Annotatio CLVI

”He that walketh without blemish,” etc. — Psalm 14:2

Erasmus cautiously admonished that Arnobius, explaining these words in the commentaries on the Psalter, is to be read [warily],¹ as though he seems to hint that Mary, when Christ entered her womb, was cleansed from the stains with which she had been infected before Christ’s conception — when he says: “Every stained one enters the tabernacle of the Lord, and there is made immaculate; but Jesus alone, immaculate, entering the virginal hall, freed that very tabernacle from its carnal stains, and gave it sanctification.” And yet it is manifest from the following words that he does not speak of the stains which had been in Mary before Christ’s entrance, but of those which are wont to be in other women — from which Christ preserved his mother immune. And that which he adds — “[the tabernacle] sanctified by the entrance of Christ” — is not so to be understood as though it then first began to be sanctified when it conceived Christ, but that Christ, entering into her, brought her greater increments of sanctity. Read Annotations 136 and 137 of the book which follows next to this.