(3) Therefore, there was ordained regarding her who beareth a male or a female child the statute of those days that she should touch no hallowed thing, nor enter into the sanctuary until these days for the male or female child are accom- plished.

(41) And she said unto him : " Give them to me until thou dost send me my hire " ; and he said unto her : " I will send unto thee a kid of the goats " ; and he gave them to her, (and he went in unto her,) and she conceived by him.

(63) Cain was not rejected in the Mother's Womb [or Body;] Isaiah 44. 4. though it is plain, that God does not love such a false [or evil] Seed, yet it stands free, it may press into the Love, or into the Anger, the one as well as the other will receive it, as Paul also saith; To whom you yield yourselves Servants in Obedience, his Servants you are whom you obey; whether it be in the Obedience of God to Righteousness, or of Sin unto Death.

(74) She became not pregnant save after sexual pleasure, Can a garden bloom without the spring? Pregnant women and their teeming wombs So every tree which nurtures its fruits Has been, like Mary, impregnated by the Unseen King. Though fire's heat be hidden in the midst of water, Though the heat of the fire be working unseen, In like manner, the members of those enjoying "union" Become big with child, viz., with forms of "states" and "words." Gazing on the beauty of these forms they stand agape,

(3) In the first week was Adam created, and the rib — his wife : in the second week He showed her unto him : and for this reason thej commandment was given to keep in their defilement, for a male seven days, and for a female twice seven days.

(55) Therefore God established the State of Wedlock with Adam and Eve, and bound it fast with a strong Chain, in that he said; A Man shall leave Father and Mother, and cleave to his Wife, and they two shall be one Flesh. And God tolerates their as one Body and its Members, and must aim (in the Fear of God) at the Getting of Children; or else the Wantonness [or Lust] in itself (without that true Love of the State of Wedlock) is continually a bestial Lust, [Infection,] and Sin. And if you (in the State of Wedlock) seek nothing but the Lust and Lechery, then in such a Condition, thou art not a Jot better than a Beast, And do but consider it rightly, that without this, thou standest [already] in a bestial Birth [or Generation,] contrary to the first Creation, like all Beasts. For the holy Man in Adam was not predetermined to have propagated so, but in great modest Love out of himself.

(28) And when Leah saw that she had become sterile and did not bear, she envied (Rachel) and she also gave her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob to wife, and she conceived, and bare a son, and Leah called his name Gad, on the twelfth of the eighth month, in the third year of the fourth week.

(28) And Laban said to Jacob : "It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the elder." And it is not right to do this ; for thus it is ordained and written in the heavenly tables,* that no one should give his younger daughter before the elder — but the elder one giveth first and after her the younger —and the man who doeth so, they set down guilt against him in heaven, and none is righteous that doeth this thing, for this deed is evil before the Lord. 1 ♦. #. seven years. For cf. Gen. xxix. , 20.

(3) And for this reason the com- mandment is written on the heavenly tables6 in regard to her that giveth birth : " if she beareth a male, she shall remain in her uncleanness seven days accord- ing to the first week of days, and thirty and three days shall she remain in the blood of her purifying, and she shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor enter into the sanctuary, until she accomplished these days which (are enjoined) in the case of a male child. ii. But in the case of a female child she shall remain in her uncleanness two weeks of days, according to the first two weeks, and sixty-six days in the blood of her purification, and they will be in all eighty days."

(461) Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour. Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust. Very true, he replied. And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated. Very true, he replied. This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter’s daughter, or his mother or his mother’s mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son’s son or father’s father, and so on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly. That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how

(5) All the seed of the females which issues beforehand, takes a place within the womb, and the seed of the males will remain above it, and will fill the space of the womb; whatever refrains therefrom becomes blood again, enters into the veins of the females, and at the time any one is born it becomes milk and' nourishes him, as all milk arises from the seed of the males, and the blood is that of the females.

(23) And, afterwards, Aûharmazd took tenderness for offspring away from them, so that one may nourish a child, and the child may remain.

(11) With respect to generation also, the Pythagoreans are said to have made the following observations. In the first place, they thought it necessary to guard against what is called untimely [offspring]. For neither untimely plants, nor animals, are good; but prior to their bearing fruit, it is necessary that a certain time should intervene, in order that seeds and fruit may be produced from strong and perfect bodies. It is requisite, therefore, that boys and virgins should be accustomed to labors and exercises, and appropriate endurance, and that food should be given to them adapted to a life of labor, temperance, and endurance. But there are many things of this kind in human life, which it is better to learn at a late period, and among these is the use of venery.

It is necessary, therefore, that a boy should be so educated, as not to seek after such a connexion as this, within the twentieth year of his age. But when he arrives at this age, he should use venery rarely. This however will be the case, if he thinks that a good habit of body is an honorable and beautiful thing. For intemperance and a good habit of body, are not very much adapted to subsist together in the same person. It is also said, that those laws were praised by the Pythagoreans, which existed prior to their time in Grecian cities, and which prohibited the having connexion with a woman who is a mother, or a daughter, or a sister, either in a temple, or in a public place.

For it is beautiful and advantageous that there should be numerous impediments to this energy. These men also apprehended, as it seems, that preternatural generations, and those which are effected in conjunction with wanton insolence, should be entirely prevented from taking place; but that those should be suffered to remain, which are according to nature, and subsist with temperance, and which take place in the chaste and legal procreation of children.

(8) So it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. Dec. B.C. 5.

(2) When she is cleansed from her menstruation, and when the time for pregnancy has come, always when the seed of the man is the more powerful a son arises from it; when that of the woman is the more powerful, a daughter; when both seeds are equal, twins and triplets.

(6) ¶Then were brought infants, that Jesus should touch them: but the disciples rebuked them that brought them. Jesus, much displeased, said unto the disciples,

(41) And when she had completed three months, it was manifest that she was with child, and they told Judah, saying : " Behold Tamar, thy daughter-in-law, is with child by whoredom."

(19) Now when God had pronounced his Sentence upon Adam, and ordained the Treader upon the Serpent for him, for his Comfort and Assistance in his Toil and Misery upon Earth, then he pronounced Eve's [Sentence] also, and established her perfectly to be a Woman of this World, and said to her; Thou shalt bear Children with much Pain, and thy Will shall be in Subjection to thy Husband [or Man,] and he shall be thy Lord, and I will cause many Pains to thee, when thou art conceived with Child.

(28) And command thou the children of Israel that they do not this thing ; let them neither take nor give the younger before they have given the elder, for it is very wicked.

(1) On the nature of generation it says in revelation, that a woman when she comes out from menstruation, during ten days and nights, when they go near unto her, soon becomes pregnant.