'The power of the Holy Spirit was perfected in the Virgin's weakness': an 1851 Old High sermon against the Immaculate Conception

In an 1851 sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on the feast of the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin, 'On a Recent Proposal of the Church of Rome to make a New Article of Faith', Christopher Wordsworth - a leading figure in the Old High tradition, Bishop of Lincoln 1869-85 - addressed the process which led to the Bishop of Rome promulgating the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. In this extract, Wordsworth expounds how refusal to accept this doctrine is rooted in the Scriptural proclamation and creedal confession of the Incarnation. Not only is the mystery of the Incarnation not aided by the doctrine Immaculate Conception. In fact, as Wordsworth emphasises, the mystery and grace of the Incarnation is more faithfully acknowledged by a recognition that the Blessed Virgin is, with us, entirely dependent upon the Redeemer. This also points to the grounds for what Wordsworth terms "the true honour of the Blessed Virgin", her overshadowing by the Holy Spirit as she became Mother of the world's Redeemer.

Let me now invite your attention to the consequences which result from the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin was exempt from original sin. 

This doctrine disturbs the relation between the Incarnate Word and His human Mother. 

It would make her a sharer in His incommunicable prerogative, that of original sinlessness. It would deprive Him of His right to be called her Saviour and Redeemer; and so is injurious to His claim to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the World. 

It would mar the contrast between the first and Second Adam. It could no longer be said, that as the first Adam was the source of guilt, so the Second Adam is the source of purity. The Virgin would be the source, and not Christ. 

It would disturb the relation subsisting between the Holy Ghost and the Incarnate Word; and, through Him, to the whole family of man. If the Blessed Virgin was sinless, if her human substance was not infected with any original taint, then the sinlessness of Christ's human nature would not be due solely and immediately to the operation of the Holy Ghost, over-shadowing the Blessed Virgin at the time when she conceived her Saviour in her womb ...

Let us listen to Scripture. Christ took upon Him human flesh of the substance of the Virgin His Mother, who was born in original sin; but the flesh which He took was not sinful, it was purified by the Holy Ghost at the time of her conception, and not before. Hear the voice of the Angel to Mary: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." The power of the Holy Spirit was perfected in the Virgin's weakness. 

 It is necessary to salvation to believe that Christ took "our nature of the substance of the Virgin Mary His Mother." It is also firmly to be maintained, that the flesh which he assumed of the substance of the Virgin His Mother, was free from all spot of sin, and that the cause, the only cause of this sinlessness, was the Holy Ghost.