We have just seen how the church was constituted by the Word and by the establishment of a certain day, place and order of worship. For civil government (_politia_) there was as yet no need, while nature was innocent and without sin. Now domestic government (_oeconomia_) is instituted. For God now makes the solitary Adam a husband by giving him a wife and uniting her to him of whom Adam had need also for the generation and multiplication of the human race. And as we have observed above with reference to the creation of Adam that God created him with deep purpose of mind and counsel, some here see that Eve also was created with profound counsel and wisdom of design. By all this Moses would show that man was a singularly excellent creature and that he partook both of the human and the divine natures, of divinity and immortality. Man therefore is a more excellent creature than the heaven or the earth or any other creature which God made. And Moses would also impress us with reference to the other part of human nature, namely, woman, that she also was created with a peculiar counsel and design of God. And the object of Moses in this particular point of his divine instruction is, to show that this sex also had great concernment, in that state of animal but innocent life, in which Adam was created, and in that state of a spiritual and eternal life also, which he expected. For the female sex was necessary for the generation and multiplication of the human race. Hence it follows that if the woman had not been deceived by the serpent and had not sinned, she would have been in all respects equal to Adam. For her now being subject to her husband is the punishment laid upon her of God since sin and on account of sin; as are also all her other troubles and perils, her labor and pain in bringing forth children, with an infinite number of other sorrows. Woman therefore is not now what Eve was at her creation. The condition of woman then was inconceivably better and more excellent than now; she was then in no respect whatever inferior to Adam, whether you consider the endowments of her body or those of her mind.