Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] If, then, they contend that this suited the novelty — that just as flesh was not from the seed of a man, so neither was it from the flesh of the virgin that the Word of God became flesh — why should not the whole novelty rather consist in this: that flesh not born of seed should nevertheless have proceeded from flesh? [2] Let them come to closer quarters still. "Behold," it says, "a virgin shall conceive in her womb." Conceive what? The Word of God, to be sure, not a man's seed. And certainly, so as to bring forth a son — for "she shall bring forth a son," it says. So then, just as it was hers to conceive, so it was hers to bring forth; and just as what she brought forth was hers, even though what she conceived was not from her. On the contrary, if the Word made itself flesh of itself, then it already conceived and brought forth itself, and the prophecy is empty: [3] for the virgin neither conceived nor brought forth, unless what she brought forth from the Word's conception is her own flesh. And will only this word of the prophet be emptied out? Or also the angel's, announcing the virgin's conceiving and bearing? Or indeed all of Scripture as well, wherever it declares her the mother of Christ? For how is she a mother, unless because he was in her womb? And how was he in the womb, if she drew nothing from her womb that would render her a mother, given that his dwelling was in that womb? Alien flesh has no claim to this title: no flesh calls a womb "mother's womb" unless it is the daughter of that womb; and it is not a daughter of the womb if it was born of itself. [4] Elizabeth too, then, will fall silent — she who carried within her a prophet, already aware of his Lord, and moreover filled with the Holy Spirit: for it would be idle of her to ask, "And how does it happen that my Lord's own mother visits me?" if Mary carried in her womb not a son but a guest, Jesus. How does she say, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb"? What fruit of a womb is this, that did not sprout from the womb, that did not root in the womb, that does not belong to the one whose womb it is? And is Christ truly the fruit of the womb? [5] Or is it because he is himself the flower sprung from the rod that comes forth from the root of Jesse — the root of Jesse being the line of David, the rod from that root being Mary sprung from David, the flower from the rod being Mary's child, the one named Jesus Christ — will he also be the fruit? [6] For the flower is the fruit, since it is through the flower and from the flower that every fruit is trained on into fruit. What then? Do they deny the fruit its flower, and the flower its rod, and the rod its root — refusing to let the root, through the rod, claim as its own what belongs to it as coming from the rod, namely the flower and the fruit? [7] For every step of a lineage is reckoned back from the last to the first, so that even now they may know that the flesh of Christ clings not only to Mary but to David through Mary, and to Jesse through David. To such a degree does God swear that this fruit from the loins of David — that is, from the posterity of his flesh — shall sit upon his throne. If from the loins of David, how much more from the loins of Mary, on whose account he was in the loins of David.