Patristic A.D. 253
“To those who attentively consider it, there seems to be expressed a kind of sacrament, in its being necessary that Christ should be put down in the registration of the whole world; in order that His name being written with all, He might sanctify all, and being placed in the census with the whole world, He might impart to the world the communion of Himself.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of Luke, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on Luke 2:1-5
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1843) ↗