with wisdom, and the grace of God was in Him: and His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.”664 But lest any one may fancy that by the “parents” here are rather to be understood the blood relations of Mary along with the mother herself, what shall be said to that preceding word of the same Luke, namely, “And His father665 and mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him”?666 Since, then, he also makes the statement that Christ was born, not in consequence of Joseph’s connection with the mother, but simply of Mary the virgin, how can he call him His father, unless it be that we are to understand him to have been truly the husband of Mary, without the intercourse of the flesh indeed, but in virtue of the real union of marriage; and thus also to have been in a much closer relation the father of Christ, in so far as He was born of his wife, than would have been the case had He been only adopted from some other party? And this makes it clear that the clause,“as was supposed,”667 is inserted with a view to those who are of opinion that He was begotten by Joseph in the same way as other men are begotten. 664 Luke ii. 40, 41. 665 Et erat pater ejus, etc., instead of Joseph, etc. [The correct text in Luke ii. 33 is undoubtedly that given by Augustin. Compare critical editions of the Greek text. So Revised Version, “And His father and His mother,” etc.—R.] 666 Luke ii. 33. 667 [Compare Revised Version, where the parenthesis is correctly given.—R.] 225 A Statement of the Reason Why the Enumeration of the Ancestors of Christ…