"With a fitness, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, 'Behold thy handmaid, O Lord; be it to me according to thy word.' But Eve was disobedient; for she obeyed not, while she was yet a virgin. As she, having indeed Adam for a husband, but as yet being a virgin, . . . becoming disobedient, became the cause of death both to herself and to the whole human race, so also Mary, having the predestined man, and being yet a virgin, being obedient, became both to herself and to the whole human race the cause of salvation. . . . And on account of this the Lord said, that the first would be last and the last first. And the prophet signifies the same, saying, 'Instead of fathers you have children.' For, whereas the Lord, when born, was the first begotten of the dead, and received into his bosom the primitive fathers, he regenerated them into the life of God, he himself becoming the beginning of the living, since Adam became the beginning of the dying. Therefore also Luke, commencing the lines of generations from the Lord, referred it back to Adam, signifying that he regenerated the old fathers, not they him, into the gospel of life. And so the knot {59} of Eve's disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith."-- _Adv. Haer_, iii. 22. 34. And again: "As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced, so as to flee God, transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the angel's speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to his word. And, though the one had disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the virgin Mary might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience." --_Ibid_. v. 19.