"Moreover among all women I sought for chastity proper to them, and I found it in none. And verily a person may find one man chaste among a thousand, but a woman never." The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs makes a similar statement and adds : " By means of their adornment they deceive first the minds of men, and they instill poison by the glance of their eye, and then they take them captive by their doings," and therefore "men should guard their senses against every woman." " The angel of God shewed me that forever do women bear rule over king and beggar alike : and from the king they take away his glory, and from the valiant man his strength, and from the beggar even that little which is the stay of his poverty." Chrysostom (347-407) pronounced woman to be "a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascinator, and a painted ill." However, in another passage of singular beauty he com pares the duties of a woman and her husband, making the former in some respects the more dignified. And in a third place he says that it is a shame for a man to beat his female slave, much more his wife. Professor Donaldson says that "The early Christians considered man a human being made for the highest and noblest purposes : woman, a female made to serve only one. She was on the earth to inflame the heart of man with every evil passion. She was a fireship continually striving to get alongside the male Saint man-of-war Paul ordered to blow that him up women into pieces." should adorn themselves in modest apparel, not with braided hair, or gold or pearls, or costly array. Saint Peter, too, forbade plaiting the hair and wearing gold ornaments. Commodian says : " It is not right to God that a faithful Christian woman should be adorned." Clement of Alexandria : "Head dresses and varieties of head-dresses, and
elaborate braidings and infinite modes of dressing the hair, and costly mirrors in which they arrange their costumes, are characteristic of women who have lost all shame." Cyprian, speaking to virgins about their hair, asks : " Are sincerity and truth preserved when what is sincere is polluted by adulter ous colors, and what is true is changed into a lie by the deceitful dyes of medicaments? Your Lord says '-Thou canst not make one hair black or white,' and you, in order to overcome the word of the Lord, will be more mighty than He, and stain your hair with a daring endeavor and with profane contempt; with evil presage of the future, make a begin ning to yourself already of flame-colored hair." As to tinting the eyes : " You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him, you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the ser pent." Centuries after, William Penn in the same spirit bursts forth : " Did Eve, Susannah, Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary use to curl, powder, patch, paint, wear false locks of strange colors?" The teachings of the most enlightened of the Fathers was that there was no natural inferiority in the woman to the man. Theodoret insists emphatically on their exact equality, and says that God made woman from man in order that the tendencies and actions of both might be harmonious. Among some of the heretical sects women were far more honored than among the or thodox. Among the Quintiliani, for in stance, frequently virgins, clad in white and bearing torches, addressed the people in their churches. Women, also, were made dea cons, elders and bishops. They gave spe cial thanks to Eve because she first ate of the tree of knowledge. These people were sometimes called Bread-and-Cheeseites, be
