But who is this they set up as the most holy mother of God? A woman, a Jewess, the wife of Joseph. She was not known except as the mother of Jesus, no claim that she was more than an ordinary woman, but blessed in being the mother of an excellent son. Taking the New Testament, which gives the only account we have of her, it scarcely mentions her, and then without giving her any prominence. No allusion is made either to the time or place of her birth, or of her death. Even her son Jesus scarcely treats her with common respect. When he wandered away from his parents, and gave them great trouble and anxiety in finding him, he did not show her any special regard when they found him. At the marriage in Cana, when she spoke to him, he addressed her in the style of orientals, not even calling her mother, but “Woman! what have I to do with thee?” He apparently neglected her, and never mentions her, his own mother, and at his death he had little to say to her. The apostles seldom refer to her, and then only as the wife of Joseph, the mother of Jesus. I defy any one to show a word or line in the Bible to indicate she had any special regard shown to her by either her own son Jesus, or by his apostles. It was not until several centuries later that she began to be reverenced, then prayed to, and finally to be deified and worshiped in the place of God. Her virginity was of no importance to the evangelists, as they never refer to it, and the theory was not taught during the first three centuries. In the fourth century she was first styled the mother of God. Augustine repeatedly asserts that she was born in original sin. Anselm declares that the virgin herself when He (Jesus) was assumed was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother conceive her, and with original sin was she born, because she, too, sinned in Adam, in whom all sinned. Others expressed the same views.