13. For He was not begotten, as is every
man, by intercourse between male and female, but born of the Holy
Spirit and of the Virgin; He received a stainless body, which not only
no sins polluted, but which neither the generation nor the conception
had been stained by any admixture of defilement. For we men are
all born under sin, and our very origin is in evil, as we read in the
words of David: “For lo, I was conceived in wickedness, and
in sin did my mother bring me forth.” Ps. li. [l.]
5. Therefore the flesh of Paul was
a body of death, as he himself says: “Who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?” Rom. vii. 24. But
the flesh of Christ condemned sin, which He felt not at His birth, and
crucified by His death, so that in our flesh there might be
justification through grace, in which before there had been pollution
by guilt.