte der Kirche kein Lehrer und Keine religiose Genossenschaft, welche sich mit einigem Schein des Rechts als Erben des ursprfinglichen Christenthums betrachten konnten, eine andere Auschauung yon dem Lebensanfang Jesu yon Nazareth gehabt haben, als diese ....  Dass die Annahme eines ursprunglichen Christenthums ohne den Glauben an den yon der Jungfrau geborenen Gottessohn Jesus eine Fiktion ist.”—­Zahn, Das Apostolische Symbolum, pp. 55-68. —­

Opponents of the Virgin-Birth occur, indeed, in the person of Cerinthus, the contemporary of St. John, and later on among the Ebionites, mentioned by Justin Martyr.* But they reject the Virgin-Birth, because they reject the principle of the Incarnation.  “There are no believers in the Incarnation discoverable who are not believers in the Virgin-Birth."+ The two truths have been held together as inseparable.  There has never been any belief in the Incarnation without its carrying with it the belief in the Virgin-Birth.

—­ * Dial cum Tryph., 48, 49. + Gore, Dissertations, p. 48. —­