{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020254.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020254.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020254.htm","text":"Let us, then, embracing more and more this good obedience, give ourselves to the Lord; clinging to what is surest, the cable of faith in Him, and understanding that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, the master of both is also one; one church, one temperance, one modesty; their food is common, marriage an equal yoke; respiration, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love all alike. And those whose life is common, have common graces and a common salvation; common to them are love and training. \u201cFor in this world,\u201d he says, \u201cthey marry, and are given in marriage,\u201d 1048 in which alone the female is distinguished from the male; \u201cbut in that world it is so no more.\u201d There the rewards of this social and holy life, which is based on conjugal union, are laid up, not for male and female, but for man, the sexual desire which divides humanity being removed. Common therefore, too, to men and women, is the name of man. For this reason I think the Attics called, not boys only, but girls, \u03c0\u03b1\u03b9\u03b4\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd, using it as a word of common gender; if Menander the comic poet, in Rhapizomena, appears to any one a sufficient authority, who thus speaks:\u2014\n \u201cMy little daughter; for by nature\nThe child (\u03c0\u03b1\u03b9\u03b4\u03ac\u03c1\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd) is most loving.\n\u1f0c\u03c1\u03bd\u03b5\u03c2, too, the word for lambs, is a common name of simplicity for the male and female animal.\nNow the Lord Himself will feed us as His flock forever. Amen. But without a sheperd, neither p. 212 can sheep nor any other animal live, nor children without a tutor, nor domestics without a master.\u201d","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Chapter IV.\u2014Men and Women Alike Under the Instructor\u2019s Charge.","type":"page"}