But the apostle also says that daughters and handmaids should prophesy which they did both in the time of the law and gospel and man and woman was meet helps before they fell, in the image of God and righteousness and holiness; and so they are to be again in the restoration by Christ Jesus. And thy ruling over thy wife and eldership is in the fall for thou art in the transgression and not an elder in the image of God and righteousness and holiness before transgression and the fall was, nor in the restoration where they are helps meet in the righteousness and image of God and in the dominion over all that God made. (C. J., II., pp. 262, 263.) Now, you women, though you have been under reproach, because Eve was first in transgression, the promise was "The seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." And this promise of God is fulfilled.... Now here comes the reproach to be taken off women. (_Works_, VIII., p. 141.) The Testimony of Women. Let your women learn in silence, with all subjection; I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but ask her husband at home. That which usurps authority the law takes hold of, but if you be led by the spirit, then you are not under the law. Christ in the male and in the female is one which makes free from the law. "I will pour out my spirit upon sons and daughters and they shall prophesy" and if they will learn anything let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church which the law forbids; it is a shame to suffer them to speak in the church. What? Came the word of God out from you or came it unto you only? Paul, according to the measure given to him, in all his epistles speaking in them of things of which some are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction. * * * * * You that cannot own the prophesying of the daughters, the women-labourers in the gospel, you are such as the apostle speaks of in the same chapter, which serve not the Lord Jesus Christ but your own bellies, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. Be ashamed for ever and let all your mouths be stopped for ever that despise the spirit of prophecy in the daughters, and do cast them into prison and do hinder the women-labourers in the gospel. (_Works_, IV., p. 104, _et seq._, condensed.) Mothers in the Church. And the elder women in the truth were not only called elders, but mothers. Now a mother in the church of Christ and a mother in Israel is one that gives suck and nourishes and feeds and washes and rules, and is a teacher in the church and in the Israel of God and an admonisher an instructor and exhorter. (_Works_, VIII., p. 41.)