For this reason He did not create the woman from something else. Taking matter from the same man, He formed her. He did this so that she would not imagine she had another nature and become proud over the man.
Why, then, does He prescribe the same laws to husbands and wives? Because the difference between them is only in bodily composition, not in the soul.
For the woman is endowed with reason just as the man is. She is capable of understanding and acting. Likewise she knows what must be avoided and what must be pursued.
Often she even sees more clearly than the man what is more profitable, and she becomes a good counselor to him.
Therefore not only men, but also women, must go to the temples of God. The law allows men to partake of the Divine Mysteries, and it does not forbid women to do so.
Rather, it commands that they also be instructed equally with men in faith and spiritual matters. Likewise, the rewards for virtue are set before both, because the struggles of virtue are common to both.
In the same way, the difference of languages does not overthrow the unity of human nature. For Greeks and barbarians alike are capable of doing both good and evil deeds, as the Greeks themselves confirm.
They themselves admire Anacharsis, who was a Scythian, not an Athenian, Corinthian, Tegean, or Spartan. They extol the Brahmans, who were Indians by birth, not Dorians, Aeolians, or Ionians.
Moreover, they praise the Egyptians for their wisdom, because the Greeks learned many sciences from them. Homer called the Hippemolgi, a Thracian people, most just.
Xenophon, the son of Gryllus, extolled Cyrus, king of the Persians, who was Persian by his father and Median by his mother, for prudence, continence, justice, and courage.
Thus the Greeks themselves acknowledge that even barbarians have some care for virtue, and that difference of language does not prevent them from possessing such an acquisition.
Indeed, the preachers of truth themselves, the prophets and apostles, were unskilled in Hellenic eloquence. Yet because they possessed true wisdom, they brought divine teaching to all peoples, both Greek and barbarian.
They filled the whole earth and the seas with writings on virtue and piety. So now all mortals abandon the ravings of the philosophers and learn truth from fishermen and publicans.
They honor the writings of the tentmaker, while they do not even know the names of the Italian, Ionian, and Eleatic schools.
Time has blotted out their memory. Yet the names of the prophets, who lived more than fifteen hundred years before those philosophers, are on their lips.
Likewise the glorious life of the fathers before them made them known everywhere: Abraham and his children, and those more ancient still, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and others like them.
But the names of those seven Greek sages, who lived after the prophets and among people of Greek descent, are scarcely known today.
Why do I speak of those who live now, when even among the ancients there was great uncertainty about them?
Some number Periander of Corinth among them. Others include Epimenides of Crete, others Acusilaus of Argos, some Anacharsis the Scythian, others Pherecydes of Syros, and Plato includes Myson of Chenae.
Thus even the ancients did not fully know them. But they know Matthew, Bartholomew, and James, and also Moses, David, Isaiah, and the other apostles and prophets, as they know the names of their children.
Yet the shameless mock even the very names of these holy men as barbarous. But we lament their madness.
They see that men of barbarian speech surpassed the Hellenes in eloquence. They exposed before all the absurdity of their fables, however adorned.
The solecisms of fishermen utterly refuted their Attic syllogisms. Yet they do not blush at this, nor do they hide in the ravines.
They shamelessly stand for their falsehood, though they are so few that one nearly knows them by count. Nor are they men nourished on Greek eloquence.
On the contrary, they fall into barbarism with every word, while imagining themselves exceedingly learned and eloquent when they insert into their speech, "By the gods," "By the sun," and the like.
But if I am not speaking truth, tell me, honorable men: whom did Xenophanes of Colophon leave as a follower of his school? Whom did Parmenides of Elea leave?
Whom did Protagoras and Melissus leave? Whom did Pythagoras or Anaxagoras leave? Whom did Speusippus or Xenocrates leave?
Whom did Anaximander or Anaximenes leave? Whom did Arcesilaus or Philolaus leave? Who now presides over the Stoic school?
Who defends the teaching of the Stagirite? Where are states now governed according to Plato's laws, following the form of republican government he prescribed?
You cannot show us a single defender of these doctrines and ordinances. But we will clearly show you the power of apostolic and prophetic teaching.
The whole world beneath the sun is filled with this teaching. The Hebrew Scriptures have been translated not only into Greek, but also into Roman, Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Armenian, Scythian, and Sarmatian.
In short, they have been translated into all the languages spoken by the nations today.
The all-wise Plato said much about the immortality of the soul. Yet he did not persuade even his hearer Aristotle to share this opinion.
But our fishermen, publicans, and tentmakers persuaded not only Greeks, but also Romans, Egyptians, and all peoples generally, that the human soul is immortal.
They taught that it is honored with reason and capable of governing the passions. It transgresses the divine laws through its own heedlessness, not by compulsion.
Then it turns again toward what is better and departs from its former error.
Together with this, one must also say that our doctrines are held not only by the teachers of the Church, but also by shoemakers, blacksmiths, wool-spinners, and other craftsmen.
Even women hold them, not only those who know letters, but also those who live by the labor of their hands, and even slave women.
Not only city-dwellers, but also farmers have knowledge of these matters. One can find many gardeners, shepherds, and orchard-keepers who reason no worse than others about the Divine Trinity and the creation of all things.
Perhaps they know human nature much better than Plato and Aristotle. Caring for virtue and turning away from vice, they fear the threatened punishments and the coming of God's righteous Judgment.
They philosophize about immortal and eternal life, and devote all their zeal to acquiring the Kingdom of God.
They learned this from none other than those whom you call barbarians. You paid no heed to the words of Anacharsis, who said, "All Greeks seem to me to be Scythians."
This fully agrees with the words of our tentmaker: "If then I do not know the meaning of the voice, I shall be a foreigner to the one who speaks, and the speaker a foreigner to me" (1 Cor 14:11).
Indeed, just as among the Greeks the inhabitants of Illyricum, the Paeonians, the Atintanes, and others are considered barbarians, so also to those who do not understand Greek, the Attic, Doric, Aeolic, and Ionic tongues seem barbarous.
But every language has the same meaning, for all men have one nature.
Therefore, honorable men, compare the simple teaching of the fishermen with the ravings of the philosophers, and learn the difference between them.
As you turn over thousands of your books, see how weak they are. Even now no one has been found who has resolved to follow the fables of the poets and the opinions of the philosophers.
THEOSIS