If birth is something evil, let the blasphemers say that the Lord who shared in birth was born in evil, and that the virgin gave birth to him in evil. Woe to these wicked fellows! They blaspheme against the will of God and the mystery of creation in speaking evil of birth. This is the ground upon which Docetism is held by Cassian and by Marcion also, and on which even Valentine indeed teaches that Christ's body was "psychic." They say: Man became like the beasts when he came to practice sexual intercourse. But it is when a man in his passion really wants to go to bed with a strange woman that in truth such a man has become a wild beast. "Wild horses were they become, each man whinnied after his neighbour's wife." And if the serpent took the use of intercourse from the irrational animals and persuaded Adam to agree to have sexual union with Eve, as though the couple first created did not have such union by nature, as some think, this again is blasphemy against the creation. For it makes human nature weaker than that of the brute beasts if in this matter those who were first created by God copied them.

It is those people who used to say; "God created members for our use, for us to grow in defilement, in order that we might enjoy ourselves." And they ...

Now if we [would] consider his precious Incarnation, then we must rightly open the Eyes of the Spirit, and not be so earthly minded, as at present...

The Christian Church is fundamentally opposed to the theory of marriage, claiming that the highest degree of spirituality is achievable only by those...

But otherwise, the Saviour [or Champion] is wholly the Virgin's Son, and a virgin Mind, as the first Adam [was] in the Creation; for you must earnestl...

Those Gnostic sects maintaining a more rational attitude on the subject declared the very existence of the lower worlds to signify that the Supreme...

John was begotten by the World through a woman, Elizabeth; and Christ was begotten by the world through a virgin, Mary. What is (the meaning of) this...

Reason saith, how might that come to pass, that the first Man born of a Woman was [so evil] a malicious Murderer? Behold, thou immodest vile whorish...

I affirm that had the Virgin not first borne God spiritually He would never have been born from her in bodily fashion. A certain woman said to...

The sons [...] truly, those who have come from his seed, call the sons of the woman "our brothers". In this very way, when the spiritual soul was cast...

You must understand, Mary was to conceive in the Body, viz. in her own Body, not in a strange assumed [Body,] as the Unenlightened (who apprehend not...