On the Reasons of the Holy Spirit, Book II

heavens, and Luther’s denial of the homousion consubstantiality, and the Anabaptists who deny that Jesus took flesh from the Virgin Mary, all of which, and many similar things, we owe to Luther and his pupils. As regards the impiety of the Anabaptists, there is nothing else needed to be said than this: if He had taken flesh from anywhere other than the Virgin, He would have suffered nothing in the name of our flesh, which He would not have possessed. Furthermore, He would not have been born in the most excellent manner of the whole of nature unless He had taken His beginning from a virgin, than whom we have nothing greater in the lower world, and nothing more like the angels, so that He who was joining all extremes might also make a virgin both mother, daughter and mother, handmaid and mistress in one person, just as He would join God and man, supreme power and supreme abjection and vileness, supreme wealth and supreme poverty. What has been poorly handed down concerning the Holy Spirit, and what has been well composed by the Church, I have treated in both chapters.

On the World. Chapter 3.

A decorative woodcut initial 'P' features intricate floral and foliate scrollwork within a square frame.
Following the cause comes the effect, the world, namely the most excellent creature made by the most excellent craftsman, which by its own nature can possess nothing of evil. For the two creatures in it inclined toward evil were made such by their own volition. Hence the impiety of the Manichaeans seems vain, saying that there is a certain evil god who is the author of evil, which Aristotle refutes in his Metaphysics by laughing at and hissing at the vanity of those men who assert such things from a position so remote from reason. These are the opinions of philosophers, rather than of heretics, that