Think for a moment what all this agreement--this consensus of
tradition implies. The testimony of these writers clearly shows
that in the early part of the second century, and reaching back
to its very beginning, the Virgin-Birth formed part of the tradition
or doctrinal creed of the Church, and that this tradition was
believed to be traced back to the Apostles. It has a place in the
earliest forms of the Creed: it is insisted upon by the earliest
Apologists. It is not merely in one Church or two Churches, in one
district or in two, that this tradition is found. It is everywhere.
In East and West alike. It is so in Rome and in Gaul (by the
testimony of Irenaeus). It is in Greece (by the testimony of
Aristides). It is in Africa (by the testimony of Tertullian);
in Alexandria (by the testimony of Clement and Origen); in Asia
(by the testimony of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ignatius); in
Palestine and Syria (by the testimony of Ignatius and Justin
Martyr). Irenaeus, if any one, should know what the Apostles
taught, for before he came to Rome he had been the pupil of
Polycarp in Asia, who had himself sat at the feet of St. John.
"Everything that we know," says Mr. Rendel Harris, "of the
Dogmatics of the early part of the second century agrees
with the belief that at that period the Virginity 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