Let us reckon then through Joseph, because as he is in chastity a husband, so is he in chastity
a father. And let us put the man before the woman, according to the order of nature and
the law of God. For if we should cast him aside and leave her, he would say, and say with
reason, “Why have you excluded me? Why do not the generations ascend and descend
through me?” Shall we say to him, “Because thou didst not beget Him by the operation of
thy flesh?” Surely he will answer, “And is it by the operation of the flesh that the Virgin bare
257
Him? What the Holy Spirit wrought, He wrought for both.” “Being a just man,”1790 saith
the Gospel. The husband then was just and the woman just. The Holy Spirit reposing in the
justice of them both, gave to both a Son. In that sex which is by nature fitted to give birth,
He wrought that birth which was for the husband also. And therefore doth the Angel bid
them both give the Child a name, and hereby is the authority of both parents established.
For when Zacharias was yet dumb, the mother gave a name to her newborn son. And when
they who were present “made signs to his father what he would have him called, he took a
writing-table and wrote”1791 the name which she had already pronounced. So to Mary too
the Angel saith, “Behold, thou shalt conceive a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus.”1792 And
to Joseph also he saith, “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife;
for That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a Son,
and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”1793 Again
it is said, “And she brought forth a Son to him,”1794 by which he is established to be a father,
not in the flesh indeed, but in love. Let us then acknowledge him to be a father, as in truth
he is. For most advisedly and most wisely do the Evangelists reckon through him, whether
Matthew in descending from Abraham down to Christ, or Luke in ascending from Christ
through Abraham up to God. The one reckons in a descending, the other in an ascending
order; but both through Joseph. And why? Because he is the father. How the father? Because
he is the more undeniably1795 a father in proportion as he is more chastely so. He was
thought, it is true, to be the father of our Lord Jesus Christ in another way: that is, as other
parents are according to a fleshly birth, and not through the fruitfulness of a wholly spiritual
love. For Luke said, “Who was supposed to be the father of Jesus.”1796 Why supposed? Be-
cause men’s thoughts and suppositions were directed to what is usually the case with men.
The Lord then was not of the seed of Joseph, though He was supposed to be; yet nevertheless
1790 Matt. i. 19.
1791 Luke i. 63.
1792 Luke i. 31.
1793 Matt. i. 20, 21.
1794 Luke ii. 7. There seems to be no trace of any such reading anywhere else.
1795 Firmius.
1796 Luke iii. 23.
550
Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…