The application is the same. The soul will say, "I have not sinned; it is the body. Since I came out from it I have been like a pure bird that flies in the air." The body says, "I have not sinned; it is the soul. Since it went forth from me I have been like a stone that is thrown on the ground."
Whether this is a later or an earlier form of the story than Ezekiel's, it seems to me an inferior one.
The next fragment is very short. Tertullian (de Carne Christi, 23) says: "We read indeed in Ezekiel about that cow which bare and bare not: but consider whether the Holy Spirit did not even then blame you by that utterance, foreseeing that you would dispute over the womb of Mary."
We have the quotation elsewhere, but only here is the source of it named. Thus Epiphanius (Hær. xxx. 20): "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son." He said not, "Behold, the woman": and again in another place he saith, "And the heifer shall bear, and they shall say, 'She hath not borne'; for because some of the Manichæans and Marcionites say, 'He was not born,' therefore is it said, 'She shall bear,' and they shall say, 'She hath not borne.'"
The old Acts of Peter, 29, quotes several prophecies (including one from the Ascension of Isaiah): "And again he saith, 'She hath borne and hath not borne,'" is one of these.
Clement of Alexandria (Str. vii. 16, p. 66, Stähelin) has the same words, with "saith the Scripture."
Gregory of Nyssa (Adversus Judæos, 3), "And again: Behold, the heifer hath borne and hath not borne."
Tertullian's words seem to imply that there was some story attached to the saying. It might very well have been a parable. In fact, as it stands it is a parable. I do not see that it can have been anything but Christian; the application to the Virgin-Birth must have been intended by the writer.
A third phrase which is quoted again and again by Fathers of all ages, and sometimes as a saying of Christ's, is attributed in the Life of St. Antony to Ezekiel,
