Thus, as the merciful and just Lord sought to destroy the vestiges of human iniquity, it was absolutely necessary that the immaculate one deign to unite an immaculate human nature to himself in the very act of conception, an act which ordinarily the devil was accustomed to rule as his own portion and dominion by inflicting the stain of original sin . . . To be sure, the flesh of Mary had been conceived in iniquity in accordance with human practice, and so her flesh (that gave birth to the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh) was indeed sinful. For the Apostle bears witness that “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.”
First Letter to the Scythian Monks, 8, 13 in Fulgentius of Ruspe and the Scythian Monks: Correspondence on Christology and Grace (The Fathers of the Church, vol. 126; trans. Rob Roy McGregor and Donald Fairbairn; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 51, 54
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