But the garment of skin has a deeper signification. Philo taught(383) that it symbolized the human body that clothed the nakedness of the Spirit. Gnosticism caught at the idea. Unfallen man was pure spirit. Man had fallen, and his fall consisted in being clothed in flesh. This garment of skin must be trodden under foot, that the soul may arise above it, be emancipated from its bonds. The second passage is quite in harmony with the first: “_Salome having asked how long men should die, the Lord answered and said, As long as you women continue to bear children._(_384_)_ Then she said, I have done well, I have never borne a child. The Lord answered, Eat of every herb, but not of that containing in itself bitterness._”(385) Cassian appealed to this text also in proof that marriage was forbidden. But Clement of Alexandria refused to understand it in this sense. He is perhaps right when he argues that the first answer of our Lord means, that as long as there are men born, so long men will die. But the meaning of the next answer entirely escapes him. When our Lord says, “Eat of every herb save that in which is bitterness,” he means, says Clement, that marriage and continence are left to our choice, and that there is no command one way or the other; man may eat of every tree, the tree of celibacy, or the tree of marriage, only he must abstain from the tree of evil. But this is not what was meant. Under a figurative expression, the writer of this passage conveyed a warning against marriage. Death is the fruit of birth, birth is the fruit of marriage. Abstain from eating of the tree of marriage, and death will be destroyed. That this is the meaning of this remarkable saying is proved conclusively by another extract from the Gospel of the Egyptians, also made by Clement of Alexandria; it is put in the mouth of our Lord. “_I am come to destroy the works of the woman; of the woman, that is, of concupiscence, whose works are generation and death._”(386) This quotation bears on the face of it marks of having been touched and explained by a later hand. “Of the woman,—that is, concupiscence, whose works are generation and death,” are a gloss added by an Encratite, which was adopted into the text received among the Egyptian Docetae. The words, “I am come to destroy the works of the woman,” _i.e._ Eve, may have been spoken by our Lord. By Eve came sin and death into the world, and these works Christ did indeed come to destroy. But the gloss, as is obvious, alters the meaning of the saying. The woman is no longer Eve, but womankind in general; and by womankind, that is, by concupiscence, generation and death exist. Clement of Alexandria was incapable of seizing the plain meaning of these words. He says, “The Lord has not deceived us, for he has indeed destroyed the works of concupiscence, viz. love of money, of strife, glory, of women ... now the birth of these vices is the death of the soul, for we die indeed by our sins.”