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ATHANASIUS also, priest of the city of Alexandria, a splendid instance
of constancy and virtue, whom the storm of heretical persecution tested
without crushing him: whose life was always like a clear glass, and who had
almost obtained the reward of martyrdom before attaining the dignity of
confessorship: Let us see what was his view of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the mother of the Lord. "This then," he says, "is the mind and stamp of
Holy Scripture, as we have often said; viz., that in one and the same
Saviour two things have to be understood: that He was ever God, and is
Son, Word, and Light, and Wisdom of the Father, and that afterwards for
our sakes He took flesh of the Virgin Mary the Theotocos, and was made
man." Again after some other matter: "Many then were saints and clean
from sin: Jeremiah also was sanctified from the womb, and John, while still
in the womb leapt for joy at the voice of Mary the Theotocos." He
certainly says that God, the Son of God, who (to declare the faith of all
in his words) is "the Word, and Light and Wisdom of the Father," took flesh
for our sakes; and therefore he calls the Virgin Mary Theotocos, because
she was the Mother of God.
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