that a woman ought to be veiled, as a token of her inferiority and dependence upon man, and he adds: "For this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head because of the angels.?" Irenaeus, in his work Against Heresies, quoting this text makes it read: "A woman ought to have a veil upon her head because of the angels." From Tertullian we learn what this means. He says in his work Aganist Marcion (V. 18):
"The apostle was quite aware that the spiritual wickedness (Ephesians, VI, 12.) had been at work in heavenly places when angels were entrapped into sin by the daughters of men."
In sundry places Tertullian waxes wroth over this supposed "entrapping" of angels by earthly women. In a treatise On the Veiling of Virgins—written for the purpose of compelling all unmarried women to be veiled as were the married, one reason being that they were "Brides of Christ"—he speaks his mind thus:
"So perilous a face, then, ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far as heaven; that when standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their (native) confines, it may blush before the other angels as well; and may repress that former evil liberty of its head—(a liberty) now to be exhibited not even before human eyes."
On Veiling of Virgins, VII.
The author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is, if anything, more severe. He remarks:
"Hurtful are women, my children; because, since they have no power or strength over the man, they act subtilly through outward guise how they may draw him to themselves; and whom they overcome by strength, him they overcome by craft * * * * * * * *. By means of their adornment, they deceive first their minds, and instil the poison by the glance of their eye, and then they take captive by their doings, for a woman cannot overcome a man by force * * * * * my children * * * * * * command your wives and your daughters
