Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Oh, he is a good one. These are the very words of Augustine. Let me
read some more. "Woman shall be subject unto man as unto Christ."
That is St. Augustine, and this sentence of Augustine ought to be noted
of all women, for in it he plainly affirms that women are all the more
subject to man. And now, St. Ambrose, he is a good boy. "Adam was
deceived by Eve--called Heva--and not Heva by Adam, and therefore just
it is that woman receive and acknowledge him for governor whom she
called sin, lest that again she slip and fall with womanly facility.
Don't you see that woman has sinned once, and man never? If you give
woman an opportunity, she will sin again, whereas if you give it to
man, who never, never betrayed his trust in the world, nothing bad can
happen. Let women be subject to their own husbands as unto the Lord,
for man is the head of woman, and Christ is the head of the
congregation." They are all real good men, all of them. "It is not
permitted to woman to speak; let her be in silence; as the law said:
unto thy husband shalt thou ever be, and he shall bear dominion over
thee."
So St. Chrysostom. He is another good man. "Woman," he says, "was put
under the power of man, and man was pronounced lord over her; that she
should obey man, that the head should not follow the feet. False
priests do commonly deceive women, because they are easily persuaded to
any opinion,--especially if it be again given, and because they lack
prudence and right reason to judge the things that be spoken; which
should not be the nature of those that are appointed to govern others.
For they should be constant, stable, prudent, and doing everything with
discretion and reason, which virtues woman can not have in equality
with man."
I tell you women are more prudent than men. I tell you, as a rule,
women are more truthful than men. I tell you that women are more
faithful than men--ten times as faithful as man. I never saw a man
pursue his wife into the very ditch and dust of degradation and take
her in his arms. I never saw a man stand at the shore where she had
been morally wrecked, waiting for the waves to bring back even her
corpse to his arms but I have seen woman do it. I have seen woman with
her white arms lift man from the mire of degradation, and hold him to
her bosom as though he were an angel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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