De docta ignorantia

Further it must be considered that, since the most perfect humanity supposted on high, since it is the terminal contracted precision, does not at all exit the species of that nature. But like is generated from like, and hence the generated proceeds from the generator according to the proportion of nature. But the limit, since it lacks a limit, lacks finitation and proportion. Hence the maximal man is not generable by the way of nature, nor yet can he wholly lack the principle of the species, of which he exists as the ultimate perfection. Partly, therefore, he proceeds according to human nature, because he is man, and since he is the highest principiate most immediately united unto the principle, then that principle itself, from which he is most immediately, is as creating or generating, as father, and the human principle is as passive, ministering receivable matter; hence from a mother without male seed. But every operation proceeds from a certain spirit and love, uniting the active to the passive, as is shown in a certain place above. And hence the maximal operation above all proportion of nature, through which the creator is united unto the creature, proceeding from the maximal uniting love, exists without doubt necessarily from the holy spirit, who is love absolutely, through whom alone without the aid of a contracted agent the mother could conceive within the latitude of the species the son of God the father, so that just as God the father formed all things by his spirit, which from non-extants proceeded from him into being, so he principally did this by the same most holy spirit, when he operated most perfectly. As that our ignorance be instructed by an example, while some most excellent doctor wishes to disclose his intellectual and mental word to his disciples, that they be spiritually fed with the conceived truth shown to them, he acts so that such a mental word of his put on voice, since it is not showable to the disciples otherwise, if it does not put on a sensible figure; but this cannot otherwise be done except through the natural spirit of the doctor, who from attracted air adapts a vocal figure conformable to the mental word, to which he so unites the word itself, that the voice itself subsists in the word itself, so that the hearers through the voice as medium attain the word. By this, though most remote, similitude we are elevated a little in our meditation above that which can be understood by us, since the eternal father of immense goodness, wishing to show us the riches of his glory unto all fullness of knowledge and wisdom, the eternal Word, his son, who exists as these things and the fullness of all, having compassion on our infirmities, since we could not perceive otherwise than in a sensible form similar to us, manifesting him according to our capacity, clothed him with human nature through the Holy Spirit consubstantial with himself, which spirit indeed, as voice from air attracted through inspiration, wove from the purity of the virginal fecundity of blood that animal body itself, adding reason, that he be man, the Word of God the father, and so inwardly united, that he became the center of the substance of human nature. And all these things were done not serially, as in us the concept is temporally expressed, but by a momentary operation above all time, according to the will conformable to the infinite power.

But that no one must doubt this mother, so full of virtue, ministering matter, to have exceeded all virgins in all perfection of virtue, and to have had among all fruitful women the more excellent blessing. For she, who through all things was preordained unto so great and so excellent a unique virginal birth, had to lack from debt all things which could have hindered either the purity or the vigor at once and the unity of so pre-excellent a birth. For if she had not been apt without male seed? If most holy and superblessed she had not been by the Lord, how would she have been made the shrine of the Holy Spirit, in which he would fashion the body for the son of God? If after birth she had not remained virgin, she would not previously have communicated to the most excellent birth the center of maternal fecundity in its supreme perfection of limpidity, but divisively and diminutely, not as it was owed to so great a unique and supreme son. If therefore the most holy virgin offered herself wholly to God, to whom by the operation of the Holy Spirit she also wholly communicated all the nature of fecundity, there remained in her the immaculate virginity before birth, in birth, and after birth, incorrupt above all common natural generation.

From the eternal father, therefore, and the temporal mother, namely the most glorious virgin Mary, God and man Jesus Christ was born, from the maximal and absolute father most fully, from the mother with the fullest virginal fecundity, replete with supreme blessing in the fullness of time. For he could not be man from a virgin mother except temporally, nor from God the father except eternally; but that temporal nativity required in time the fullness of perfection, as in the mother the fullness of fecundity.

When therefore the fullness of time came, since without time man could not be born, then he was born in the time and place fittest unto this, yet most hidden to all creatures. For the supreme plenitudes are incomparable to other daily experiences, hence no reason could apprehend them by any sign, although by a certain most hidden prophetic inspiration certain obscure signs were handed down, shadowed with human similitudes, from which the wise could reasonably have foreseen the Word to be incarnated in the fullness of time. But the precision of place or time the eternal genitor alone foreknew, who ordained that, while all things held the middle silence, then in the course of the night the Son descend from the supernal citadel into the virginal womb, and in ordained fitting time manifest himself to the world in the form of a servant.