Note N35 — St. PETER (continued 7)

That the Virgin Mary had other Children besides Christ, was not a new Opinion. It was taught by Helvidius in 383. and long before him by Tertullian, as Jerom himself is forced to own in the Treatise which he wrote against Helvidius: nay, in the Time of Epiphanius, who flourished from the Year 366. to 403. that Opinion universally prevailed in Arabia, as appears from the Letter which he wrote in Confutation of it, and addressed to all the Christians dwelling in Arabia, from the Presbyters down to the Catechumens. In that Letter he styles those who denied the perpetual Virginity of the Virgin Mary, Antidicomarianites; and ranks them, though their Opinion had not yet been condemned by the Church, sometimes among the Heretics, and sometimes among the Schismatics. But in the same Letter he censures, with no less Severity, those who adored her, styling the Worship that was paid her an idolatrous Heresy; which was taxing those who paid it both with Heresy and Idolatry; and from neither will the unmeaning Terms of Latria, Dulia, Hyperdulia, &c. invented and used by the Schoolmen to express different Degrees of Worship, excuse the present Practice of the Church of Rome. Epiphanius was unacquainted with such Terms, as well as with the different Degrees of Worship answering them; and therefore called the Meeting of certain Women, on a stated Day, to offer a Cake to the Virgin Mary, and eat it together in her Honour (whence they had the Name of Collyridians), a Folly repugnant to Religion, an Illusion of the Devil, a robbing God of the Honour that was due to him, an idolatrous Heresy[1]. These Women came from the Northern Provinces of Scythia into Thrace, probably about the Year 372. when Athanaric King of the Goths drove all the Christians out of his Dominions. From Thrace they wandered into Arabia; and there, in Opposition to the Antidicomarianites, introduced the above-mentioned idolatrous Practice. This is the first Instance of any Worship paid to the Virgin Mary; and to those Women the extravagant Worship that is still paid her by the Church of Rome, owes its Rise. Some of these Women took upon them to act, at their Meetings, as Priestesses. This Epiphanius styles an abominable Abuse, Women being so utterly incapable, says he, of performing any Ecclesiastical Functions, that our Saviour did not grant even to his Mother the Power of baptizing[2].