"Here sin was no relative": Jeremy Taylor on the sanctity and perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

A final extract from The Great Exemplar, a beautiful and deeply patristic meditation from Taylor on the sanctity and perpetual virginity of Our Lady, indicative of Laudian Marian piety:

As there was no sin in the conception, neither had she pains in the production, as the church from the days of Gregory Nazianzen until now, hath piously believed; though before his days there were some opinions to the contrary, but certainly neither so pious, nor so reasonable. For to her alone did not the punishment of Eve extend, that "in sorrow should she bring forth": for where nothing of sin was an ingredient, there misery cannot cohabit. For though amongst the daughters of men many conceptions are innocent and holy, being sanctified by the word of God and prayer, hallowed by marriage, designed by prudence, seasoned by temperance, conducted by religion towards a just, a hallowed, and a holy end, and yet their productions are in sorrow; yet this of the blessed Virgin might be otherwise, because here sin was no relative, and neither was in the principle nor the derivative, in the act nor in the habit, in the root nor in the branch: there was nothing in this but the sanctification of a virgin's womb, and that could not be the parent of sorrow, especially that gate not having been opened by which the curse always entered. An as to conceive by the Holy Ghost was glorious, so to bring forth any of "the fruits of the Spirit" is joyful, and full of felicities. And He that came from His grave fast tied with a stone and signature, and into the college of the apostles "the doors being shut", came also (as the church piously believes) into the world so without doing violence to the virginal and pure body of His mother, that he did leave her virginity entire, to be as a seal, that none might open the gate of that sanctuary; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, "This gate should be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter it; because the Lord God of Israel hath entered by it, therefore it shall be shut".

Jeremy Taylor The Great Exemplar I.III.3.

(The icon of the Theotokos is by Ivanka Demchuk.)

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