Joseph, replying, said:
"Whither shall I take thee, for the place is desert?"
Then said Mary again to Joseph:
"Take me down, for that which is within me mightily presses me."
Joseph then took her down from off the ass, and he found there a cave and put her into it.
Joseph then left Mary in the cave, and started toward Bethlehem for a midwife, whom he found and brought back with him. When they neared the spot a bright cloud overshadowed the cave.
"But on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the cave, so their eyes could not bear it. But the light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared and sucked the breast of his mother."[155:1]
Tertullian (A. D. 200), Jerome (A. D. 375) and other Fathers of the Church, also state that Jesus was born in a cave, and that the heathen celebrated, in their day, the birth and Mysteries of their Lord and Saviour Adonis in this very cave near Bethlehem.[155:2]
Canon Farrar says:
"That the actual place of Christ's birth was a cave, is a very ancient tradition, and this cave used to be shown as the scene of the event even so early as the time of Justin Martyr (A. D. 150)."[155:3]