The explicit doctrine of the immaculate conception was first taught about 1140, at which time a festival was established in favor of it. Bernard of Clairvaux opposed this. “On the same principle,” said he, “you would be obliged to hold that the conception of her ancestors in ascending line was also a holy one, since otherwise she could not have descended from them worthily, and there would be festivals without number.” The Franciscans favored the feast of the conception without the immaculation, which the Dominicans under Aquinas opposed, and a severe and bitter controversy ensued between these rival sects. In 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated the bull _ineffabilii deus_, by which the doctrine of the immaculate conception became an article of the Romish faith, to disbelieve which is heresy. All history shows that this doctrine is but a modern invention. There is not a particle of proof that God had anything to do with it. It is assumed that God could be born of a woman, then that he must be without a human father, his mother a virgin, and to improve the situation that she must be immaculate, born without sin. The frame-work once set up, the fabric has been completed by additions from century to century, until this obscure Jewish mother of the man Jesus has become in the Roman church the most holy mother of God. The very idea is sensuous, born of the flesh and not of the spirit, repulsive to a refined mind, and degrading to the character of God. The whole structure reminds one of an English medieval house that has been added to and patched upon, and so changed that the first occupant, should he come to the earth, would not recognize his own birthplace. Without a doubt, if Mary and Jesus should rise from the dead, they would be astonished at their modern portraits; and Jesus, honest man that he was, would lash these libellers out of the house of God for making it a place of lies, deceit and merchandise. Among the heathen or pagan nations such an apotheosis was not uncommon or strange, but that an intelligent people, claiming to have exalted views of almighty God, should invent such wicked, degrading nonsense, is astonishing. It was customary among the earlier Romans to deify their rulers, and place their prominent men among the gods, but it was reserved for the modern Romans to bring God down and make him a man among men.