"It is a great sacrament that, whereas through woman death became our portion, so life was born to us by woman; that, in the case of both sexes, male and female, the baffled devil should be tormented, when on the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose punishment had been small, if both sexes had been liberated in us, without our being liberated through both."--_Opp. t. vi. De Agon, Christ_, c. 24. {62} 9. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450), Bishop of Ravenna, and one of the chief authorities in the fourth General Council: "Blessed art thou among women; for among women, on whose womb Eve, who was cursed, brought punishment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is honored, and is looked up to. And woman now is truly made through grace the mother of the living, who had been by nature the mother of the dying. . . . Heaven feels awe of God, angels tremble at him, the creature sustains him not, nature sufficeth not, and yet one maiden so takes, receives, entertains him, as a guest within her breast, that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb, she asks, she obtains, peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union of God himself with human flesh."--_Serm._ 140. It is difficult to express more explicitly, though in oratorical language, that the Blessed Virgin had a real, meritorious co-operation, a share which had a "hire" and a "price" in the reversal of the fall. 10. St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe in Africa (468-533). The homily which contains the following passage is placed by Ceillier (t. xvi. p. 127) among his genuine works: "In the wife of the first man, the wickedness of the devil depraved her seduced mind; in the mother of the second Man, the grace of God preserved both her mind inviolate and her flesh. On her mind he conferred the most firm faith; from her flesh he took away lust altogether. Since then man was in a miserable way condemned for sin, therefore without sin was in a marvellous way born the God man."--_Serm_. 2, p. 124, _De Dupl. Nativ._ Accordingly, in the sermon which follows (if it is his), he continues, illustrating her office of universal mother, as ascribed to her by St. Epiphanius: "Come ye virgins to a virgin, come ye who conceive to her who conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have recourse to her she may be a succor, and so restore the whole race of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity, as the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of men."