8.  For a sign that shall be spoken against.  By a sign, we properly understand in Scripture a cross.  Moses, it is said, set the serpent “upon a pole.” Num. xxi. 8.  That is upon a cross.  Or else a sign σήμειον, LXX. is indicative of something strange and obscure seen by the simple but understood by the intelligent.  There is no cessation of controversy about the Incarnation of the Lord; some asserting that he assumed a body, and others that his sojourn was bodiless; some that he had a passible body, and others that he fulfilled the bodily œconomy by a kind of appearance.  Some say that his body was earthly, some that it was heavenly; some that He pre-existed before the ages; some that He took His beginning from Mary.  It is on this account that He is a sign that shall be spoken against.